The Watchdog vs. The (Baylor) Bear

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The Texas Monthly expose on Baylor and Sam Ukwuachu will produce enough troubling questions — for head coach Art Briles and Baylor associate dean Bethany McCraw in particular.

The story, or lack of it, should also trouble sports journalists.  According to reports, the assault happened in October 2013.  The Waco Police Department did not press charges and sent the case to the district attorney for evaluation.  In March 2014, the assistant DA Hilary Laborde decided to move ahead.  On June 25, 2014, a grand jury indicted Ukwuachu, and he was arrested.

This Deadspin article, great work by Diana Moskovitz, provides helpful details, including a copy of the true bill of indictment returned by the grand jury.

This is where things begin to get murky.

As Moskovitz points out, prosecutors’ choice to go the grand jury route does invite questions, because a grand jury process is, by nature and law, more secretive than a public arrest.  When an athlete, or any suspect, is arrested, the accompanying mugshots, and sometimes even “perp walks,” draw attention.

Still, in McLennan County, once someone is indicted, it is publicized.  Supposedly.

The Waco Tribune-Herald posts indictments twice a month to its website, and those indictments remain available for public viewing.  The report of June 25, 2014, indictments, when Ukwuachu was indicted, mentions more than 100 names, and five specifically mention some form of sexual abuse.

Ukwuachu’s name does not appear in this list. Why not? Was the name redacted from the list before it was given to the Waco newspaper?

According to Texas Monthly, when the requested information on Ukwuachu’s indictment and arrest, the received “a letter declaring that all information outside of the Incident Report following Doe’s visit to Hillcrest Hospital the day after her encounter with Ukwuachu was exempt from the law requiring disclosure.”

Still, if that’s the case, under what judgment was Ukwuachu’s name deleted from a public list, and not the rest?  If it’s exempt from “the law requiring disclosure,” why publicize indictments at all?  The 100-plus folks whose arrests were publicized would wish they got the same break as Ukuwuachu.

True, McLennan County DA Abelino Reyna is a 1997 graduate of Baylor Law School. With no specific response on his office’s part, however, the question remains, and is troubling.

It should also be mentioned that the prosecuting DA, LaBorde, also went to Baylor, but that did not stop her from investigating and then prosecuting Ukwuachu

I have reached out to the Waco Tribune-Herald via e-mail.  The McLennan County DA’s office (no e-mail listed) has refused all interview requests.

The first report appeared in the Tribune-Herald on Aug. 5, more than 13 months after the indictments were handed down.  The lag time invites questions, particularly related to the local newspaper’s function as a watchdog.

As any competent sports writer, college or pro, will tell you, the good reporters know how to uncover such information. Whether through strategic Web searches or well-placed sources, they know when players are arrested amazingly soon after it happens and can guide their readers through the court process.

Court-related documents are available online through databases like Scribd, as Moskovitz demonstrated in her article.

But before casting too much blame on the newspaper, realize that no reporter’s system can do everything, and an insular community like Waco is a prime culture to thwart such information gathering.  For whatever reason, the public did not learn of the announcement until twelve days before the trial itself began.

According to the Deadspin article, Judge Matt Johnson did issue a gag order, but that did not happen until Aug. 7 of this year, shortly before the trial began.

As the handling of the Ukwuachu case is discussed, concern will be directed at Baylor personnel, who admitted a player with problems at his previous school.  Dan Wolken rightly took Briles to task in a USA Today column for putting Ukwuachu’s victim, and every female at Baylor, at risk by allowing him to transfer in.

This concern relates closely to constitutional guarantees for open trials.  This right belongs not to the media, but to the public.  Community members have a right to know what is going on in matters that relate to their public safety, and it is the news media’s duty to provide that information.

When information is withheld from the public, as it was in the list of indictments published on the WacoTrib.com website, the system has failed, and citizens deserve to know how and why.

The Truth About Krispy Kreme

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donuts

They’re awesome, particularly chocolate frosted.

But that’s not the truth I want to talk about.  Instead, now that it has been officially confirmed that Krispy Kreme is opening a location in Auburn, I’m referencing a tweet I posted a month ago:

Doughnuts and journalists have a long and storied relationship.  An old-school joke asks, “What’s the hardest thing when a copy desk staffer dies? Prying the doughnut out of his cold dead hands.”

Journalistically speaking, the story was a fun experience, and it provided the basis for some fun lessons on how to source and when to tweet:

Protecting a Source

I originally caught wind of the Krispy Kreme story through a friend who told me how excited her husband was that we would be getting the purveyor of hot doughnuts.  She had heard the news from a family member, whom I also knew.

So I contacted the family member, and he (only clue you will get) confirmed that, indeed, Krispy Kreme was planning to locate in Auburn.  So I started from there.

Even though we are not dealing with the identity of CIA agents or U.S. policy in Iraq, I will not tell you who my source was.  He was not authorized to announce it, and while neither of us would have gotten thrown in jail, it is still information worth keeping confidential.

The worst thing any journalist can do is burn a source. First, it shows dishonesty toward the source.  Second, you are costing yourself good future sources.  Any source with worthwhile information is probably doing to do his/her homework on you, and can easily tell if you have revealed another source’s identity.

When to Tweet

I had the information from one source, and it was a reliable source.  But I did not want to move too quickly, particularly on this topic.

In January 2014, someone set up a fake Instagram account and announced that Krispy Kreme would be coming to Auburn.  It got a lot of excited tweets, followed by some crestfallen follow-up tweets after the national office exposed the fake.

Krispy Kreme did send a retro bus with free donuts later that week.  I actually got a heads-up on that news from a friend at Auburn, via e-mail.  Even then, I was afraid to announce the bus’s visit via Twitter, and sent him a nervous e-mail to make sure it was true.

It was and the bus came — no, not freshly made, but I still ate a couple.  But KK fans in Auburn returned to yearning and trips to Columbus/Montgomery.

Thus, I had no interest in putting out a Krispy Kreme tweet that was not true.  I called around to some folks in the City of Auburn for confirmation, but could not get a second source to confirm.

Then, I saw some authentic paperwork related to the new site (again, no help on the source).  In my mind, that represented a second reliable, independent source.  I talked to a couple of journalism colleagues, and they liked the information too, as well as the prospects of those hot, fresh doughnuts.

Even so, for about three days, I held off on the tweet, mainly because of the previous reaction.  I called around to my city sources again, but no help.

Finally, by June 17, I had to decide to go with what I had.  To be honest, one big factor in my decision was that I had tired of the internal back-and-forth.  I just wanted to get it over with, and decided the information was good enough.

The point is: fear of getting it wrong is always the right response for a journalist.  We need to be as positive as possible before giving out the news.  To throw something out there and then shrug when it’s wrong — as often as it happens — is the wrong response.  We are only as credible as our information, and we should guard both zealously.

So, I clicked on “Tweet” for the above. It got great response, as I expected, along with pleas that I not mess with folks’ hearts.  I assured them that I would never tweet the info if I did not feel it was solid. Still …

What If It’s Not True?

I will admit that I spent a nervous couple of days, fearing a denial by the Krispy Kreme main office.  The longer I waited, the better I felt.

But another doubt emerged: What if Krispy Kreme pulled the plans on the new site? Or what if all of the redevelopment near Auburn Mall took so long that it delayed our doughnuts?

As I checked various sources online and on social media, I came to a nervous discovery: The Krispy Kreme corporate account was following me.  It was not a recent follow after the news; they started following me during the January 2014 debacle.

So that made me feel better, because they had known about it pretty quickly and had said nothing.  It also made me wonder: If I had remembered that before the tweet, would I still have done it?  I don’t have to worry about the answer to that question, but I am glad I didn’t remember.

But, of course, the Facebook post by Elizabeth White of WTVM in Columbus confirmed everything, and I allowed myself a little bit of gloating to hide my relief.

So now, I guess there is nothing to do but let the construction process take its time, and then join the rush.

I will see you there, and we can raise a hot glazed or a chocolate-frosted to a fun story with a happy ending.

Is Disclosing Medical Records an Unhealthy Reporting Method?

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First published on al.com.  Click here.

Note: This column includes implied obscenity in a tweet presented later in the article.

To anyone who doesn’t know, ESPN NFL reporter Adam Schefter caused quite the ethical dust-up when he ran a tweet showing Jason Pierre-Paul’s medical records.

To quickly dismiss one objection: no, Schefter did not break the law.  He did not violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) by showing it.  The medical professional who leaked the info to Schefter did.

Schefter is not in legal hot water for disclosing information, even if someone else obtained illegally.  The Supreme Court decided that in Bartnicki v. Vopper, where a radio station played illegally wiretapped conversation between teachers union officials during tense negotiations in Wilkes Barre, Pa.

The court found “a stranger’s illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern.”  Schefter operates under the same shield.

That might sound like the equivalent of accepting stolen property and getting away with it, but the Supreme Court treats news-related information differently.

But law does not equal ethics.  The question is, did Schefter violate journalistic ethics here?  As with many such questions, the answer is determined by where you stand on ethics.  There is, however, another issue here, a constant with ESPN: ethical transparency.

Many argue that Schefter should have declined to show Pierre-Paul’s medical records and merely reported the information, anonymously sourced.  Showing an individual’s private medical information crossed a line, to them.

What is troubling to me — and always has troubled me — is that ESPN ignored its commitment, as a news media organization, to be transparent about this ethical decision.  I watched Schefter’s live report on ESPN SportsCenter.  It was all news, zero reflection.

In its September 2014 revision to its code of ethics, less than a year ago, the Society of Professional Journalists added the words “and transparent” to its fourth major standard, “be accountable.”

The resulting exhortation, “Be Accountable and Transparent,” includes the following sentences of explanation and application: “Ethical journalism means taking responsibility for one’s work and explaining one’s decisions to the public. … Explain ethical choices and processes to audiences. Encourage a civil dialogue with the public about journalistic practices, coverage and news content.”

As I write this blog, ESPN has not done this and certainly did not choose to do this early in its reporting.  It could have been handled so simply — with two or three sentences of explanation by Schefter.  But for whatever reason, Schefter and his producers decided not to take the time, even with the existence of ethical disagreement within the profession and the audience.

I wrote about this in al.com a couple of years ago — regarding Joe Schad’s reporting of alleged autograph selling by Johnny Manziel.  It is sad to see that apparently nothing has changed.

Don’t expect to hear from ESPN on this through its ombudsman blog.  The network has not updated the blog since Dec. 3, 2014, when Robert Lipsyte ended an excellent stint.  It is a sad, and telling, omission.

So where does it go from here? Nowhere?  Maybe not.

I see another layer to this debate, and it relates to Schefter’s relationship with his anonymous sources within the league.  Note the following tweet by former Steeler James Harrison:

Apologies for Harrison’s language, but it does raise the question: How will Schefter’s sources within the league respond to this?  One reason a journalist never breaks a pledge to an anonymous source, even risking imprisonment, is because of the damage it would cause to other source relationships, and these are an investigative journalist’s lifeblood.

It will be interesting to see if Schefter gets any pushback from his sources — players, agents or team officials — because of this.  Players might punish him for damaging an unsigned colleague’s negotiating power.  Agents and team officials might be more likely to look the other way.

All of these considerations weigh in to a serious ethical discussion in a matter like this.  And as the SPJ code encourages, and ESPN once again ignored, it’s best to include your audience in that ethical discussion.

John Carvalho is an associate professor of journalism at Auburn University.  A former sports journalist himself, he discusses sports media issues at @John_P_Carvalho.