The recent arrest of a suspect in the murder of a nine-year-old Cole County girl raised some questions about how journalists cover stories involving juvenile suspects.

The juvenile court asked stations not to report the name and gender of the suspect until after the case's certification hearing. KOMU only reported the suspect's age, while some stations did not comply with the court's request at all.

Charles Davis is Executive Director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition. He said KOMU and several other news outlets in the Columbia area have shown great ethical restraint.

"As a newsgathering institution, you have to figure out what you're going to disclose, [and] how much you should to disclose," Davis said.

KOMU's decision not to cover the girl's gender also dismayed some viewers. One viewer named Linda was particularly upset.

"I am shocked over the last line of your article 'Olten's Funeral is Wednesday, but KOMU 8 will not cover it as to let the funeral remain private'. The family has stated that both the viewing as well as funeral are open to the public. Why would the network not be covering it when the family has made the decision to have it open the public? I am also shocked that none of the press conferences that were held by Sheriff White or anyone else for that matter has been covered live when KOMU has streaming capabilities on the web. It is pretty disheartening to be watching traffic and a church on your live cams when the death of a child is why many of us who are following it are visiting your site. Will this be changing now that the national media has picked up this story?"

Tuesday, the family's funeral director, Houser Millard, released a statement asking the media to refrain from attending both the visitation and the funeral in order to respect the family's privacy. However, the funeral home did accommodate the media with a staging ground at the girl's graveside service.

Nevertheless, KOMU News Director Stacey Woelfel said he felt the accommodations were not an invitation to the media to attend.

"The funeral home and the family expected the disruption and wanted to keep it to a minimum, so they set up the place for the media to go," Woelfel said. "But in the big picture I think these are private affairs and for the media to show up often acting not in the style that you should at a funeral is really upsetting for family and friends and there's really nothing to shoot there and it's better to just report on that without going."

If you want to comment on the coverage of the Elizabeth Olten suspect or anything else, you can click on the Your View tab. You can also call us on the Your View commentline at (573) 884-NEWS.