Audit Financial Journalism Ethics Quiz: Advanced Placement Final.
1. A newspaper that accurately quotes someone saying something that is almost certainly complete b.s. about a third party has:
A. Done its job.
B. Done a bad thing.
C. Earned an honorable mention from the American Stenographic Society.
D. Put itself in a spot where it might later have to clarify the record.
2. Accurately quoting the third party denying the thing said about it and claiming it knows nothing about the outfit that is talking about it:
A. Solves the newspaper’s problem.
B. Is an occasion for reflection.
C. Further enhances stenography credentials.
3. Running with the allegation after the sole source cannot be reached a second time and his organization leaves a message on an answering machine saying it has suspended operations due to an “extreme situation” is:
A. Wise.
B. Unwise.
C. Neither.
D. Both.
4. Declining to correct the record after a famous financial newspaper, which had run a similar story, publishes a correction on its story the size of a softball:
A. Is a sign of steadfastness.
B. Is a sign of stubbornness.
C. Is another occasion for reflection.
D. Is why all newspapers should be wiped from the face of the earth for all time.
This is not the biggest deal in the world, but the Ventura County Star, an E.W. Scripps Co. paper in Camarillo, California, ran a story under the headline “Madoff fallout cancels local folks’ D.C. trip,” reporting that residents had bought packages to the Obama inaugural from a Chicago charity, known as December Rain, but later learned that the charity had shut down and that they were out of luck.
The trouble is Madoff almost certainly had nothing to do with the local folks’ losing their tickets. The only support for the claim was the word of a person who was actually caught reneging on his promise to provide tickets and then disappeared.
The story starts this way:
At least four Ventura County residents and about two dozen others nationwide have lost out on inauguration packages in Washington, D.C.The deals they purchased were supposed to include tickets to President-elect Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony and a chance to meet Obama.
Okay, so far (the text, anyway, not the headline, which we’ll get to). But before dropping out of sight, the Chicago charity told the Star that it was the victim of the Madoff scandal, specifically one of Madoff’s so-called feeder funds, which collected money from investors and invested with Madoff (the emphasis is mine).
But they have been snagged in a bizarre web involving a New York investment firm said to be reeling under the weight of the Bernard Madoff financial scandal and a Chicago-based children’s charity, which announced Friday it has temporarily shut down.
Then the feeder fund is named:
December Rain said it purchased the packages through Fairfield Greenwich Group, a New York investment firm that is said to have direct ties to Madoff’s securities firm. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Fairfield Greenwich appears to be the biggest casualty in Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi schemeDecember Rain Executive Director Paul Saulnier was critical of Fairfield Greenwich in an interview earlier this week, saying he never received the promised ticket packages.
Hmm. In the next paragraph, Fairfield Greenwich is allowed this statement:
But when contacted for a response, Fairfield Greenwich said in a terse statement late Thursday that it “has never heard of this charity, nor have we ever worked with this charity. ”
A jump ball, you say? No way.
Think about it: That means anybody gets to say anything about anybody as long as the second party is quoted denying it. It requires the second party to prove a negative: how do you prove you did not offer to obtain tickets to the presidential inaugural on behalf of some charity? How do you prove you didn’t do a lot of things? There’s no alibi for this.
This story is poorly organized and even more poorly written. Had it been presented as a summation to a jury; surely an acquittal wold have ensued.
By the end of the article I found myself siding with the Paper.
#1 Posted by RSL, CJR on Tue 3 Feb 2009 at 09:03 AM
What Joe Howry, editor of the Ventura County Star fails to realize is that his paper's problem is with HOW it ran with the facts and its failure to check whether December Rain is real and, if it is, what its status is.
As to reporting, the Star should have done more to check out December Rain, first by going to Guidestar.org. Its report shows that December Rain has not filed a Form 990 and shows no assets and no names for any directors. Now maybe that is because it has less than $25,000 of anual revenues and is exempt from 990 filing, but then why would people in Ventura be dealing with a charity almost 2,000 miles away that is so small?
Next, The Star should have called the Illinois Attorney General's chariable division about the organization.
That is just the bare minimum to vet this group, about whom the voice mailbox recording should have set off alarms.
The deeper problem is in how the facts were presented. Not even a hint of skepticism about anything. Shame.
Many times we are faced with completely irresolvable differences on facts, but we are also expected to apply some judgment. And our job as journalists is to write the story in a way that demonstrates judgment.
Readers deserve a correction -- a long, forthright correction -- and more reporting by The Star to get the story right.
#2 Posted by David Cay Johnston, CJR on Fri 6 Feb 2009 at 11:03 AM
Mr. Starkman had made up his mind about this story before he ever called me for a response. During our conversations, whenever I would present facts that would dispute his point of view he would go through contortions to dismiss them.
Fair enough, and it's fair to criticize The Star. No doubt, we made some mistakes reporting this story. But despite Mr. Starkman's seemingly divine knowledge of the truth, that has not been determined yet. We continue to report on this story, and when we do discover the truth if we need to correct the record we'll be happy to do so.
Finally, Mr. Starkman rather conveniently failed to mention in the story that this was all spun to him by a public relations firm that works for Fairfield Greenwich. The Star has yet to receive an official request for a correction from the company.
It's unfortunate that Mr. Starkman and the editors of CJR don't follow the same standards of journalism that they employ to judge others.
Joe R. Howry
Editor
Ventura County Star
#3 Posted by Joe Howry, CJR on Fri 6 Feb 2009 at 01:26 PM
Thanks to David Cay Johnston:
In response to Joe Howry: The record, according to the Star, stands this way: "Madoff fallout cancels local folks' D.C. trip." Also, local folks still "have been snagged in a bizarre web involving a New York investment firm said to be reeling under the weight of the Bernard Madoff financial scandal.... "
I don't have any divine knowledge of the truth, but I know the evidence supporting these assertions at the time was thin--the word of the person who had actually reneged on the deal and then stopped returning phone calls.
Now, with Saulnier's disappearance, the evidence has collapsed. Never mind Fairfield Greenwich. The standard here can't be that someone's word is enough to drag a third party into a controversy and that, once in, the third party has to wait for the newspaper to prove that it wasn't guilty.
#4 Posted by Dean Starkman, CJR on Fri 6 Feb 2009 at 03:17 PM
To Joe Howry --
For the sake of argument, let's assume that Dean Starkman made up his mind before he called you.
Now how does that change anything about your newspaper's failures here, which you admit to, but then assert you will not correct until you establish "the truth."
At an absolute minimum The Star's readers deserve to be told that the story is in dispute, the reasons for that and what The Star is doing to establish not the truth, but just the facts.
The idea that you need an "official complaint," whatever that is, before correcting a deeply flawed report should trouble all Star readers about the integrity of anything appearing in the newspaper for which they pay your employer a good price.
Suggestion: simply consider a report in CJR to be an unofficial complaint -- and act on it in print.
#5 Posted by David Cay Johnston, CJR on Sat 7 Feb 2009 at 08:36 AM