News-Record.com

We published two stories on the front page today that broke big news. One is about the man expected to be appointed the next chancellor at A&T, and the other is a significant expansion of the investigation into Guilford County high school athletics.

But I'm not writing about the relevations in the stories themselves, as interesting as they are. Instead, I'm writing because both stories are based on information from sources we did not identify.

We don't like to use anonymous sources, a view shared by most mainstream publications. We believe that readers deserve to know where the information they read comes from. And, as a general practice, we're in the business of publishing information, not withholding it.

In both of these cases, we could not get the information another way, and we thought the stories were important enough to tell you about them now. Also in both cases, the sources have what I think are legitimate reasons to want their identities withheld.

Does the use of anonymous sources in these stories bother you?

Further reference: Our code of ethics.

I read a lot of blogs. If you're a blogger and reading this, I have one piece of unsolicited advice: read this post.

The Christian Science Monitor writes about The Slammer, a Raleigh-based publication that....well, the SCM describes it this way:

If "Jerry Springer" came in newsprint, The Slammer could be it -- a garish compilation of the week's local crimes and their alleged perpetrators. The men and women, with their dour mugs, bloodied noses, and booze-induced grins, have been arrested for everything from skipping a court date to robbing a food mart. It is, in essence, the local police blotter writ large.

I've seen it. That describes it well. Then the story adds:

Critics, on the other hand, see the papers as sensational, tawdry, and ethically dubious -- a modern form of the "crime rags" that flourished in the heyday of early 20th-century yellow journalism. "This is a sad commentary on the state of American journalism," says Bob Steele, a journalism ethics expert at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Which brings me to the always-popular Guilford's Most Wanted, which we publish every Monday. That feature, in which we publish mini-profiles and photos of two people on the lam, is coming up on its one-year anniversary next month. So far, 71 people featured have been arrested.

"You don't publish enough positive news. Good things happen every day and you don't reflect that."

I suspect every journalist hears that. It could even be true. I have been talking with a reader -- a retired public school teacher -- who thinks that we overplayed this story about two students who hung KKK hoods at the school yard. She said her son in Charlotte knew about the incident, thanks to the Internet. Then she suggested to me that we played it dramatically "to sell newspapers."

There are numerous acts of kindness and charitable actions and interactions with handicapped and ESL students performed by individiuals or groups within our schools that could paint a more positive picture of our young people.

In this age of divisiveness and racial/religious/homophobic prejudice, emphasis needs to be placed on the positive side of things. I know that bad news sells more papers but attitudes might be changed and a better impression of our community given as an example to other parts of the state.

The fact is, we published it on page B5, hardly a prominent place. I doubt it sold a single newspaper. We put it "back in with the truss ads," as one editor used to say, precisely because we thought it was an isolated incident that didn't have much significance to the community, and probably not much at Central High School, for that matter.

I actually believe that we publish much more good news than bad about teenagers in the community. Here's today's example.

But I could be wrong. These are hard times. The news is bad...from the markets to the unemployment line to the crime blotter. Do we emphasize the bad too much?

I just heard a local television station refer to a story in the morning paper by saying, "as reported by a local newspaper."

We used to avoid naming competitors, too, to avoid giving credence to something they reported (and we didn't). Silly, really. It didn't help readers. We changed that several years ago, prefering precision to vagueness. And now that there are hundreds of "competitors" it makes even less sense. It's like refusing to link out.

My wife is happy for a variety of reasons about this news. Me, I'm happy that the number of times we need to include the following sentence in any story is now dramatically diminished.

The property is owned by Susan Robinson, the wife of News & Record Editor John Robinson, and her brothers, W. Hardy Spence and Royall Spence III.

The sentence was included in the interest of full disclosure. Even so, she and I didn't discuss this deal at home. At work, I didn't participate in news coverage discussions about it. I also didn't participate in the editorial board discussions that suggested the city not buy it.

Being involved -- even when you're not involved -- in a news story is a pain.

I continue to get comments and e-mails about the Obsession DVD. (Sounds like a perfume ad, doesn't it?) The sustained interest in the DVD interests me. Yesterday, I received an e-mail interview request from a student at Syracuse University who is writing a research paper on the topic. I've attached it, with my responses. She didn't explain why -- perhaps the interest interests her, too.

Dear Mr. John Robinson,

I have read your posts on the topic and was wondering whether you could answer some additional questions for me.

1) In your article "Radical Islam DVD didn't meet standards" you mention that "As a journalist, my default position is to provide people with more knowledge, however, troubling, rather than less." In the same article, you also say, "Were this truly an issue of freedom of information, I would have argued to publish. But this was a paid advertisement presenting one side of an inflammatory issue." I see these two statements in contradiction with one another. So are you saying that an ad and a piece of written news should be treated differently? Just because the ad is troubling, it shouldn't be published but a piece of news that is troubling should? Could you please clarify this difference?

In a way, been there, done that.

The Fox News take: ...the newspaper is on firm journalistic ground in refusing to make the tape public..

Newspapers publish a lot of public records: crime reports, court dispositions, home purchases, births, marriages, divorces, gun permits among others.

So, how about the names of people who didn't vote?

A Tennessee paper does it it as a way to encourage people to vote. (Via E&P.)

"Sometimes when you embarrass people they do the right thing," the president and publisher the Tennessee Tribune said.

Interesting concept and perfectly legal. Seems wrong, but that's what some people tell us about every list we publish, including marriages and births.

Don't expect us to follow suit. If you have to shame people into voting, I'm not sure I want them to vote.

"Is it OK for me to attend the Obama speech?" one of our newsroom folks asked me last week. "Not to cover it as a journalist or anything, but just to watch it?"

It's a common question whenever politics is involved. Journalists' answers to this question run from "Absolutely not' to "Sure. What's the big deal?" (Disagreement in a newsroom? Who'd a thunk?)

My answer: Yes, if you want to go listen to someone who could be the next president of the United States, go. Don't carry an Obama sign or where a pin or indicate support (or protest, for that matter). But you are welcome to educate yourself and to see the candidate in the flesh and listen to his words. Attending will certainly help you understand better what people see in him and how they respond.

I would give the same response to those in the newsroom who want to watch McCain and/or Palin when they come. If either comes.

Some in the traditional media think that attending rallies feeds the perception of political bias. And I suspect that for some, it does. Others think we should go in the other direction and state our biases at the top so that readers will know how to interpret our reporting. I'm at neither place, obviously.

Seth Godin writes about the wisdom of bullying someone into a sale. He finds, of course, little wisdom in it.

The flaw in thinking is this... the people you most want to sell to won't respond well to this. The people you most need to spread the word, the people who are the best partners, the most loyal customers -- they blanch in the face of bullying. They walk out.

I often have people try to bully me into this or that, pushing for news coverage or expressing dismay about something we've done. I listen and explain. Sometimes, when appropriate, I apologize. If the bullying persists, I wait for a pause and say, "Does this approach with people usually work for you, because, I gotta tell you, it ain't working for me."

That usually changes the direction of the discussion. (Unless it is an attorney and they redouble their efforts.)

We have talked about this John Edwards story for a couple days. The arguments to publish and not to publish are pretty well covered in these links.

For our part, we got nothing to publish. AP hasn't moved anything. The New York Times hasn't moved anything. The other wires we use have sent us nothing, all because they don't have any independent confirmation that what the Enquirer is reporting is actually true. I have no doubt, though, that many of their reporters are on the trail.

Surprisingly, I have not gotten many calls about the story. I don't know if that is because it comes from the Enquirer, because people don't know about it or because it's summer and people have better things to do than obsess over a politician without an office. For the record, I have no idea if the allegations are true. I would be disappointed, but not surprised. (Is it possible to be surprised anymore by any behavior exhibited by national politicians?)

In any case, we aren't avoiding the story because of some bias. We will publish if we get a story from a credible source.

After the school board voted to offer the superintendent's job to Mo Green last night, board member Amos Quick thanked the two assistant superintendents who had run the school system for the past several months. The board and the crowd gave the one assistant who was there a standing ovation.

The reporter from the News & Record remained seated, taking notes.

It may seem rude, but it is generally a rule that reporters don't applaud much of anyone when they're on the job covering a news event. It goes with the turf of being independent of the people and institutions you cover.

I thought of this as I've read about the exuberance with which Sen. Obama is expected to be received at the Unity Convention, a conference of members of the national associations of Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American journalists. If there is cheering among supposedly objective, unbiased journalists, how will it be interpreted?

I understand the significance of having a minority candidate in a serious run for the highest office in the land. I think I can understand how personally exciting that is. And I certainly see and feel his charisma.

But then I also remember the abuse that one of our reporters took when she expressed, with too much exuberance, her appreciation for Condi Rice at the end of an interview with the Secretary of State a few years ago.

No question that personal feelings can outrun professional obligations. We don't permit journalists to campaign for candidates or put bumper stickers or post yard signs for candidates. We don't want to put our credibility in jeopardy. We vote, but we also exercise dispassionate detachment as best we can. We know that some members of the public question our objectivity, and we don't want to further fuel the perception that we favor one candidate over another.

In 1999, I attended a journalists conference where then President Clinton was invited to speak. He was politely applauded at his introduction and at the end of his talk. Politely. Most of us were simply conference attendees; I didn't see the working reporters clapping.

Myself, on Sunday, I hope Sen. Obama is greeted with applause, polite, respectful applause.

Sunday update: From a Chicago Tribune report: At UNITY, the applause was restrained, after organizers reminded conference participants that the appearance was being nationally broadcast and they should make every effort to maintain "professional decorum."

Still, Obama received a standing ovation from many in the audience at the start and end of his appearance. There was also a rush toward the stage after his speech, as Obama shook hands and signed autographs.

We published a story today about Pruitt Rainey, who was killed Sunday in Afghanistan.

The Burlington Times-News had the story, too, but didn't publish.

Editor Madison Taylor writes: We actually had a story ready to go Monday night that was at least as documented as the current one by the News and Record (sic). By Tuesday night we had a lot of information the N&R didn't have -- including the rank and base where the young man was stationed.

From our perspective the News and Record story with only two sources, no military rank, no base is way to skimpy to publish.

Our reason for publishing wasn't complicated. The death of a local serviceman in fighting in Afghanistan is news, and we believed it to be true. We had family and church confirmation of his death. There was a lot more information we wanted for the story, but couldn't get. Still, we didn't think much about holding the story to await the military.

The Times-News went ahead and published its story on its Web site this morning, presumably without military confirmation. Because the News and Record (sic) has a story on its Web site about this incident and Channel 2 does as well, I’ve decided to post ours so readers will at least have more information.

But I’m not comfortable with it.

I would not have changed what we did, but I understand the Times-News decision. When to publish what you have on sensitive topics is often a tough call.

Media bias has become increasingly profitable given a polarized electorate in which conservatives and liberals want news coverage that tilts toward their political leanings, according to a University of Illinois study.

"You listen to news not just to get informed, but to be entertained," economist Stefan Krasa said. "And you're more entertained if they tell you you're right than if they tell you you're wrong."

Hmm. I am certainly pleased when I'm told I'm right, but I am vastly entertained when I'm told I'm wrong.

I've been thinking about this letter to the editor by a Greensboro College professor in which she encourages readers and her students not to trust the media.

I teach critical reading skills to my college students. We look at a text and ask ourselves: Who is the writer? What is the writer's purpose? What is the text saying? How does word choice impact the reader? Does the writer succeed? Students realize that all texts have an agenda, no matter how subtle.

Putting aside the vague generalities of what she considers media -- I wonder what she thinks of the stereotypes of the political persuasion of college professors -- it is an interesting letter. I agree with the above exerpted paragraph, but not with her conclusion.

I wouldn't say "don't trust." It closes the door too soundly. Instead, I encourage skepticism. And I don't restrict it to the media. I advise people to be skeptical, period. Here's why: Is the Web "the media"? Is an unsolicited mass e-mail you receive "the media"? Is a friend telling you a story about something he's heard "the media"? There are plenty of examples of each being even less worthy of trust for accuracy than The Onion.

Alan Mutter: A few weeks ago, a story ricocheted around the Internet about a 13-year-old boy who stole his father’s credit card to hire hookers to play videogames with him in a Texas motel. The problem is that the story wasn't the least bit true.

The steady pollution of the web with phony and malicious info-junk could turn an awesome resource for humanity into little more than useless, time-wasting digital flotsam

Think that is out of the ordinary? Here are four other examples.

You can reflect on the e-mail crapola you receive and the stories you hear from friends that you know are bogus.

American Journalism Review has a longer takeout on media bias that is worth reading. It describes the public perceptions, manipulations, industry manipulations and media realities accurately....at least to this biased observer.

Bottom line: Every source should be questioned, no matter how esteemed. Does the story make sense? Sound unbelievable? Photos can be Photoshopped. Video can be tricked. Think Kobe jumped over that Aston Martin? Think again.

That shouldn't bother mainstream organizations, even though it does sometimes. (We try to get over ourselves.) We doubt and question sources that tell us things. Why would we expect you to do anything less? Over time, you will either trust our reporting or not.

What do journalists value that readers don't?

I started thinking about that question as I discussed with another editor whether we should refer from a front page story to an editorial. (Refer -- pronounced reefer -- is journalistic jargon for a brief line of text telling readers about a related item elsewhere in the paper.)

In traditional news ethics, the separation of news and editorial is right up there with the separation of news and advertising. But I wonder how often that separation disregards what best serves the reader. Pointing readers to related content is not dissimilar to linking to other views from the same blog post. It is a convenience, not an endorsement.

But it's not something we traditionally do because of the separation between news and editorial.

What other newspaper traditions do we hold dear but which no longer -- if they ever did -- help the reader? Some of those walls between newspaper journalists and readers have fallen already. We have ads on the front pages of some sections. We publish ad stickers, covering the nameplate of the paper. Editors hate them -- I'm one -- but readers didn't object. (You could argue that those are walls that have fallen between news and advertising, too.)

It wasn't that long ago that we didn't publish news as soon as we knew about it even though we could, thanks to the wonders of online? Thank goodness, that wall has fallen.

What about long, explanatory, "important" stories? We know that all but the very best stories lose readers paragraph by paragraph, but it sure is tough to wean ourselves from them.

"We did that same story last year" is a common explanation for not doing a perfectly fine story. Think first day or last day of school. Allergy season is here. Mother's Day. Is our journalism so memorable that readers are going to recall a story a year later?

Advertising is anchored to the bottom right on the page and never anchored on the top. We have broken with this tradition on occasion.

What else? How else do we stymie those want to use us?

Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic has an interesting post about what he calls an online mugging by another blogger.

What bothered me about Mr. Haber's post was not its insults (a couple of which were funny) but that he repeated a discredited accusation made by an ethically-challenged journalist about my reporting without having sought my comment. I called Haber to complain. He said: "I just wanted to promote your new blog." ... Then he said that, while the Observer "does reporting," the blog for which he writes "is a looser, more fun kind of way of writing things." Fun, in Haber's view, includes slander.

It has always been a curiosity to me that some bloggers feel no responsibility to ask for information or an explanation before they write something negative about me or the reporters here or the newspaper. The responsibility then falls to me or someone else here to correct the record or at least present an explanation for what we're being accused of. Of course, that requires us to know that the post has been written in the first place. (And for sure, it is not just me or the paper; there are some public figures and other bloggers who get reamed without being contacted for comment. I can only speak for myself.)

Most recently, one blogger headlined a piece saying we had censored his comment. Actually, our spam filter snagged it because it had several links in it. When I read his post, I suspected that had happened and resurrected the comment. I explained what happened on his blog and asked him to change the headline, and he graciously did. That's hardly slanderous and isn't a big deal. But it was factually wrong and could easily have been explained and fixed. I'm not linking to him because in the past he has asked me via e-mail for a comment about an issue he was interested in.

We aren't difficult to reach. Writing a fuller, fairer piece seems a reasonable motivation. It brings the blogger more authority and credibility. It would make the local blogosphere a more inviting, civilized place. Is that just the traditional journalist in me?

An editor asked me this morning why we were not giving this homicide of the A&T student the same visibility in the newspaper we gave this homicide of the UNC student body president.

Stories about Eve Carson's murder in March were on the front page a couple times. Stories about Derek Hodge have been on the Local front.

Both deaths are tragic for all the reasons you can think of. But for both philosophical and procedural reasons, the two were not judged the same way when we're putting the paper together. At least, that's how I responded to the editor. Here's why the difference in the coverage:

* Eve Carson was student body president and held a variety of high-profile positions within the university community. She was a mover and shaker who made news often by the things she did well before her murder.
* Her murder went national quickly, creating an interest in the story well beyond the Triangle or even North Carolina.
* A murder in "idyllic Chapel Hill" seems less common and therefore more newsworthy than one in Greensboro.
* The Chapel Hill police held regular news conferences and were relatively forthcoming with details and progress. That's not how Greensboro police do things.
* The case moved fast. Homicide of student then photos of suspected perps then arrests...all over the course of a few days. The progress created a sense of momentum.

But Hodge was a student at a local university, which carries a lot of weight here. Should we raise the visibility of his case?

Mark Binker gets his hand slapped by Clinton press folks for acting like a citizen of the United States -- going to the Clinton fund-raiser along with 700 people yesterday and then writing about it.

I have resisted, until now, pointing out the fact that there were 700 people in that venue, 95 percent of who were toting cell phones with cameras and recorders, a bunch with personal cameras and all, I would think, with decent enough memories to relate the event to friends and neighbors. So since everyone invited to the event was potentially a reporter, that "closed press" thing seemed pretty laughable.

I think it has been suggested before that the Clintons are working under a 20th century media mentality which is no longer operable in the age of citizen journalism. Yesterday was an up-close taste of that.

I just received an e-mailed news release from a Raleigh group called Action for Children North Carolina about its new report on corporal punishment. A few minutes before that I got a news release on the local winners of the National Merit $2,500 scholarship winners.

Today is Monday; both releases are embargoed until Wednesday.

Normally when information with strings attached is exchanged, both sides agree to the strings. Given that I did not agree to embargo the information from National Merit or Action for Children -- both releases were sent unsolicited -- am I bound to honor the embargoes?

We don't care for embargoes, although we agree to them on occasion. They rarely help us or, more important, our readers.

But the tradition, I think, is to adhere to the requested embargo date, although I can't think of a good reason why. Now, with publishing in the hands of many, rather than few, isn't it time for this practice to go away?

When I was a reporter, the school superintendent told me, another reporter and two of his department heads an off-color joke that belittled African Americans and women. (This was not in Guilford County.) The reporter and I were in his office at the time, interviewing him and the aides about test scores. After he told the joke -- he saw me making a note -- he declared it off the record. I shook my head and said that we had made no such agreement. We argued about it briefly -- the department heads both looked horrified; they knew a faux pas when they heard one -- and I finally told him that he had been a public figure longer than I had been a reporter and he knew the rules: You don't declare something off the record after the fact.

I thought of that as I read about Samantha Power's statement about Hillary being a monster and her immediate declaration that that was off the record. Glenn Greenwald at Slate uses that example to write about one of the weaknesses of the American press.

It's extremely likely, though, that had Power been speaking to a typical reporter from the American establishment media, her request to keep her comments a secret would have been honored. In one of the ultimate paradoxes, for American journalists -- whose role in theory is to expose the secrets of the powerful -- secrecy is actually their central religious tenet, especially when it comes to dealing with the most powerful. Protecting, rather than exposing, the secrets of the powerful is the fuel of American journalism. That's how they maintain their access to and good relations with those in power.

And then he cites other persuasive examples.

I wonder if it is yet another one of those big city inside-the-beltway deals that those of us in the sticks don't get. Dan Gillmor describes his practice, which is precisely what I was taught 30 years ago and what we practice here.

Visitors here have strong opinions on when to publish and when not to publish.

So if you're the editor who is asked not to publish Prince Harry's whereabouts in Afghanistan, what do you decide?

In a series of meetings at the Ministry of Defence late last year, British media and selected international outlets agreed not to report Harry's deployment in exchange for getting regular pictures, video and text of his day-to-day activities once the planned four-month assignment was completed.

Apparently, the Drudge Report wasn't one of the outlets.

He's coming home now.

Update: It's quiet. Too quiet. C'mon, it's not that hard.

Two stories:

My friend Sam Zealy was killed last week in a traffic accident. I got a phone call about it late Thursday night from a friend of the family. We had a story about the accident online late Thursday and it was updated first thing Friday, but we didn't include his name either time because police had not released it.

Victims of the Ocean Isle fire tragedy are identified in today's story from The State newspaper. The State didn't get the information from the police, who hadn't released it. The paper credited "other officials, family members, friends and other sources."

Why identify one set of victims and not the other? The Ocean Isle fire has gotten national media coverage since it happened Sunday morning. There is intense public interest. Because the victims were identified only as attending South Carolina and Clemson, tens of thousands of people -- students, friends, parents, other relatives, alums -- were left wondering, who? The paper could answer that for those of us who didn't check Facebook and MySpace.

Sam's death, while tragic, was smaller in scope. The old-fashioned grapevine moved quickly. My guess is that lots of people knew Friday morning. I don't know why the police hesitated in releasing his name -- his family certainly knew -- but out of respect and caution, we waited, too. There didn't seem to be a public hunger for the identification.

But I could be wrong about that. Consistency in policy is something I like. It makes decisions easier, and it sets forth clarity when others are deliberating. This isn't consistency. On the other hand, it's a judgment call, which I also like.

Want to help clarify?