The Wrong Ways to Get the Scoop

George Stephanopoulos interviews Darren Wilson on ABC in November,

Reporters always want the scoop – the exclusive story you secured through hours of reporting, working the phones and gaining trust of sources. But just as important as getting the scoop is making sure how you get it is done in the right way.

Journalists have to tread a fine line. They need to be polite and gain the trust of people, without being a source’s friend. But they also need to find ways to be objective and critical without being someone’s enemy. And in today’s PR-obsessed world, it can be hard for reporters to get scoops without undermining their ethics and credibility. Sources no longer share their stories with reporters who have a solid track record, they are looking for reporters who won’t ask tough questions, reporters who will put the right PR spin on things, reporters who will make them look good.

Last month, reporters met secretly with Darren Wilson, making their pitch as to why they should be allowed to help share Wilson’s side of the story about what happened in the shooting of Michael Brown. The police officer had his pick of reporters, from ABC to CNN to CBS. In the end, Wilson chose ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. But why? ABC never explained to its viewers what Stephanopoulos said to Wilson to land the interview, and Wilson never explained either. But we can guess – do you think someone in Wilson’s position wanted a tough-as-nails reporter who would go after him about the facts? Or did he want a sympathetic ear?

No reporter likes to share the tricks of the trade. They want to keep their advantage over the rest of the pack. It’s just good business. But that also assumes that reporters are doing their jobs right: gathering facts, asking tough questions, and staying true to their ethics. Viewers assume that if someone wanted to share their story under specific terms or agreements, that the reporter would ethically choose to decline. So the process of how you get your scoop becomes just as important to your readers and viewers, to ensure that they can trust the information you provide is honest.

That’s become even harder in sports journalism, as the line between reporter and columnist is blurred. In a perfect world, reporters gather facts and columnists present their opinion. But these days, those columnists are breaking stories alongside their positive or negative opinion pieces. Writers are being asked to wear two hats, and we see it everywhere, from Sports Illustrated to Deadspin to ESPN to Yahoo. I don’t agree with it. I’ve heard arguments from sportswriters that people get their news differently now; that there aren’t the traditional definitions of “reporters” vs “columnists” vs “bloggers” anymore. But I think that approach comes at the cost of our ethics.

To keep things honest, there needs to be a clear line. And when the line continues to be smudged, it’s hard to know how certain scoops came to be.

Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski is typically credited as one of the best NBA writers, but his methods of getting scoops are dubious.

I had previously been a fan of Yahoo Sports’ NBA writer Adrian Wojnarowski. The guy had every scoop, every detail, every trade, every draft pick, sometimes before they were officially announced. I thought, “this is a reporter who knows how to do his job.” He kicked ass, frankly.

But there was always that line that Woj seemed to straddle. He would break stories on Twitter, but he would also give some scathing criticisms or heap praises upon players, coaches, general managers, and agents. Now, a huge takedown by Kevin Draper in the New Republic reveals the methods to Woj’s scoops, and how he used his position as a columnist to get information.

For example: Wojnarowski seemed to have every scoop on the Detroit Pistons over the last few years, from coaching decisions to trades and free agents. But during that time, even as the once-mighty Pistons fell into the cellar of the Eastern Conference, he never wrote a single negative column about the team. As Draper points out: “Instead, Wojnarowski penned several sympathetic profiles of [Pistons GM Joe] Dumars, including ones that covered his completion of his college degree and another wholly about his defensive skills as a player in the 1980s.”

And when Woj didn’t get the scoop? Then he used his column to criticize and attack players and personnel. Whereas other reporters work hard to gain the trust of sources in order to break news, Wojnarowski uses his column to shift public perception about players. Woj has more than 800,000 followers on Twitter, and a column from him can make or break someone’s reputation. As a result, he mixes his reporting with his opinion, and bullies his way into breaking stories.

Then came the hammer: Draper writes about how the NBA figured out that it was Joe Dumars who was leaking the information to Woj:

In 2010, the NBA fined Dumars $500,000 for leaking multiple confidential league memos to Wojnarowski, according to multiple sources. This matches the third largest publicly known fine the league has ever handed down. The NBA decided that too many memos were making it into the media, so they conducted a sting operation over several months. They would change a few words or numbers in different team’s copies of otherwise identical memos, so that when the memos leaked they could spot the small differences and trace them back to the leaker. This approach caught Dumars red-handed, as well as an executive from another team who was fined $12,500 for leaking to a draft-focused website.

Go read the whole piece over at the New Republic, because it’s an enlightening look at the dubious methods being used by someone who had been hailed as one of the NBA’s top reporters. It will make you take a closer look at what you are reading, and hopefully, you’ll start to question how a reporter got their info in the first place.

Confirm, confirm, confirm

All of the best information in a story is completely worthless if it is wrong. To do the basic job of reporting, you need to get your facts right.

I was taught as an investigative reporter to confirm, confirm, confirm. Don’t just take someone’s statement as gospel. It’s hard, especially when people are trying to save their jobs, their reputations, or their heads. People lie, or forget, or misremember things. Their stories might be contradicted by others. Emotions and opinions get in the way. But the facts are the facts.

Any investigative reporter worth his salt knows that you need ways to back up claims. You need the evidence that supports the facts. Find the documents, the reports, the official research. Find police reports, bank statements, 911 tapes, surveillance video, grand jury testimony, or IRS forms.

I can’t count how many times in my career that police hid behind a blanket of an “open investigation,” or when governments created a maze of read tape to make it hard to access financial documents. Investigators would forget to mail something, or lose my email address, or say they were too short-staffed to get me my records in a timely manner. But you need to keep at it. One of my proudest moments is a reporter was being dogged enough to keep calling, keep sending emails, and keep sending records requests, following up on an itch that police were hiding something about a fatal car crash. In the end, all that work pays off – in my case, police lied about how long it took to respond to a single-vehicle car crash, which I confirmed using 911 tapes and public records. The facts tell the story.

To quote Rasheed Wallace, ‘ball don’t lie.’ Find the facts.

Then, just as importantly, you need to find the best way to share those facts clearly and succinctly. In the rush to tell stories, facts can get muddled or lost amid the clutter of so many voices shouting the loudest to reach viewers.

Sometimes, the simplest option is the best.

After the grand jury decision on the Darren Wilson-Michael Brown case, an article went viral about a University of Kansas student who laid out the facts. According to Kansas Exposed, KU journalism major Shelby Lawson laid out the facts of the case on her Facebook page, and cited the specific sources to back up those facts. Lawson linked to grand jury testimony and highlighted specific sections. She linked to autopsy reports and pulled out specific items.

Is it a perfect piece, devoid of any flaws? No, but it does the best job I’ve seen of linking to real documents and reports and using those facts to sort out the reality of the situation.

Sometimes in complicated cases, you need to take the reader by the hand and walk them through the process. It’s like paying your taxes – those forms can be daunting, but they’re much more manageable with Turbo Tax walking you through each step.

I’ve heard people say about the Ferguson case, “we’ll never know what really happened.” They’re probably right. But the closest we can get to completely understanding it lies in the facts. They just need to be confirmed, and presented clearly.

Media in Ferguson: Lighting the fire or fanning the flames?

A man runs away from the burning storage facility after the announcement of the grand jury decision Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. A grand jury has decided not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed, black 18-year-old whose fatal shooting sparked sometimes violent protests. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

America went to sleep last night watching the images from Ferguson, with riots following a grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

Tuesday morning, people woke up, and the images, emotion, and pain were still there.

And along with it came an interesting new question: who is to blame? More specifically, what role did the media have in all of it?

Those questions came up as soon as prosecutor Bob McCulloch stepped to the podium to announce the grand jury’s decision Monday night.

“On August 9th Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson. Within minutes, various accounts of the incident began appearing on social media, accounts filled with speculation and little, if any, solid, accurate information.”

Later, he continued:

“The most significant challenge encountered in this investigation has been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something, for anything, to talk about, following closely behind with the nonstop rumors on social media.”

On Facebook and Twitter this morning, I saw similar sentiment, insinuating that the media had pushed the situation in Ferguson too far, or that the media had created a powder keg waiting to erupt with the grand jury’s decision, then continued to fan the flames.

So did they? That’s a heavy question to answer.

To paraphrase Edward R. Murrow, they didn’t create this situation, but some exploited it.

In the hours leading up to the announcement, reporters were on the ground in Ferguson. Their main topic: being on the ground in Ferguson. A decision had not been reached yet and riots had not broken out, but reporters were still expected to go live every few minutes, desperately trying to fill air time. “What’s the feeling on the streets?” anchors asked.

It’s important to be there, but it’s more important to actually provide some relevant information.

The lead-up to the announcement was bad enough, but those same bad traits carried over when the grand jury announcement was made. Reporters thrust themselves into the mobs, choking through smoke and teargas, to give us the latest of the riots in Ferguson. But there was another problem: they weren’t exactly saying anything. There were rumors of shots fired, there were camera shots of burning trash cans, and there were reporters pointing down to discarded bottles of liquor. But there was no context or actual information. Where was the crucial information about the decision? Where were the transcripts of witness testimony while the riots took place?

As Slate’s Josh Voorhees pointed out, the details from the grand jury were not analyzed. There were no interviews with community leaders. And there was no context to help viewers understand where everything was happening until Anderson Cooper finally informed viewers that the riots were only taking place in a small part of Ferguson.

If it bleeds, it leads. And Ferguson was bleeding last night, so cable TV networks hit the riot coverage hard.

Anchors wearing gas masks and being hit with rocks became more important than giving people the details of the grand jury decision. Closeups of looting by people wearing Guy Fawkes masks were the focal point, rather than the information from police reports. Reporters’ remarks about “the smell of marijuana” were prioritized over the witness and officer testimony, or an understanding of the grand jury process. Shots of protesters confronting police in the streets as fires burned in the background were the main event.

TV news did not create the tension in Ferguson – riots were bound to happen regardless if there were cameras there. The people blaming the media, or the spread of information on social media, are misguided, and are missing the much larger point about race and police violence in America.

But the media is missing that larger point, too, and that’s what makes the media’s coverage Monday night all the more disappointing.

TV news had the chance to use their medium as a tool for understanding and education amid chaos. Coverage of the Arab Spring in 2011 showed images of violence, but also gave information about why it was happening. Both aspects are critically important in covering a volatile situation in order to keep viewers informed. But those graphic, powerful images, without context as to why they are powerful, makes them meaningless. In Ferguson on Monday night, TV chose to point their cameras at the fire, instead of the match.