Arrogance Unfettered

A week ago this morning, I caught "someone" creatively editing a three-year-old editorial written by Greg Mitchell of news industry trade Editor & Publisher. The lede in Mitchell's editorial was rewritten to cast him in a more favorable light in a story in which he already admitted to being guilty of journalistic fraud three years ago.

Greg Mitchell wrote this as the lede to his 2003 editorial:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

It stayed unchanged for over three years until I criticized him for it, at which point the editorial's lede was changed to this within hours:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

The changes—most likely made by Mitchell himself—are obvious:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

Over the course of the week, various bloggers have attempted to contact Mr. Mitchell and other figures inside both Editor & Publisher and its parent company, VNU Media, about this journalistic fraud, and neither publisher Charles McKeown of Editor & Publisher, nor VNU Media's company spokesman Will Thoretz has had enough courtesy, professionalism, or even concern about the reputation about the craft they are supposed to represent to respond to those asking very serious questions about a very real breach in ethics apparently committed by one of their senior staff members.

Media organizations have essentially two ways with which they can deal with situations of journalistic fraud as noted by Dr. David Perlmutter recently and ironically enough, in this editorial in Editor & Publisher about a similar journalistic scandal:

News picture-making media organizations have two paths of possible response to this unnerving new situation. First, they can stonewall, deny, delete, dismiss, counter-slur, or ignore the problem. To some extent, this is what is happening now and, ethical consideration aside, such a strategy is the practical equivalent of taking extra photos of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The second, much more painful option, is to implement your ideals, the ones we still teach in journalism school. Admit mistakes right away. Correct them with as much fanfare and surface area as you devoted to the original image. Create task forces and investigating panels. Don't delete archives but publish them along with detailed descriptions of what went wrong. Attend to your critics and diversify the sources of imagery, or better yet be brave enough to refuse to show any images of scenes in which you are being told what to show. I would even love to see special inserts or mini-documentaries on how to spot photo bias or photo fakery—in other words, be as transparent, unarrogant, and responsive as you expect those you cover to be.

In an email earlier this week to E&P Publisher Charles McKeown I said:

The self-serving rewrite of Mr. Mitchell's column has been described as "journalistic malpractice," by one media commentator, and another suggested today that Mitchell has a "truth problem." This is obviously not the kind of public face you would want your publication to have.

Neither Mitchell, nor others that have been contacted about this incident have sought to explain what happened, why it happened, and what can be done to prevent this from happening in the future. Editor & Publisher, or at least Mitchell and those under him, seem to be trying to stonewall this, apparently hoping that if they can delay long enough, that the issue will simply go away. I fear that when the issue does finally pass, it will take its "pound of flesh" in the form of the credibility of this publication with it.

Trust in the media continues to fall and circulation continue to decline, precisely because people such as Mitchell seem to think they are beyond accountability and beyond reproach. I ask you to help save your publication.

All it takes is a simple look to the server logs to conclusively identify who rewrote Mitchell's 2003 column late this past Friday afternoon. An even application of the kind of company policies I expect in any large media organization against this kind of unethical behavior should provide the remedy. Address the problem transparently, and you can gain credibility for Editor & Publisher instead of losing it.

Instead, officers of Editor & Publisher and VNU Media have chosen to stonewall, dismiss, and ignore the breach of journalistic ethics in an editorial by one of their senior editors, and have chosen a failed path. They can publish articles about journalistic ethics, but seem incapable of practicing what they preach.

Sadly, Editorial & Publisher is apparently unable to follow the advice that it provides to the publishing world; allowing journalistic malpractice to reign in its halls unchallenged, unfettered, and unafraid.