The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Media pieties debunked: Even NYT and WaPo pick up SOME rumors—and I’m glad they do

Here’s a ques­tion that the debut of TBD.com, the new hyper­local site writ­ten up in Howard Kurtz’s media col­umn today, makes all the more timely.

Just when should a rep­utable Web site—or maybe even a paper newspaper—publish rumors?

TBD’s peo­ple have expressed a strong inter­est in guid­ing read­ers to the truth; and the oper­a­tion is not a rumor site. But with an empha­sis on fast-breaking local sto­ries, the  line between news and rumor at times may be thin, just as it is on even the best news radio sta­tions. The answer is to be trans­par­ent and share with read­ers the gaps in news sto­ries and invite cor­rec­tions, exactly what TBD is doing. 

Psst! Think TBD is impure? Even the New York Times men­tions rumors or spec­u­la­tion on occa­sion despite all jour­nal­is­tic pieties to the con­trary. So does Kurtz’s employer, the Wash­ing­ton Post. And I’m glad that the Times and Post do, as long as they abide by cer­tain com­mon­sen­si­cal rules and doesn’t make rumors the main show. Among the other rules—or fac­tors to consider:

1. Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of rumors as rumors—rather than solid facts.

2. The source. Sony may well be about to release some new e-book read­ers, accord­ing to Sony Insider, and hav­ing con­sid­ered the source, the CNET tech net­work feels com­fort­able in report­ing the story with a ques­tion in the head­line. On the other hand, I sus­pect that CNET would prop­erly have ignored the report if it came from a news source unknown to it.

3. Pos­i­tives for soci­ety in gen­eral vs. the neg­a­tives for the peo­ple writ­ten about. Or maybe the opposite—the risk that the pub­li­ca­tion involved will play into the hands of hype artists like stock-market scam­mers and cor­po­rate fraud­sters. Take the pos­si­bil­ity of a bank fail­ure. Does the Web site or other pub­li­ca­tion risk set­ting off a panic? Or, via the hype, enrich­ing unscrupu­lous Wall Street spec­u­la­tors? Just how widely should the infor­ma­tion, what­ever its nature, be shared?

4. Whether you may hurt the sub­ject of the rumor by not print­ing the truth. The sup­posed Al Gore sex scan­dal was cir­cu­lat­ing online in the wake of a National Enquirer story—and the media had to write about it. At the same time the MSM peo­ple could and did raise ques­tions. I’m just sorry that cer­tain pub­li­ca­tions such as the Wash­ing­ton Post and Politco—owned by Allbrit­ton Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the peo­ple behind TBD—didn’t pub­lish more detail in ques­tion­ing the rumor.

5. The promi­nence of the person—how close he or she is to, say, the pres­i­dency of the United States? Leonard Downie, for­mer exec­u­tive edi­tor of the Wash­ing­ton Post, revealed in a video inter­view with Carol Joynt that the Post has an excel­lent rule. Don’t run ugly exposes of the per­sonal lives of city coun­cil can­di­dates. Peo­ple at the Gore level are a dif­fer­ent story since they may end up with their fin­gers on The But­ton. So the thresh­old for report­ing a rumor would be lower.

6. In a related vein, the rel­e­vance of the rumor to the person’s role in pub­lic life. In The Solomon Scan­dals novel, I write of a gos­sip colum­nist whose employer delib­er­ately sets out to wreck her career with rumors about her per­sonal life. Even if the rumors are fact—and I leave that ques­tion open—I myself would not print the infor­ma­tion. Gotcha moral­ity is one way crooked cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments try to black­mail activists into sub­mis­sion. It is no coin­ci­dence that some of the most cor­rupt soci­eties are also among the offi­cially most puritanical.

7. The nature of the pub­li­ca­tion itself. An oft-updated site like TBD will prob­a­bly have a lower thresh­old than the paper edi­tion of the New York Times. Often the new media in effect use con­ver­sa­tion mixed with nar­ra­tive. That is why a reporter-blogger at the Rock Hill Her­ald went with a cred­i­ble rumor about a CVS Phar­macy being built near a Burger King, with the reporter men­tion­ing a call placed to Burger King for con­fir­ma­tion. In other words, the read­ers would more or less be learn­ing how the facts unfolded—a form of nar­ra­tive. And via com­ments, they could par­tic­i­pate in a conversation.

Doug Fisher, a senior jour­nal­ism instruc­tor and online newslet­ter pub­lisher at the Uni­ver­sity of South Car­olina, ques­tioned the reporter-blogger’s deci­sion. Defend­ers of the reporter-blogger said no harm was done and the nature of the online medium pro­vided for an easy correction—and yes, the reporter was right about the CVS. I think this is a pretty gray area. Like the Fisher fac­tion, I’d love to have known more about how the Burger King peo­ple knew that a CVS was on the way. First-hand info? I will say that I would not have printed the pos­si­ble news—pre-verification—in a paper newspaper.

Foot­note: Just to be clear, the Kurtz col­umn is a gen­eral dis­cus­sion of TBD—including links to mem­bers of a blog network—and not a con­dem­na­tion of its prowess at get­ting at the truth.

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