Let’s review, because everyone calling themselves “wlos insider” or something similar sees no wrong in the Charu medical marijuana story, while everyone else does.
- Charu does a story on medical marijuana.
- Charu interviews Steven William Ward as her one main source.
- Charu reports that Ward suffers from multiple sclerosis.
- Charu does not report that Ward has been convicted in federal court of threatening to kill or kidnap a federal judge, local federal magistrate Max Cogburn.
- Charu reports that Ward smokes marijuana to ease his pain.
- Charu does not report that she asks and enourages Ward to buy marijuana and smoke it in front of her so she can have some juicy film footage.
- Charu does not report that after her story runs, Ward is subpeoned to court for a hearing to determine if he broke the rules of his bond by using marijuana – his probation officer saw the report on TV.
- Charu does not report that she is subpeoned to testify about the role she played.
- Charu does not report that a federal judge does indeed revoke Ward’s bond and throws his ass back in the slammer because of the TV report.
- Charu does not report that the federal prosecutor handling the case has referred it to state prosecutor/Buncombe County District Attorney Ron Moore for possible charges against the TV station.
The ethical and legal issues seem pretty clear to me. Why can’t anyone else at WLOS understand this? Here’s a typical comment:
wlosinsider
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.
I think it’s explained above. Here’s a much more thoughtful answer from Catnap:
It is fair to lump the whole station in on this. Why? Because viewers and readers do. News consumers don’t make a distinction from one reporter to the next. Either they’re all a bunch of crumbbums or they are not. Charu did the story, but someone else did the intro from the anchor desk. Someone must have seen the story before it aired – There was a promo aired about it. Someone should have asked a question like -“um, did you show up at his house and find him smoking marijuana?” Yup — lump the whole station.
small example:
I was working at a newspaper where a photographer, of whom I had a great deal of respect, brought in a picture of an unfortunate man killed by a train. You could see something by the side of the track with a tarp over it.
“Is that the body?” I asked.
“yup.”
“Where were you standing when you took this?”
“Beside the track.”
“Did someone give you permission to be standing there? — the train track right-of-way isn’t public property.”
“I was beside the track but I was on the road where the track crosses.”
I asked him about three more times and then had him show me on a map where he was standing. I needed to be 100 percent sure he was on public property.
In the end, I don’t even know if we even ran the photo. But those conversations aren’t taking place at the tv station.
4 Comments
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. Unfotunately, 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.
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.
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-.
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.
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.