Props to TVNewser’s Steven Krakauer, who has an interview with Brian Ross of ABC News. Ross is the journalist who in 2001 fueled our national fears with his reporting on the anthrax killings, citing unnamed sources who falsely linked the anthrax attacks to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. In light of recent (and still somewhat murky) revelations in recent days, Jay Rosen and I asked three questions we hoped ABC would address. (Here’s my version; here’s Jay’s.)
Read the the questions, and then Ross’ response to TVNewser.
Essentially, Ross is saying that he was told by sources who believed what they were saying at the time; that the White House denied it; that ABC News reported that denial; and therefore everyone acted in good faith, including the network. The process he describes — three top scientists, and then a fourth, concluding that a material found in the anthrax is bentonite, thereby tying the attack to Iraq, before discovering, oops, that it wasn’t bentonite after all — is suspicious all by itself. But let’s assume they were making an honest mistake and were not playing him all along.
There’s another problem, a journalistic one that Ross dismisses: He did not tell his viewers that the scientist sources concluded they’d been wrong, and that they told him so.
The White House denial was enough, Ross told TVNewser, adding, “From my point of view it gave national credibility to have on the record attribution and not some anonymous scientists.”
Right, those same anonymous scientists who were the basis for his melodramatic reporting in the first place — the same sources who spurred him to report, sensationally but falsely, that the anthrax was likely coming from Iraq’s government.
Here’s how Jay paraphrases Ross’s response:
Q. Did you ever report that your three—sorry, four—sources had changed their minds, and that they were wrong the first time?
A. Now why would I do that? These were confidential sources. I had the fire department on the record telling me that it was not arson. That’s a lot better, don’t you think?
A news organization on a mission to keep its audience fully informed would have run a separate report saying that its fabulous sources from the original, sensational reports were now saying they’d gotten it wrong. This news organization preferred, for whatever reasons, to keep such highly relevant information from its audience.
If these events occurred the way Ross says they did — and if ABC has done sufficient homework to ensure that they were not part of a scheme to manipulate the network — then ABC would be justified in not revealing the the sources’ names now. That assumes a great deal. I hope some other journalists who work for other news organizations are probing those questions now, because it’s obvious to me that ABC will not.
on Aug 7th, 2008 at 9:37 am
re: “If these events occurred the way Ross says they did — and if ABC has done sufficient homework to ensure that they were not part of a scheme to manipulate the network — then ABC would be justified in not revealing the the sources’ names now.”
The sources were confidential: they spoke to ABC on *this condition*. Whether or not ABC did their homework is irrelevant to whether or not ABC should break its promise (oral contract?) to those they regarded as sources.
Again, the courts could expose the identity of the sources if it was indeed conspiracy to deceive the public.
Delia
on Aug 7th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Delia, I don’t think we’ll be seeing sources exposed here anytime soon.
I believe that Dan Kennedy got to the heart of it here:
“Somehow we were supposed to know that ABC had shifted from We’re sticking by our story despite White House denials to We’re retracting our story because of White House denials.”
Certainly today (and for much of the last 35 years), a “White House denial” was taken as something to be interpreted as a truism, but I suppose in 2001 Brian Ross and ABC felt that a White House denial really should be taken at face value.
on Aug 7th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
what do you think should happen, Jon? D.
on Aug 7th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
here is the part I find most important:
“And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.”
–> I think this is *potentially* conspiracy to deceive the public (but just… potentially…) D.
on Aug 7th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Delia.
I’m glad you asked. Around four years ago, there was a much more obvious screw-up at a national news network. One effect was that Dan Rather lost his job. Another was that the network launched the “Public Eye” blog to “bring transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News.” It featured — who else — in its inaugural guest blog post.
But few of the evangelists realized how it was set up to fail: “…Public Eye, led by its editor, will not be The Judge of Virtue at CBS News and will not issue Edicts and Pronouncements about what is acceptable or praiseworthy journalism and what is not.” In other words, it could have just done its job as a public editor. Instead, it wanted to join the blog-eat-blog world of just trying to appear original through passing on thrice-chewed blog fodder.
And, last December, the Public Eye ceased updating. A CBS spokesman told TVNewser: “We weren’t able to find a sustainable business model for Public Eye.”
There was another, more humble suggestion from 2005 by way of Scott Rosenberg. A news organization should simply have an error database where they track complaints and bugs, just like a software project. The pitfall is that no one came up with a catchy name for it. (So call it a P.E.D. — Published Error Database)
It wouldn’t necessarily have a “business model”, but it would be the right thing to do. And that’s what’s so sad.
Gosh, if the NYT canned its Public Editor role, you’d hear it from here to Broadway (um, that’d be where the 3 J-schools in Manhattan are). But because the P. Eye was never established as an ombuds/bugtracking site, no one is mourning its loss.
And *again* rolling back the calendar all those years, imagine if the citmedia boosters had told the journosaurs: “Well, a blog will just devolve into marketing fluff and navel-gazing. You really need a PED, and we media-reformer-academics will help you build them and will keep score on how aggressively you use it.” But that’s not how it happened.
on Aug 8th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Having an error database seems like a good idea; it could also include things like “we are working on a similar report” etc. but I’m not sure how it would work from the reader’s side: would you be searching at different times for errors in an article you read in a continuously changing database because you had a hunch an error might have been there? it seems to me that placing an update note at the top of the article from the time when an error is detected and giving the readers the option to sign up for email updates if they would like to be informed if and when the error would go into the database would be more user-friendly; I suppose you could charge a small fee for the service if *really* needed.
Delia
P.S. But this would not have prevented the major problem in the situation we are talking about, would it? D.
on Aug 8th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
the following:
“giving the readers the option to sign up for email updates if they would like to be informed if and when the error would go into the database”
should read:
“giving the readers the option to sign up for email updates if they would like to be informed if and when *any error* would go into the database”
on Aug 11th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Delia,
Yes, indeed. That’s how it could work.
Maybe somebody’s working on it. Since no one’s volunteering an answer here, I’ll inquire within the Online News Association list.
Would it have prevented the original problem?
Well, do bug databases prevent all computer defects?
And do public disclosure laws prevent political favoritism?
etc.
one can hope, that’s all.
I don’t know.
Anyways, Dan G. and Dan K. have moved on; and Greenwald’s on vacation this week, and besides, his interest in this morphed into his general interest in unraveling the case against Ivins.
Another day, another tempest of outrage, and we yet wait for tools like a Publisher Error Database to be built.
Jon
on Aug 11th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
re: “And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.”
–> I think this is *potentially* conspiracy to deceive the public (but just… potentially…) D.
Jon, I think this was the real problem and a database that tracks errors couldn’t expose confidential sources any more than ABS can just came out and do it now (if it wants to still use confidential sources in the future).
Delia
on Aug 13th, 2008 at 5:52 am
Delia– I wasn’t suggesting that a database would expose confidential sources. It’s merely that it could help the public better understand how the news evolves.
One nuance, remember, is that if a reporter changes his assessment from “mostly confident in X” to “less confident in X” or “no longer confident in X” does that mean that the first statement is wrong?
Why doesn’t every news organization have a wiki for every fact that they know (going forward…)? Why, I suppose, is that the blog-evangelists have sold them on marketing value in blogging, more than the constructive value of wikis.
on Aug 13th, 2008 at 6:55 am
re: “One nuance, remember, is that if a reporter changes his assessment from “mostly confident in X” to “less confident in X” or “no longer confident in X” does that mean that the first statement is wrong?”
That’s the risk they take when they choose to use confidential sources (they can’t break their promise, they would have never gotten that info if they would not have agreed to confidentiality). If you are talking about regular sources, there are such things as retractions (if they believe their prior report was in error).
re: “Why doesn’t every news organization have a wiki for every fact that they know (going forward…)?
for many good reasons, I suspect… (not divulging the info to competitors is the first that comes to mind)
Delia