Shopping Stories

First off, if you’re looking for stories about my trip to the mall, you’re out of luck. Your humble Ranter tends to avoid shopping malls like the plague, as Mrs. Rant will no doubt attest. Unless there’s a bike store, bookstore, an excellent coffeeshop or a music store, good luck getting me in one of those places.

No, the type of shopping stories I’m going to talk about occur when sources shop stories to journalists. Any journalist worth his or her salt has a number of sources with expertise on a variety of subjects. Most of the time, the journalist will contact a source to get information on whatever story he or she is working on.

But sometimes the source makes the first contact. And it happens for all sorts of stories, both big and small. Good journalists will be somewhat wary of the story a source passes along, and unless it’s a hot story that is developing rapidly, they will usually wait to get confirmation of the story before running it.

You have to be wary when a source comes to you, because you don’t know the source’s agenda or intentions. It may seem innocent enough, but when a source calls up and says, “Hey, did you know that Joe Wilson’s wife works at the CIA and she got him that plum assignment to investigate the Niger story?” you need to be a bit leery of why he is telling you this information. If you’re sympathetic the the source’s point of view, say Robert Novak, you might run the story without doing the fact checking you might follow up with for a less trusted source.

In Novak’s case, he didn’t check enough to find out that Valerie Plame worked as an undercover operative. And the source’s agenda might be to smear someone, as the person who leaked Valerie Plame’s name to the press was trying to do.

Sometimes these people can cite information, chapter and verse, that no one else knows. If your source is a whistleblower who’s calling to tell you about secret prisons our government is operating overseas, the person’s intentions may be noble — to let people know that their government is engaging in illegal activities. Some may see that as being unpatriotic, but an uninformed public can’t make appropriate decisions when choosing their leaders if their leaders actions aren’t known.

So say you’re a sports or investigative reporter at the beginning of the Landis scandal and a trusted source calls you up and tells you all sorts of things about the case that aren’t in the public domain yet. What should you do? Well, first, you’re going to want to verify if the information is true. You just might be getting a scoop. But beyond that, you also should think about the source’s agenda.

Someone from an anti-doping agency calling up to tell you the dirt on Floyd Landis is one thing — especially if that source wishes to remain anonymous. Someone calling up to tell you of some shenanigans going on in the anti-doping agency is another.

In the first instance, you need to be leery of whether the source is just trying to spin the story in such a way that it makes the anti-doping agency look good. Remember that USADA receives the majority of their funding from Congress. And WADA receives some funding from the US Congress, too. Both agencies have a vested interest in Congress and the public perceiving them as being on top of the doping problem and catching those dirty athletes who are destroying “pure” sporting competition.

And when a scandal breaks they want to get out in front of the story to set the tone of the discussion. As Michael Henson said on at the Wilmette Theatre on Saturday, the first 72 hours is crucial, as that’s the time when most people form their opinions. So, no doubt, the temptation is there to contact reporters and leak tidbits of information that are damning to the other side. Which is precisely what happened. And, in fact, some of the information that got out to the press was in the public’s hands at about the same time — and possibly even before — Floyd Landis and his defense team received the information.

The question that comes to mind is whether such a source already knew that there were problems with the Landis case, or whether the source was merely being aggressive in making sure that their side of the story got out first. In either event, the effect on Floyd Landis was the same. His reputation and standing in the public eye was completely trashed.

When such a story breaks, you should ask yourself: Would these be the actions of an organization whose purpose is to determine the truth of the matter, or would these be the actions of an organization with a win-at-all-costs mentality? My bet would be on the latter.

Now, if a source calls up and tells you of various shenanigans going on with an agency, you still have to be leery of the story. One thing you need to figure out before publishing their allegations is whether they have a personal axe to grind. Imagine an employee who was just fired, or whose job was in peril, going to the press with stories of rampant wrong-doing. The stories might be true. But they might also be false, and the person telling them might be out for revenge.

No matter what, a good journalist needs to be leery of information that’s been volunteered. But what happens with a story that’s rapidly developing, as the Landis story was back in late July and early August? Sometimes reporters jump on these stories, either because they’re afraid of being scooped, or because they’re trying to keep up with the pace of the story.

Someone who’s got a story to sell can very easily take advantage of such a situation to get their version — true or false — into the public’s eye before the other side has a chance to react. That’s spinning the story. And several people did that to great effect on Floyd Landis. First, there was Pat McQuaid, who spoke of the “worst-case scenario” and all but outed Floyd (despite his disingenuous claim that it was Phonak that did the deed) as the person who tested positive.

And then there are the sources who let out information about Landis’ test results. Among those sources is the person the AP reporter was telling me about on Saturday. The person or people who placed that information into the hands of the press were running a campaign of character assasination par excellance. Before the Landis team really had time to gather the facts, look at the lab data (remember, they didn’t get the full data until about 6 weeks later) and figure out their response, based on the leaked information most people with a passing interest in the Landis story figured he was as good as convicted.

It’s not the first time an organization or agency has run such a campaign. Think of Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos physicist who was targeted for investigation based on his ethnicity. Or Dr. Steven Hatfill, who has been a “person of interest” in the anthrax letters episode from late 2001.

Hatfill was recently featured on 60 Minutes (view the video here), and among the revelations was the fact that at the time Hatfill’s name became public, the FBI had between 20 and 30 other “persons of interest.” By putting Hatfill’s name out, law enforcement officials made it appear as if they were making progress on the case. And yet, they have not been able to arrest anyone or bring any charges against anyone in more than five years of investigating.

In both cases, the source had an agenda — to show that the government was making progress in some crucial investigation. But also in both cases, it appears that the agenda was to make some poor sap the fall guy for the government’s inability to actually find the people they were really looking for. And in both cases, the victims’ lives and careers were irreparably damaged. Sounds an awful lot like the Landis case, doesn’t it?

There are people who have and will continue to shop stories to their contacts in the media. It’s up to the media to determine whether or not the source in each case has an agenda, and it’s up to the media to ensure that they’re not assisting in a campaign of character assasination.

But beyond that, what should happen when someone leaks damaging information that either turns out not to be true, or is partially true but the intention is to harm a person’s reputation or standing within the community?

In my opinion, people who cynically spin stories to the press with ulterior motives that are, shall we say, less than honorable ought to pay a price for their actions. Consider Wen Ho Lee. The person who leaked his name to two New York Times reporters has not been identified, so he or she is still out there able to wreak the same havoc on someone else. Ditto the person who leaked Dr. Hatfill’s name to the press.

And while Wen Ho Lee was able to recover some damages from several media organizations and the government, the person who made the decision to put his name before the public has suffered no consequences. Somehow that doesn’t seem fair, does it? In my mind, the person who did this to him should be paying Wen Ho Lee a large amount of money in damages, at the very least. Prison time might be nice, too, especially given the fact that Dr. Lee spent time in prison because of this person’s actions.

And while no one knows who mailed those anthrax letters in 2001, the FBI hasn’t been able to find any evidence that Dr. Hatfill is the one who did. So for the last 5-plus years, a man who was entitled to the presumption of innocence has been treated as guilty, causing great harm to his career and his reputation. If they ever do find the person who mailed those letters, what will happen to the person who leaked Dr. Hatfill’s name to the press? My guess: nothing.

And, of course, the same thing has happened to Floyd Landis. In spite of rules that are supposed to guarantee confidentiality, a number of officials violated those rules by placing Landis’ name before the public and by releasing information to the press. One of those people shopped a story around that contained unpublished information about Landis’ test results (results he may not have even had at that time) and offered a theory — unproven speculation, really — about how Landis had doped. And there are a few reporters out there who fell for the story and printed it.

So when all is said and done in the Landis case, what should happen to the person who shopped those stories. If it were up to me, he would get fired. And be forced to pay Landis some significant damages. And make a very public apology.

But don’t bet on any of that. Sadly, the most likely outcome is that the person who shopped those stories will keep his job. And perhaps his bosses will even give him a promotion. And some day, he will shop another story to reporters about another athlete implicated in a doping scandal. Let’s hope that next time, the reporters getting his calls hang up on him before the words even come out of his mouth.