July 2005

Thought readers might be interested that readers do actually call to thank us, as well as criticize us.

This re a recent Doonesbury strip, which caused some controversy.

In this business, when I hear from other local news organizations wanting to ask me questions it’s usually because they think they’ve got something on the Rocky Mountain News.

When the News published a five-part series on graduation rates in Denver Public Schools, the media writer at the weekly newspaper Westword picked at how we worked with the school district to ensure accuracy rather than assess the quality of the actual journalism we published.

Now comes the monthly magazine 5280. We got a call Wednesday from Research Editor Patrick Doyle, who was “suspicious” about an editorial we had published about Joseph Wilson, the former diplomat who’s married to a CIA agent at the center of the controversy that has landed New York Times reporter Judith Miller in jail.

Doyle first called last Friday to raise questions about passages in the editorial he thought were similar to a piece that had been published on The Daily Howler Web site. What he didn’t know then was that we had already published a correction about the July 16 editorial more than 24 hours earlier.

This is what it said: “An editorial on Page 14C Saturday should have attributed a phrase describing former ambassador Joe Wilson's "stretches, misstatements and howlers" to The Daily Howler Web site.”

Our policy, simply put, is that writers may not “submit the work of another person without complete attribution of the true source.” We published the correction after we were alerted that a local Web site had asserted that a phrase in our editorial mirrored a sentence on the Daily Howler Web site. We immediately investigated, although we had received no demand for a correction from another author or from any readers, and made public our error. The phrase that was repeated in our editorial was a unique phrase that shouldn’t have been replicated without attribution.

On Wednesday, Doyle talked with Editorial Page Editor Vincent Carroll and me about what he thought were other problems in the editorial.

Here are the problems he cited.

The Daily Howler quoted New York Post writer Deborah Orin on MSNBC’s Hardball, “…on virtually every point that Joe Wilson made, starting from denying his wife had him sent on the trip, which turns out to be not true.”

Our editorial said: “Then there’s the matter of Wilson denying his wife had recommended he be sent on the trip, which also turned out to be not true.”

We agreed with Doyle that there were troubling similarities between the two sentences involving Wilson’s trip. We told him it violated our policy, but that we didn’t believe it rose to the level of requiring another correction.

The Howler, in a piece that was six-pages long when printed, also used the verbs bolstered and debunked in separate sentences in different parts of the piece. The Howler said, “Indeed, the committee found that Wilson’s report bolstered suspicion that Iraq sought uranium.” Three paragraphs later, it said: “According to the unanimous committee, Wilson hadn’t debunked Bush’s claim.”

Those verbs also were used in the Rocky editorial, in a single sentence. “The committee said Wilson’s Niger reporter, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as Wilson said, bolstered the case for most CIA analysts.”

We didn’t agree that the use of the same verbs in writing on the same topic was a problem. They’re too common to raise concern when applied to an editorial where they’re clearly appropriate and could easily be used by scores of writers addressing the same topic who’d never seen the Daily Howler. There’s no copyright on a single verb.

Doyle asked what action we had taken against the writer. We don’t discuss internal personnel matters. But we assured him that the matter had been taken very seriously. We told him we believe the similarities were inadvertent, that we don’t condone either the sentence we corrected or the similar construction of the other phrase and that we had taken appropriate action with regard to the person who had written the editorial.

Then the angle of Doyle’s inquiry became clearer. Aren’t we being hypocritical calling for the ouster of CU professor Ward Churchill for plagiarism when we have a problem with one of our own editorials, he asked?

No, we told him. The Rocky immediately acknowledged and rectified an example of journalism that didn’t meet our standards, without any demand from outside the newspaper. The problem involved two phrases in a 250-word editorial. Churchill is accused of a slew of examples of plagiarism, all of which he denies in the face of very strong evidence. Churchill hadn’t simply taken a phrase or two from another source. His pattern is vast in scope, as the Rocky has extensively documented, most recently in its series “The Churchill files.” Perhaps even worse, Churchill is accused of another academic and journalistic sin, fabricating history. He is accused of making stuff up and reporting it as the truth.

Months after Churchill’s problems were brought to light, the university is still studying his case. There’s been no official acknowledgement of any wrongdoing, let alone any disciplinary action.

The Rocky has a clear policy. We don’t present the words of others as our own. We were faithful to that policy in our handling of this case.

We won’t be silent about Churchill. You can count on that. You can also count on us to continue to take seriously our responsibility to live up to our own standards.

One day the city learned from the Rocky of a confession from an accused cop killer to his girlfriend. The next day the Post reported that she had told its reporter that she had never said what she told us.

Then, almost two months later, came a court hearing, and the truth came out. The Rocky had accurately reported her account all along.

I don't think it's pointed out often enough when it's not the news media that's wrong, despite what a source says. In this case the Rocky was alone in having it right originally. It was a banner story. The next day, other news organizations seemed to make a big deal of how our story might have been wrong.

This is an example of why you shouldn't be too quick to believe attacks on newspapers, especially when they're accused of making things up. Despite what some think, that's not a part of any newsroom culture I know.

Follow the sequence through the following links.

Here's a letter I got from a reader with a perspective it might be interesting for Canadians to hear.

A Canadian reader saw my column about press freedom in Canada and had this to say.

-----Original Message-----
From: hard-body [mailto:hard-body@shaw.ca]
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2005 7:54 PM
To: editor@RockyMountainNews.com
Subject: Your article regarding Canada

Hello Mr. Temple;

I read with a great smile your observations regarding our whacked out political/judicial system. Keep in mind however that there is a very large number of Canadians that are not like what you described in that article and we almost exclusively live in Alberta. We are majority not against the US- in fact we consider ourselves good friends, but that our unfriendly neighbours on our street (the rest of the country) have some chemical imbalance issues and forgot to take their meds. Remember the Quebec "Distinct Society" claim a few years back when they were going for separation? Well, if there ever was a "distinct society" in Canada it is not in Quebec- it is in Alberta. Our values are what you remember them to be when you left, and we haven't changed them as we have been bullied around by the rest of the country. We are staunchly Conservative and abhor the secular humanist agenda that has been shoved at us with no recourse to prevent its effect. The list of grievances grows monthly from outright contempt to economic warfare (the Kyoto implementation is going to affect pretty much only Alberta- as Ontario and Quebec get a stay). With the implementation of the Kyoto (Socialist monetary redistribution program) Alberta will have the final arrow in its quiver to get the population to vote for separation in a referendum. And you thought Quebec would be first! The rumblings are all over, the media out here are starting to take sympathetic views and are publishing support articles from leading academics. The wave is rising and once Alberta does separate I am certain you will recognize us as the Canada that you knew growing up, not the snotty nosed brat we have become that takes pot shots at the popular kid from a distance to make himself seem more important with the kids at his elbow.

Thank you U.S.A. for standing up for freedom and democracy by putting your own lives on the line.

Thank you U.S.A. for ignoring the ignorant (Canada's elitist governing society), and having immense grace whilst doing so.

Thank you U.S.A. for remaining our best friend all this time- economic irritants aside- we really have no other friends.

Thank you U.S.A. for holding steadfast to the common sense that God gave you, resisting the ridiculous "progressive" agenda.

Alberta believes in these same principles and we have been unfortunately tarnished with the "Canadian" brush- we wish we could change things. We don't wish to become a 51 state, we don't wish to remain "new Canada", we are a highly educated (highest education levels per capita in Canada), moral, hard working, freedom loving people that are being crushed under the Canadian Socialist Jackboot. This will soon change; I and an ever increasing number of Albertans are joining with us to ensure that we break the yoke of what has become a joke of a country. Please remember that not all Canadians hate the U.S.A., merely the brainwashed masses outside of Alberta.

All we can say in Alberta to the U.S.A. is "Thank GOD for the U.S.A."... and please pray for us in our quest to "succeed to secede!"

Gavin Anger

Calgary Alberta.

One reader responded to my column about press freedoms in Canada by pointing out that I had left out an important recent example.

Our YourHub.com initiative has dramatically improved its photo service. It's easier to use. You can blow the photos up on your screen. And the slide shows look much better. (I'm probably forgetting other improvements.)

I'd love for local photographers to share their work online and let me know what they think of the service now.

I made a mistake in identifying George Douglas as the critic of my posting on our publishing of open casket photos. I should have checked with George before making the posting. I understand that in the online world it can be difficult to tell the identity of a person posting a comment or sending an e-mail. It's a fundamental of journalism that you shouldn't assume anything. I did. I regret doing so. I apologize to George.

We're seeing another troubling case of a judge overreaching in Boulder, ordering a newspaper not to publish a photograph of a suspect.

While there may be different views on how much protection the First Amendment gives the press when it comes to anonymous sources, there's no question that "prior restraint" of the press is not part of our system.

I felt I had so much I wanted to say when I wrote my column about the Judith Miller case. It raises many important issues.

I want to point out two other articles worth reading on this topic.

Rocky Mountain News media critic Jason Salzman wrote a good column Saturday analyzing the content of both Denver papers and calling for more international coverage.

Here's my perspective.

Whether to publish open casket photos or the many pictures we receive every day with dead bodies are among the most difficult decisions about picture play we face.

The EEOC responded to my column criticizing the agency.

Here's their letter and my response.