Paige Wiser a reviewer/columnist in Chicago has lost her gig over an ethical violation. The older I get the more I wish we could cut folks a little slack over a one-time issue.
Here's another link to information about the story.
Let's not forget that Mitch Albom, an award-winning columnist for the Detroit Free Press got a pass from doing pretty much the same thing when he wrote a column implying he was at an event when he was actually somewhere else.
Like Albom, I think Wiser may have deserved a reprimand, but a second chance.
Here's another link that mentions that she only agreed to cover the event after she got an agreement from her editor to take her children. It was one of her children getting sick that forced her to leave the concert early.
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8 comments:
I'm not so sure I agree with you about a second chance. If she would have contacted people about the ending and written about it without saying she was no longer there, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But she assumed something had happened when it hadn't, and she wrote about how she felt about it after never having seen it. I would never do this, and don't think anyone should be allowed to do so. I think the only thing worse than this, as a journalist, would be plagiarism.
Eric I agree that this was bad. As I said, as I get older I tend to cut people a little slack and give them one second chance. My point is that this in unevenly applied. Mitch Albom was spared even though he essentially did the same thing a few years back involving a Michigan State story.
I think a one or two week suspension would have been appropriate. With no prior incidents over a 17 year career there, a second chance would have been o.k. with me. She was writing about a concert after all, not a real hard news event. She shouldn't have lied and come clean prior to filing her story. Another reason why kids and work DON'T mix!Mitch Albom is his own entity at The Freep and is a cash cow. I've heard from many reliable sources whom Mitch wrote about that said he took some creative license in his stories. He's written several questionable stories in his career. I frankly don't read him anymore because I don't believe what he writes. Maybe if she had written several books that were made into movies and plays, she'd still be there. Lesson learned??
Jim, I agree with you about cutting people some slack but I'm not sure Albom was deserving of the considerable slack he got. Let's not forget that a newspaper "investigation" of the Albom incident revealed more of a widespread problem with allegations that Albom plagiarized more than one sports reporter, using their quotes, etc. He blithely argued that this was routinely done by the busy elite of the sports reporting world. And the paper's published invetigatory findings supposedly were considerably watered down -- itself a huge sin, though not Albom's direct fault. We had, however, only to imagine what else Albom had done. Of course, a high-ranking editor, who presided over much of of this suppressed scandal and gave her beloved newspaper "son" a big pass, herself was ushered out of the paper for another job within the corporation, only to lose it a short time later (read: she was fired over the Albom incident). All that still might not argue for Albom's termination except he was recently involved in another ethical lapse -- this one reported by WJR Radio, Albom's radio show host, but as far as I know curiously ignored or all but ignored by the equally (as in Albom's equal) ethically compromised Freep. This incident involved the ubiquitous Albom's shilling for the Michigan film tax credit, which we learned late in the game that he had authored, but then failing to report his involvement in a Michigan film project that had received the lucrative tax credit. Oops! I'm sure Albom conveniently wrote off the latest incident as another trumped up case pushed by jealous reporters and other critics. You see, the Freep'shameless coverage of all of Mitch's plays (e.g., Ernie) while supposedly having a policy against reviewing his many books written on the company dime is matched internally by mamagement's scolding of reporters that Mitch is a writer and they are, well, mere reporters. This, by the way, may be one of the biggest injustices at the Freep. It's akin to a teacher telling 29 of her students that only the 30th student has any brains. Just because Mitch learned long ago that people thrilled at his ability to repeat certain thematic lines in a story -- what loosely might be called a writing style -- the paper has basically and institutionally taken the position that no one on staff can write as well as Mitch. To that I say baloney! That Mitch can write is beyond dispute but at what cost? I believe one can make the case that he's very over-rated. And what to make of all of his transgressions? Certainly, he's to blame for most of them but the Freep culture of Albom pampering and protectionism also must be considered. No, I think he should've been fired, though I'm not surprised he wasn't. If he didn't wear that thick cloak of Oprahesque self-righteousness and his own brand of superiority, it might be easier to forgive at least one or two of his pratfalls. But taken together, I think the man who only occasionally ever actually sets foot in th Freep should've been given his walking papers long ago.
Yeah, Anonymous 10:16, we can read more about the latest Albom debacle here:
http://ushotbuzz.blogspot.com/2011/05/detroit-news-pundits-take-mitch-albom.html
WJR's Frank Beckmann indeed took Albom to task over the film flap. Afterward, Albom told his listeners he found the interview offensive and it impugned his integrity. To that I ask, what integrity? Albom may be able to write, but his memory seems woefully lacking. Then again, denial is a big river in Egypt. Also, one wonders if Kwame or other future targets of Freep investigatory stories take a hint from Mitch and dismiss the allegations by simply calling their interview with the Freep reporter offensive?
Yeah, at the Regret the Error blog the alarmingly frequent incidences of reporters fabbricating the news have a name: they're called an "Albom." As in, "Jill Lunchbucket was fired after pulling an Albom, writing about the climax of a concert even though she left early and did not witness the event." Interestingly, a blog entry on that site today quotes a Poynter official as fingering Albom-style fabrication as more serious than plagiarism. Supposedly, Albom stepped into both buckets at various times -- though he tried to dismiss everything as minor when matched against the rest of his career as a columnist and author. An older blog entry about Albom's suspension for the fabrication incidennt quotes a dandy of a letter from the newsroom's later-exiled editor: "Detroit Free Press management has completed its internal review of an April 3 Mitch Albom column that contained inaccurate information by
describing an event that had not yet occurred." Catch that last part? More proof of how much the Freep protected its franchise columnist. True, the event had not occurred yet but A) Albom wasn't there when the event occurred and B) many events Albom wrote about in his column NEVER occurred! I feel more discipline -- of editors and management -- was needed all around in that sorry episode.
Just don't see how you can not fire someone for fabricating material, regardless of the topic. Can you do anything worse as a journalist? And it's so cut and dried in this case.
Mitch should have gotten the boot as well.
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