Tag Archives: abc news

Beware of Torladoes

February 8, 2008 – 8:00 am

The story was corrected, but the headline’s a bit of a problem. Thanks, Jeff!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Online | Also tagged , | Comments

ABC News investigation clears Alexis* Debat of fabrication, cites “four details… that we couldn’t confirm”

October 24, 2007 – 8:00 am

Background here and here.
TVNewser acquired the memo that ABC News head David Westin sent to staff about the findings of the internal investigation into the work of Alexis Debat, a former consultant with the network. Some relevant excerpts:

…This review was extremely sensitive, as it required going back to confidential sources in this country and abroad. It also involved traveling to Pakistan to confirm first-hand the circumstances of Mr. Debat’s work there. Early in our review, we learned that there were other interviews Mr. Debat had published in France that the subjects denied had been conducted. We reported this story immediately on ABC News.com. We have now completed our review. After going through all of the stories Mr. Debat worked on for ABC News, we found no instances of false reporting. Mr. Debat was not the sole source for anything ABC News reported. Moreover, we confirmed with Mr. Debat’s confidential sources that they had given him the information as he’d claimed in contributing to our reports. We also confirmed that Mr. Debat traveled to the locations in Pakistan as he had claimed and talked with the sources he had identified.
Our review did uncover four details of Mr. Debat’s reporting that we couldn’t confirm. In one case, he mis-identified which branch of U.S. Special forces had engaged in a particular operation, although we did confirm the other facts surrounding the operation. We also found disagreements over the location for two meetings reported on by Mr. Debat, although, again, we could confirm the other facts surrounding the meetings. And, one of the people whom Mr. Debat identified as attending a meeting would neither confirm nor deny that he/she was a direct participant. None of these discrepancies would rise to the level of a formal, on-air retraction because none of them was material to the substance of our report.

So none of the stories he worked on need to be retracted, but does this mean ABC News won’t inform viewers of its findings? Why not explain the detailed investigation that took place?

Also, an AP story about the memo that ABC has on its website seems to have a misleading headline. (This appears to be AP’s doing, not ABC’s; see here.) It reads, “ABC: No Errors Tied to ‘Fake’ Consultant.” But Westin’s memo clearly states that there are details and facts that can’t be confirmed. Is that really the same as “no errors”? Also, the AP story does not detail the discrepancies outlined in the memo. Why not?

ABC News is also instituting changes to its practices:

There are three changes we are making in our internal practices based on what we’ve learned from this case.
Starting immediately, we will include both our News Practices team and the corporate Human Resources Department in the hiring of all consultants, reviewing in particular claims of prior employment and educational history. We will also undertake a review of current consultants where appropriate.
When we hire a consultant, we will make a determination of exactly how that person will be identified on all programs and platforms.
News Practices will be alerted each time that we include a consultant in our reporting to ensure that the consultant is being used and identified properly.
We undertake extensive efforts in all of our reporting — and particularly in our investigative reporting — to check and double-check information we are given so that no one source can compromise the truth of what we present to our audiences. Based on our review, our overall systems and procedures worked in the case of Mr. Debat. Nothing in our review, of course, condones the instances of resume enhancement or fake interviews that Mr. Debat published elsewhere.

*Correction November 4, 2007: The headline of this post originally misspelled “Alexis” as “Aexis.” It was corrected after a reader brought the error to light.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Regret Articles, Television | Also tagged , , , | Comments Off

ABC gets partial correction to Stanley story; objective and subjective errors

March 9, 2007 – 10:07 am

nytbanner1Alessandra Stanley wrote a TV column for Wednesday’s NY Times about Brian Williams and the major network anchors that made ABC News hot under the collar. A senior exec at the network fired off a letter to Romenesko that was widely blogged about yesterday. The Times today ran a correction (now included in the online column) to address ABC’s concerns. Let’s compare.
ABC letter:

There are glaring errors in Alessandra Stanley’s column today. For the record, Charlie Gibson was in Washington, DC for the State of the Union (not at his desk in New York as Stanley wrote). He anchored both "World News" and ABC’s primetime coverage of the President’s speech from Capitol Hill. Following the speech, he interviewed Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain…

NY Times correction:

The TV Watch column yesterday about reports from Iraq by the NBC anchor Brian Williams, and the competition among NBC, ABC and CBS to draw viewers to their evening news programs, referred incorrectly to coverage of President Bush’s State of the Union address in January by Charles Gibson, the ABC anchor. He covered it from Washington, not “from his desk in New York.”

Okay, so we’re one for one as of now. Except the ABC letter continued on:

Stanley also falsely asserts that since Gibson took over as anchor in late May, he anchors solely from New York City. That is demonstrably untrue. Gibson has reported from: The Middle East to cover the escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah, including from Jerusalem, the Israeli-Lebanese border and Larnaca, Cyprus (July 16-19); from New Orleans for the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (August 28 &29); from Nickel Mines, PA to cover the Amish school shooting (October 3); from Amman, Jordan for Bush-Maliki summit (November 29 & 30); from Washington, DC, when the 110th Congress convened (January 4); and from Philadelphia (October 5), Boston (October 24), Dallas (November 13), Houston (November 14), Atlanta (November 15&16), Detroit (January 29 & 30), and Chicago (February 12 & 13).

How did Stanley assert that Gibson "anchors solely from New York City"? Here’s the relevant text from her column:

Mr. Gibson hasn’t exactly overexerted himself in his new job. He was the only anchor who didn’t go to Washington to interview Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House. (He entrusted Terry Moran with the task.) He also stayed put for the tornadoes that devastated Florida in early February…

This is where we begin to deal with a more subjective view of error. Anyone reading the above sentences, especially when coupled with the erroneous statement that Gibson was in New York for the State of the Union address, would clearly understand Stanley is suggesting Gibson is a bit of a homebody who doesn’t leave the anchor desk to cover stories. But does she specifically say that he only anchors from New York? No, although it’s also clear that’s what she’s saying.
These hair-splitting distinctions can be very important, but they can also be very frustrating for sources and those being written about. ABC is not going to be 100 percent happy with the correction offered because (and we’re guessing here) it will feel that the article made unfair assertions about Gibson based on inaccurate information. The Times is being strict in only correcting the one clearly stated factual error. The issue of fairness goes uncorrected. This is common; fairness is a difficult, subjective thing to assess and correct.
In this case, we have a media-on-media error and that’s one of the reasons why there has been so much blog chatter. The other reason for the extra attention is that the author is Alessandra Stanley.
In the end, this is a very telling example of why corrections are and aren’t given for certain requests. Was it unfair and incorrect to suggest that Gibson is largely tethered to his NY desk? Based on the evidence supplied by ABC, it appears so. But the fact that the article only suggested this, albeit very clearly, turned ABC’s complaint into one that could be classified as subjective, even if it appears valid. This example shows the balancing act that corrections/section editors walk every day, and it also shows why sources who request corrections are not always pleased with what they receive.
ABC had one final complaint:

Finally, Stanley take a gratuitous and unfounded swipe at Gibson stating that he is on vacation while Williams reports from the Iraq. For the record, this is Gibson’s first vacation in ten months.

This is an issue of fairness and context, not fact. Stanley wrote, "This week, while Mr. Williams is in Iraq, Mr.Gibson is on vacation." That sentence is totally accurate. Yet it exists to drive home her questionable point about the supposedly lackadaisical Gibson. But she hasn’t made a factual error, and so no correction.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Regret Articles, Television | Also tagged | Comments Off

Boy falsely claims to have been in classroom when gunman entered, fools Today, Good Morning America, CBS Early Show etc.

September 28, 2006 – 10:05 pm

A boy named Cassidy Grigg made the rounds of the morning shows Thursday, hitting the Today show on NBC, The Early Show on CBS, and Good Morning America on ABC. He said he was in the Colorado classroom when gunman Duane Morrison entered. Morrison eventually took six girls hostage and murdered one before killing himself. Grigg offered some colorful first-person quotes:

  • “He was just an old guy who came on a mission, and I think he got what
    he wanted.”
  • “I think he just went because he knew he wasn’t going to come out alive.”
  • “You could tell that he wanted the females. He tapped me on the
    shoulder and he told me to leave the room. I told him, “I don’t want to
    leave.”

Unfortunately, Grigg’s mother later revealed that her son was not in the classroom. It’s possible that it all started when the boy told his father he was in the room and the father then relayed this to the Associated Press. At least that’s how this AP correction makes it sound:

In Sept. 27 stories about a deadly school shooting at Platte Canyon High School, The Associated Press quoted parent Tom Grigg giving an account of the ordeal he had heard from his 16-year-old son, Cassidy. Grigg said his son was in the classroom when the gunman picked out his female hostages and the teen had offered to stay with the girls — but the gunman warned him to get out.
The student’s mother said Cassidy Grigg lied.

As is often the case, the boy’s remarkable first person tale was quickly picked up by other outlets, and now the mass corrections/corrective articles have begun. This correction was posted on MSNBC.com:

A story published Thursday morning on MSNBC.com described a 16-year-old boy’s account of a hostage-taking at a Colorado high school in which a gunman fatally shot one girl before killing himself.
The story was based on comments the boy, Cassidy Grigg, made on the “Today” show and to other media outlets. Cassidy said he was in the classroom at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey on Wednesday when the gunman entered.
Cassidy’s mother, Larina Grigg, said Thursday that Cassidy had lied and was actually in another room at the time. Link

WRIC, a television station in Virginia, ran with the story but then received a “withhold” on it and put that online. (A question for TV people out there: would a “withhold” be sent out by the network in a situation like this?) WRIC eventually removed the text from its site. We found this in the Google News cache:

Stations: WITHHOLD all of the items on yesterday’s school shooting in Colorado in which student Cassidy Grigg is quoted as saying he was in the classroom when …

FOX News has a story up, as does the Rocky Mountain News, and many TV affiliates. The boy’s mother told one outlet, “He said, ‘Mom, all those kids were my friends and I just wanted so much to help them. … I guess I just made it up in my mind. I just wanted it to be true so bad’.”

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Online, Television | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments Off