By Mike Pound, Joplin Globe
It was one of those stories that you hear about all the time.
A big-time college athlete is caught accepting favors he shouldn’t from a sports agent. This time, the allegations were made by a TV station in Little Rock, Ark., and concerned Arkansas University running back Darren McFadden. The report was big news when it aired shortly before the Razorbacks were to play the University of Missouri in the Cotton Bowl.
As college sports scandals go, the one aired on KARK-TV was pretty juicy. It involved a former Razorback athlete, a current Razorback athlete and an expensive SUV. There was only one problem: The story was — to use a journalism expression — full of bull.
So full of bull, in fact, that Rob Heverling, the station’s news director, had to issue a statement apologizing for his news department’s “poor standards of reporting.”
At least Heverling apologized. In St. Louis, not only did the news director of a TV station that ran a major story that also turned out to be wrong not apologize for the error, he bragged about running the mistake-ridden report. And for his efforts, has been rewarded with a better job in a larger television market.
It was reported Monday in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Kingsley Smith, formerly the news director at Fox affiliate KTVI-TV in St. Louis, has taken a similar job with the Fox affiliate in Philadelphia, Pa.
It was KTVI-TV in St. Louis that reported shortly before the Mitchell Report — on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball — was released that Albert Pujols would be named in it. Big story … if it was true. It wasn’t.
When reached for comment by the Post-Dispatch after the Mitchell Report came out and the Pujols story was debunked, Smith didn’t seem too concerned about the mistake. In fact, he seemed proud of the erroneous report. He said the Fox brand allowed his station to have a “certain sense of edginess and aggressiveness,” and he contrasted his station’s approach with that of the other St. Louis stations that opted not to run a story based on a rumor.
“If you want to have your button-up newscast packaged with a bow, there are stations in town that do that and have been doing it for 25 years,” is what Smith said.
Yeah, that whole “facts” thing can sure bog down a newscast.
I don’t mean to pick on TV news or on sports reports, because you can kind find examples of shoddy reporting in all sorts of media. But still. I mean, how can you run a story accusing a football player, shortly before one of the biggest games of his life, of violating NCAA rules without making sure the story was correct? Judging by how quickly the Little Rock station had to back off its story, it shouldn’t have been too hard to do.
Look, I don’t know if McFadden has ever accepted gifts from sports agents or not. That sort of thing certainly has happened before in college sports. But the fact remains, the story the TV station aired was wrong. It was riddled with inaccuracies.
Same goes for the Pujols story. Whether Pujols at some point in his past did use a performance-enhancing drug isn’t the issue. The issue is that the St. Louis TV station reported — pretty much as fact — that he would be named in the Mitchell Report, and he wasn’t.
One of the arguments I’ve heard for this rush to get stories on the air, on the Web or in print is the climate of instant communication in which we live. The fear, some news folks say, is that if you don’t get your story out there in a hurry, someone else will beat you to it.
So what if the story is wrong? We can just pull it and run another story that might also be wrong.
Look, just about every reputable news organization — this paper included — has made mistakes. It happens. But most reputable news organizations — this paper included — hate it when mistakes are made. Just ask any Globe reporter — this reporter included — what happens when a mistake is made.
I’m just worried that some news outlets don’t take mistakes as seriously as others do. I’m worried that some news outlets are practicing what I call spaghetti journalism: throwing stories against the wall to see if they stick.
I’m worried that when news outlets practice spaghetti journalism, someone will get burned. And I’m worried that it won’t be the news outlets.
Tags: anchor, Carlson, Emily, Emily Carlson, EmilyCarlson, reporter, tv
