Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Comments keep rolling in on GanjaGate.
Romani has this:
I grew up in an city where there was a local affiliate for each network, those stations wouldn’t have tried to pull something like this because they knew the other two would be all over it. I’ve said all along that if WLOS had ANY local competition, their news broadcasts wouldn’t fare very well in the ratings. Competition forces a business to strive to stay ahead, WLOS lacks this motivation.
My reply: Excellent point. Competitors police each other in a way that no others can. (Except kick-ass bloggers.)
w-loser has this:
The fact that Charu did not report that the guy had a conviction isn’t a problem. It had no bearing on the story. However, WLOS should have reported the guy’s arrest on the probation violation, and the station’s role in it, and reported the conviction then.
Let me stop you there for a second – not reporting the conviction is, in my opinion, a problem. It’s called context. It helps viewers understand the big picture. I know in the soundbyte land of TV this is a hard concept to understand, but it’s huge.
back to w-loser:
It’s also hard to believe the story that aired was all that was available on tape. Since this was a sweeps piece, they would have held onto the raw tapes until the piece aired, in case they needed to make any last minute edits. I’m sure they’ve gotten burned before by holding onto raw interview tape that didn’t cast them in the best light, and likely claim the raw tape already had been reused. But this would seem like one of those cases where you’d want to put that tape in the news director’s office for just such an eventuality – to have proof that Chachi really did tell him she could use file video if he didn’t want to light up.
Other question: where’s transcript of the photographer’s testimony. Surely he or she would have been called, having been there rolling tape on the interview.
Catnap weighs in with this:
Another example: We wanted to run a story about a new fuel depot that was opening up in town. The niche market they are after are farmers and truckers that are abandoning their on-site tanks because of environmental regulations.
We wanted to get a shot of someone pumping gas. It took us three trips. Twice we were there and they offered to fake pumping gas. The pumps were turned off for some reason.
My photographer wouldn’t do it.
He, rightly, arranged to show up when someone was actually going to be pumping gas. Not because we wanted to take a picture but because he needed the damn gas.
It’s not a big story and not a great picture. But, we thought it was important to be honest.
Does the WLOS insider even understand this.
My reply: Honesty. What a concept.
Catnap also has this:
WLOS insider said this: This guy smokes pot, right?? So he smoked it on air – big freakin’ deal. This is less about the t-v station and more about a poor m-s sufferer getting in trouble with the law.
He or she is right. The story is about an M-S sufferer. Unfortunately, but her unethical actions (asking someone to violate the law to get some video footage for pete’s sake) Charu lost a chance to tell the story properly.
If she worked for me – fired. Simple. The only difficult part would be making sure she wasn’t looking for another job in journalism. We got enough problems without crap like that.
I AM OUT.
Here’s what the Citizen-Times has to say.
I guess we’ll just have to disagree on this one. I don’t see how someone’s guilt of a crime unrelated (as far as we know) to using marijuana impacts his credibility as a person with a disease seeking relief from its symptoms. At what level crime should they draw the line at disclosing a conviction? Does there have to be a conviction, or should they report if an interview subject has even been accused of a crime? That brings us to the ethical issue of reporting the accused, dragging their names through the figurative mud, but not helping restore a reputation when the charges are dismissed or the verdict is “not guilty.”
One other point on this particular case I haven’t seen addressed (and maybe I just missed it): did Charu even know Mr. Ward had this conviction? It’s not routine practice to run a background check on an interview subject. A Citizen-Times.com archive search indicates the paper never reported the conviction (at least not prominently enough to include it in the Web version), and it’s unlikely WLOS would have sat through a video-opportunity-less federal court docket for a communicating threats charge. So, unless Mr. Ward, himself, told Charu about his conviction, it’s likely the first she knew of it was when she and/or the tape was subpoenaed. Which still doesn’t excuse WLOS not reporting on the probation violation court action, but would explain why (if we accept your contention that it was relevant to the original story) the conviction was not reported in the original medical marijuana story.
We’re not talking about parking in a firelane, we’re talking about a federal conviction for threatening to kill a federal judge for crissakes.
It goes to the credibility of the source and the reporter. It’s relevant.
Let me stop you there for a second – not reporting the conviction is, in my opinion, a problem. It’s called context.
What does that conviction have to do with medical marijuana? Nothing. He’s a guy with MS who asked the station to interview him about using marijuana for medicinal purposes. No relevance to the conviction here, but a big relevance in the follow-up story they’re not doing.
“John Public thinks handicapped people should be allowed to park in the fire lane. Before we hear from him, we should point out that John was caught check kiting in 1997 and was cited for passing on a double line in 2003. He also ate a grape at Ingles which he didn’t pay for, but was not caught.”