PressEthic

On October 5, Neil Brown, Executive Editor of the St. Petersburg Times, printed an op-ed on why his newspaper chose not to break the Mark Foley scandal. Although, I don’t necessarily agree with the decision, Brown made some interesting points:

“I led deliberations with our top editors, and we concluded that we did not have enough substantiated information to reach beyond innuendo.

We were unsuccessful in getting members of Congress who were involved in the matter or those who administer the House page corps to acknowledge any problem with Foley's ambiguous e-mail or to suggest that they thought it was worth pursuing.”

Brown continued:

“And we couldn't come up with a strong enough case to explain to a teenager's parents why, over their vehement pleas to drop the matter, we needed to make their son the subject of a story - and the incredible scrutiny that would surely follow.”

Although, I believe the newspaper should have worked hard to accumulate enough evidence to substantiate (or not) the story, I think the reason cited above is one of the most valid. Why force a teenager to undergo trauma if you can’t even verify the claims you’re making? Brown continued:

“It added up to this conclusion: To print what we had seemed to be a shortcut to taint a member of Congress without actually having the goods.”

Brown also wrote that the decision was based in part on a desire to focus on local news instead of chasing a Congressman few readers were familiar with. This is a valid point.

Yet Foley was a Congressman, and therefore newsworthy. The paper had some of Foleys strange emails, and rumors were already flying in the capital. Shouldn’t reporters have investigated the story? Isn’t that in their job descriptions? Shouldn’t they have ‘gotten the goods’?

Brown went on to write that the St. Petersburg Times got scooped, first by a blogger and then by ABCnews.com. He also questioned the decision of his newspaper, and other papers, not to break the story.

Brown makes a case that his paper needed to verify the truthfulness of the story before they printed rumors. Instead of just sitting on the story, St. Petersburg Times reporters should have been out and about verifying the rumors. Then the newspaper could have been the one to the story.