With the Super Bowl and awards season in the air, we decided to take a look back at a post about a movie launch during a previous Super Bowl. The “based on a true story” thing is still happening quite a bit these days, from “The Boys in the Boat” to “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” As much as I love the stories, I find myself occasionally wondering to what degree things were fluffed up a bit for dramatic purposes.
Here’s a peek back at the last time we dug into this:
Based on a true story = We made up some stuff
Amazon spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $14 million during the Super Bowl for a minute-long teaser trailer of “Air,” a movie that tells the story of how Nike came to land Michael Jordan as a client. The Ben Affleck/Matt Damon flick follows a familiar trend these days, as it is “inspired by true events,” which is just a fancy way of saying, “We made up a bunch of stuff.”
Movies like “Elvis,” “Blonde,” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” have seen varying levels of post-hoc fact checking that call into question certain parts of the films, with film buffs rebuffing these concerns as mere “dramatization of controversial and contested historical events.” Still, these situations are small potatoes when compared to how some films and limited series have taken liberties with reality.
“Winning Time,” HBO’s look at the late 1970s/early 1980s rise of the L.A. Lakers, created massive amounts of controversy with the way in which it played fast and loose with the truth. Given the relatively recent era in which the events took place, the degree to which sports information is retained and a quality text from which to draw, it seemed almost purposeful that the series got so many things factually wrong, including places, dates, opponents and scores. This isn’t even accounting for how the athletes, including Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar , publicly denounced the way in which they were portrayed.
Even more, Jerry West and his legal team have demanded an apology and retraction for the way in which the series portrayed the Laker legend, noting that the producers engaged in “legal malice.”
The New York Times did a deep dive on the cottage industry that has streaming services building mini-series around actual events, but then jazzing up reality to make life seem cooler than it was. The piece cites West’s portrayal as a “rage-aholic” as one of the more egregious cases of taking liberties with reality. It also points out that Linda Fairstein, the prosecutor in the “Central Park Five” case, is currently engaged in a lawsuit against HBO for its portrayal of her in the series “When They See Us.”
The defamation attorneys the Times quoted made it clear that these cases aren’t always easy to win, because the First Amendment does provide folks with the ability to create fiction based on true people. However, there are limits to this kind of thing:
Sometimes disclaimers are enough to protect a studio from legal liability, especially if they are prominently displayed in the opening credits and offer detail of what has been fictionalized — beyond a generic acknowledgment such as “based on real events,” legal experts say. The First Amendment offers broad protections for expressive works like film and television productions that depict real people by their real names.
But if someone can convincingly claim that he or she was harmed by what screenwriters made up, that is grounds for a strong defamation suit, said Jean-Paul Jassy, a lawyer who works on media and First Amendment cases in Los Angeles.
“A disclaimer is not a silver bullet,” he said.
This is in some ways akin to the way courts have afforded opinion pieces and reviews protection under the fair comment privilege. This allows writers to provide “pure opinion” that cannot be proven true or false without fear of falling afoul of defamation laws. That said, merely stating something is opinion isn’t a silver bullet either.
If you say, “In my opinion, Vince Filak is a lousy professor,” it falls into that opinion realm. It’s stated as such and there’s no way to define “lousy” so that a court could determine if I fit that definition or not. Plus, in defamation suits, the plaintiff (in this case, me) would have to show harm: Did I get fired? Did my classes shrink to the point I had to teach Medieval Basketweaving to maintain the course load in my contract? Did a group of random professors follow me around and mock me to the point I needed therapy? Probably not, so I’m not going anywhere with this.
However, if you say, “In my opinion, Vince Filak stabbed a student in the face with a fork during his 8 a.m. Writing for the Media Class on Feb. 20,” now you’re in trouble. It’s not an opinion, for starters, as we can prove it either happened or didn’t happen. It’s accusing me of a crime, which furthers my case. Plus, if that thing gains steam, I’m likely to get fired.
Writers, editors, producers and directors have always taken SOME liberties with reality when it comes to how they portray real people in fictional or semi-fictional stories. What makes this recent set of efforts more concerning is the degree to which they are bending the truth and the ways in which the fictionalization has the ability to warp public perception of real people in some harmful ways.
As for me, I’m looking forward to “Air” for the bad 1980s clothing and the Affleck/Damon banter that most of their collaborations pull off quite well. I’m also looking to see if anything gets dinged on a fact check, especially because, as anyone with any experience with Michael Jordan will tell you, he’ll take it personally.
Those of you who ordered a “Filak Furlough” T-shirt should be getting a surprise in the mail just before Christmas:
Another T-shirt.
Here’s a look at the back of the one you have, so let’s see if you can figure out why this is happening:
In case you missed it, as I did the first time, I’m not on a “Furlongh.” Here’s the back story on how this happened and a perfect example of how a company, PR organization or news outlet can gain a lot of credibility in the eyes of the public.
As we discussed in an earlier post, CustomInk reached out just before production to tell me I couldn’t include the names of the schools on the shirt without permission. (I’ve since heard from at least two legal experts who remain befuddled by this, but that’s for a different post…)
To make sure that these things got done before I headed out for a conference where several people were expecting them, I had to do a quick fix and get a new version sent back to them that day. I cut the school names, went with the cities, gave everything a once-over and sent it along.
A rep from CustomInk hit me back with a link to the proof, which I scoured for any hint of school stuff I missed and to make sure I didn’t misspell a city or place it in the wrong state. Everything I touched was good, so I green-lit the shirt.
Fast-forward to the day before I’m heading out for this trip and I’m ironing one of the tour shirts when I notice the error. (Yes, I iron my T-shirts. I’m socially inept and fashionologically stunted, but I will not be rumpled.) Immediately, I figure it’s all my fault, so I go back to the proof I sent, wondering how the hell this happened.
It turned out, what I sent was right.
I then looked at the proof and found that was where the error came into play, as the folks at CustomInk infused the misspelling into the mix. I sent an email to them, explaining that this was a mistake that I didn’t create, that somehow got through and it looked doubly stupid because it was a shirt from a journalist. I asked what they’d do to fix it.
My expectations ranged from bad to passable:
BAD:They would come back with something like, “Look, this is why we have you proof the thing before we put it on the shirt. It was there on the proof and you missed it, so c’est la vie. If you want a reprint, you’ll pay for the whole thing.”
COULD BE WORSE:They would come back with something like, “Yeah, it’s kind of our fault but kind of yours as well. We’re willing to do the shirts at a discounted price and you pay for shipping.”
PASSABLE:They would come back with something like, “We’re sorry this happened and we’ll redo the shirts for free, but you’ll need to cover shipping. Next time, though, we have to hold you to what you approved with the proof.”
Never in my wildest dreams did I expect this:
In short, it’s on us.
I agreed and they redid the proof, sending it to me for a review. (And you damned well better believe I studied that thing like it was the Zapruder Film before I hit “send.”)
They then promised to make sure everyone had them before Christmas (as I’m sure many of you were planning to make it a Festive Filak Furlough Holiday Season…).
Aside from essentially guaranteeing my business for every other shirt I’ll ever do, the folks at CustomInk gave us a textbook example of how to deal with a foul-up in any field, regardless of if it’s a newspaper correction or a marketing mistake:
ACKNOWLEDGE IT: The people at CustomInk got back to me right away and said, “We see the issue here.” In doing so, it sets the stage for the rest of the process. If they’re like, “What’s the big deal?” or “Don’t be so petty,” we’re off to a bad start.
Admitting that a mistake happened is really tough in our field, particularly when we pride ourselves on always being accurate and helpful. I know a lot of newspaper folks used to fight tooth and nail to bend reality in a way that made potential errors not worthy of corrections. The idea there was that by fessing up, we somehow undercut our credibility with the readers. In reality, the opposite was true.
EXPLAIN IT: One of the questions I had was how the mistake happened, as I was initially sure it was my fault. Then, when it wasn’t, I had a hard time figuring out how a PDF got screwed up, as that’s not supposed to happen. In this email, CustomInk gave me the basic explanation of what it does and how the error occurred.
In some cases, the errors are your fault and explaining how you screwed that up can be helpful. An amazing reporter I worked with back at the State Journal once covered a bank robbery that a regular citizen foiled by tackling the robber outside the bank. However, she managed to invert the names, thus calling the hero by the name of the robber and the robber by the name of the hero. Clearly, that caused some problems.
In both cases, the reporter explained how those mistakes had occurred, with the idea that in figuring this out and talking about it, the reporter would be less likely to have the same thing happen again.
Also, in some cases, it ISN’T your fault: A press release has the wrong information, a source misspoke or one of a dozen other things happened. In explaining those issues, you can also save face in the eyes of your audience.
However, whenever a mistake can be fixed, do so to the best of your ability. It might not be fun and it might not be easy, but do everything you can to restore faith in you and your organization.
Sure, CustomInk could have told me to go pound sand, and from a legal standpoint, I’m sure that would have been OK. However, the folks there realized that a ticked-off customer is not something they want roaming the internet. Even more, I’d had so many good experiences with them, I’m sure they didn’t want the last one to be terrible.
Therefore, they realized the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze here and they decided to fix it in the best way possible, knowing they probably lost some money on the deal, but also knowing that they kept a customer happy.
THE LEAD: The Daily Cardinal, the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published a story about how the system president, Jay Rothman, had emailed the chancellors at the UW schools with some thoughts about the future. In that email, Rothman noted his support for several changes, including moving away from liberal arts programs at certain campuses:
As the University of Wisconsin System faced a dire fiscal situation, system President Jay Rothman suggested chancellors consider “shifting away” from liberal arts programs, particularly at campuses with low-income students.
In emails obtained by The Daily Cardinal, Rothman, a former law firm chairman and CEO with no higher education background before leading the UW System, told campus chancellors UW schools should seek a long-term path “to return to financial stability.”
“Consider shifting away from liberal arts programs to programs that are more career specific, particularly if the institution serves a large number of low-income students,” Rothman wrote in a list of recommendations sent Sept. 1.
THE FALLOUT: Rothman was not pleased with this reporting and took to Twitter/X to express that displeasure:
Interestingly enough this “egregiously false headline” and problematic “framing of its story” has not led anyone in the UW hierarchy to demand the Cardinal fix specific errors in the piece, according to the folks at the Cardinal:
(SIDE NOTE: The System has never been shy about asking for things to be fixed when a story is factually inaccurate. I remember a story that ran when I was at the Cardinal with the headline “Negligence Haunts Regents.” The public affairs guy called up our campus editor and politely asked for a fix, saying, “There’s really only two things wrong with the story. It’s in the headline: The word “negligence” and the word “haunts.”)
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE ON THE STORY:
First, it’s awesome journalism. I have no idea how the reporter got that piece of paper, but it speaks volumes about the importance of things like FOIA and open records acts, as well as having good sources. People have the ability to lie to you. Documents have an uncanny way of telling the truth. It’s a great story, a solid read and well sourced.
Second, the headline is not “egregiously false” based on exactly what Rothman wrote. It was “private” (email usually is, compared to him putting stuff on Twitter/X or making a public speech). It was a suggestion, not a mandate. It included the phrase “shift away.” It did say liberal arts was the thing from which shifting away should occur. The only MINOR argument might be between “low-income campuses” and those that serve low-income students, but at that point, you’re arguing about the type of bark that’s on the tree and ignoring the fact you’re in the forest.
Third, the story does contain a response from system spokesperson Mark Pitsch that put in Rothman’s two cents:
UW System spokesperson Mark Pitsch said Rothman has “consistently” stated he valued liberal arts education and shared the report having acknowledged some of its lessons “would not be applicable to the Universities of Wisconsin.”
“He did not suggest that chancellors move away from liberal arts programs,” Pitsch said. “However, as evidenced by the $32 million workforce proposal, the universities are seeking to expand capacity in high-growth STEM, health care, and business disciplines to meet workforce needs.”
As the story then notes, the email says something entirely different. As much as I don’t want to argue semantics, Pitsch is wrong here. Rothman DID suggest that in the email. To what degree he meant something else or failed to make something clear could be debated. Arguing that something didn’t happen when people can see the thing with their own eyes strains credulity.
Finally, there is a huge difference between “I don’t like the story” and “The story is wrong.” I can’t tell you how many people have called me over the years, screaming up a blue streak over a story that ran in the DN or the A-T or the Missourian, demanding we fix the mistakes in it. When I asked them to explain the errors that needed correcting, 99.99% of the time it came down to them not liking that we reported they cheated on their taxes, stole money, shot someone at a Taco Bell drive thru or some other thing that actually happened.
In one case, a student demanded a retraction because she had made several disparaging comments about the LGBTQ community in relation to changes made to Homecoming court. She threatened to sue because people were all over social media and email, telling her how horrible she was based on our reporting. When we dug into it, it turned out she said the stuff IN AN EMAIL TO THE PAPER and the reporter had actually done her a favor by not including some of the more egregious stuff she’d written.
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE ON THE SITUATION: This is probably going to be a really unpopular position, but if you read the entirety of Rothman’s emails, he’s right about a lot of stuff he suggested in terms of how to do certain things and what needs to be done to re-calibrate the UW schools.
If you read the whole email (skipping the now-infamous item 13), you get a clear sense of a smart business person who is telling a bunch of people that it’s time to be smart about your approach to your campus.
Here is a basic summary of his points in a simple fashion that I think most folks with common sense would agree with:
FISCAL:
Don’t build out insane, pie-in-the-sky programs and figure the money will come from somewhere.
Plan based on what money you have, not what you hope to have.
Collect money you’re owed.
Don’t plan one year at a time for a hand-to-mouth approach. Plan for the long term and hold to it.
If you’re going to keep stuff, make sure it’s worth it. That doesn’t mean everything has to be cost-neutral, but it does mean you can’t spend like a drunk sailor on leave and expect everything to be fine all the time.
TAKING ACTION:
Do the hard stuff right away because it’s not going to get better by putting it off. Also, do it in one big swoop so that you don’t have everyone looking around each time a shoe drops. Drop all the shoes at once wherever possible and then rebuild confidence for those who are left.
Tell people what is going on while it’s going on and be transparent. The more you hide, the worse it gets.
Read your policies to figure out what you can and can’t do before you try something. Also, if those policies are from the Stone Age, update them so you aren’t hamstrung by them.
That covers most of what he’s saying. It’s good advice. Does that mean the campuses are following it? No. Does that mean those who have made cuts etc. have done it the right way? Um… heck no. Is that Rothman’s fault? Not a chance.
In terms of his look at what should and shouldn’t be offered, that’s a whole other can of worms, but as I noted in another post, most of the students and families I’ve met here and while enrolling my kid at college are worried about jobs and the cost of this whole process. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have liberal arts, or a broader liberal-arts education.
What it does mean is that just like everything else, liberal arts courses should have their tires kicked from time to time, as should the structure of any program to make sure it’s giving students what they need. I think in a lot of cases, general education courses and the departments they’ve been based in got used to a huge influx of students each term by the dint of merely being part of that system. The level of scrutiny was not there in regard to value for the students (in any sense of the word) and the answer was always the silver bullet of “Kids need liberal arts, so stop asking so many questions and go away.”
I know I benefited from a lot of my general education courses, ranging from the history course I took to understand my parents’ generation to the race, gender and ethnicity course I took through women’s studies. I also know I had more than a few classes where it felt like the professor got a “no-show job” through a Soprano’s associate and didn’t give a damn because the class was required and we all had to take it. (I tried to find a link for a clip but gave up when I remembered how the dialogue in this show would make the heads of my editors at Sage explode.)
A strong examination of liberal arts is not a bad thing and reasonable people can agree or disagree about it. However, everything starts with honesty, accuracy and transparency, which is something the Cardinal article brought to bear.
“I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again,” Thompson said. “I would make up the report sometimes because, A, the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime or it was too late and I was like, I didn’t want to screw up the report, so I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up.'”
She then explained there was no harm in anything she would say to audiences.
“No coach is gonna get mad if I say, ‘Hey, we need to stop hurting ourselves, we need to be better on third down, we need to stop turning the ball over and do a better job of getting off the field,'” she continued. “Like, they’re not gonna correct me on that. I’m like it’s fine, I’ll just make up the report.”
“When on a podcast this week, I said I would make up reports early in my career when I worked as a sideline reporter before I transitioned to my current host role,” she said.
“Working in the media I understand how important words are and I chose wrong words to describe the situation. I’m sorry. I have never lied about anything or been unethical during my time as a sports broadcaster.
“In the absence of a coach providing any information that could further my report I would use information that I learned and saw during the first half to create my report. For example if a team was 0 for 7 on 3rd down, that would clearly be an area they need to improve on in the second half. In these instances I never attributed anything said to a player or coach.
So, if you’re following along at home, Thompson glibly did the “I’m so cool I can make stuff up and nobody cares” thing until she realized that EVERYBODY cares about the accuracy of sports journalism. Then, she did the “I chose my words poorly” thing, which is usually saved for when people make a career-ending comment and are desperately trying to save their careers.
It’s not a rare thing, unfortunately, to talk about people in journalism breaking the basic ethical codes of the field. It also seems to be in some of the dumbest possible circumstances, in that you rarely see a story like the one Jayson Blair made up about the D.C. Sniper and more so in situation where a reporter didn’t feel like asking a salt-of-the-earth pancake-eating source what they thought of inflation.
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: The first and most obvious thing is that, as a journalist, you don’t make stuff up. You can’t include the word “reporter” in your title and then pretend that the tenets of accuracy and honesty don’t apply to you.
When I look at the career of a sideline reporter, I can’t imagine a more difficult job because of who tends to fill it, how the world tends to perceive them and how hard they have to hustle. The majority of these reporters are women, and sports have never been too kindly to female journalists. The book, “Who Let Them In?,” does an amazingly and painfully detailed job of explaining what path-breaking women in sports journalism went through and what women in sports journalism still go through.
The television element adds the issue of physical attractiveness to the topic at hand. You might get a heavy-set guy with the remnants of a bad teenage bout with acne on the screen, but you’re almost assuredly not going to see a woman of a similar description.
One of the first women to have a nationally prominent role on an NFL television program was Phyllis George, a former Miss America. Critics pointed out that George had limited television and sports experience, and was intended merely as eye candy for men. Unfortunately, as viewers got a heavy dose of female reporters on the sideline over the years, each of whom was “visually appealing,” the rap on these journalists became that anyone who could successfully rock a “Hooters” uniform could probably do the job.
The fact of the matter is that these journalists have to hustle harder than their counterparts in so many ways and be ready for almost anything. As some reports on this topic mentioned, when Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on the field, the sideline reporters were the first and most direct line of communication to the public about his situation. When players are injured, when fights break out in the stands or when any other kind of bedlam takes place, these journalists are pushing for information and trying to keep the audiences informed.
When one person of a particular group (sideline reporters) breaks the code and kind of does it in a “oh, well, I’m not really a journalist anyway” kind of fashion, it hurts the remainder of the people in that group. That’s why you saw Laura Okmin, Andrea Kremer, Tracy Wolfson and dozens of other sideline reporters and female sports journalists coming out on social media to say, “We don’t make stuff up. Never. Don’t even think about it.”
Thompson’s actions and her disclosure in this fashion caused a great deal of harm to journalists who already have to work way too hard to be considered journalists at all, let alone equals of people who often have less journalism-based education and media training than they do. As we have seen in some of the other cases noted earlier, this is a firing offense and it should be.
The Filak Furlough Tour took a stop at Morgan State University, where we covered a couple of really great topics in two classes. Milton Kent, the professor there, was extremely nice to me after I screwed up the name of his student newspaper in a post I wrote a while back, so I wanted to make it up to him and his crew as best I could.
In one class, we talked about some reporting and writing stuff while in the other, we talked about editing, fact checking and such. It was such a great time that I forgot to grab a screen shot photo for this.
Oh, well. You’ll have to take my word that I actually wore a different shirt.
Onward…
MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY – Baltimore, Maryland
THE TOPIC: We went with a lot of Q and A in the first class, and we’ve kind of touched on a lot of that already, so we’re going with the second class a bit more, with the idea of how to edit and what to do.
THE BASICS: There are a couple key things that really help me when I need to edit something. The first one is particularly helpful when I am trying to edit something I wrote.
Write, get the heck away from it, come back, put on my “editor’s hat” and then go to work.
Editing right after you write something doesn’t tend to work that well in a lot of cases, particularly because you figure if you wrote it, you probably figured it was right in the first place. It’s also hard to edit right after you wrote it, at least it is for me, because my mind kind of “fills in” stuff that’s not there because I knew what I meant when I wrote it. That makes it harder to do a true word-by-word edit.
Getting away from the piece for a while can help you mentally reboot and come back at it with a fresh set of eyes. I also like to pretend a bit that this came from someone else, so I can be like, “OK, what the fresh hell is this?” Like most things when you’re working with writing and editing, you find little ways to make things work for you. Once you find them, stick with them.
A couple other tips I liked to use:
ASSUME EVERYTHING IS WRONG: One of the easiest ways to get something wrong is to assume everything is right and then only check on things that appear wrong. It’s a pretty standard thing editors who are strapped for time do. Editors who work with high-end pros a lot also tend to go this route, because you expect stuff to be right if the person is a high-end pro.
Me? I work with a lot of students and I’ve read a lot of things that, while outlandish, tend to be true. I’ve also read stuff that seemed to be logical, only to find the kids made it up. This kind of weird confluence of experiences has put me in t he position where I just assume everything is wrong and I have to go about proving it to be accurate.
For example, if a source said, “I got arrested in New York in 2004 for a string of burglaries and got sent to Smithton State Prison for 10 years. While I was there, more than 20 people got killed in prisoner on prisoner violence.” I’ve got a lot to look at:
Can I prove the guy got arrested and for what charges?
Can I prove the time and place of the arrest and conviction?
Can I prove he went where he said he went and for that amount of time?
Can I prove people got killed there and if so, can I prove the number of deaths?
The same thing is true of simple things like name spellings, ages, job titles and more. Assume it’s wrong and prove it right.
SINS OF OMISSION ARE VENIAL, SINS OF COMMISSION CAN BE MORTAL: Going along with what we talked about above, if I can’t prove something is right, I’m probably not going to use it. This isn’t always possible. I love going back to this argument in Jay McInerney’s “Bright Lights, Big City” where the main character (a fact-checker at a magazine) has a discussion with a notoriously sloppy writer:
“Where did you get this about the French government owning a controlling interest in Paramount Pictures?” you say.
“Don’t they? Well, shit. Run a line through that.”
“Your next three paragraphs depend on it.”
“Damn. Who told me that?”
In many cases, however, it’s easy enough to either check the fact and prove it so you can keep it in or check the fact and disprove it so you can cut it. If you can’t do either, it’s better to leave the thing out than to be wrong.
In writing, we talk about sins of omission and how they can undercut a piece. That’s true, but those sins, to borrow from my Catholic upbringing, are venial. You can be forgiven for not being as complete as you need to be. If you screw up because you guess wrong, those sins are mortal and you can pretty much kill a piece (or even your career).
WHEN YOU SCREW UP, ADMIT IT: Mistakes will happen. I think I make about 353,532 a day, and that’s when I’m only awake for 12 hours. The ones you put into the public sphere, however, can really damage your reputation among your peers and your audience.
The one thing I did when I talked to Milton Kent’s class was to apologize for screwing up the name of the school’s publication. I’d already fixed it on the blog weeks earlier and I made an email apology to Milton, but I wanted to let the kids know I was sorry as well. The goal was simple: Be a decent example.
It’s hard to feel OK about screwing up and it’s even harder to fess up when you make a mistake, but people tend to trust you more when you are honest and open about errors. Like most hockey goalies, even the best editors occasionally let one slip past them. There’s no shame in raising one’s hand and saying, “That’s on me.”
BEST QUESTION OF THE DAY: What do you think of the situation with Hasan Minhaj and The New Yorker’s fact check of his comedy? He told some broader truths and after the piece questioned his accuracy, he did a video where he “brought the receipts” for what he said in his act. What’s your take on all this?
BEST ANSWER I HAD AT THE TIME (plus an update): (When the student asked me this, I’d read the New Yorker piece, seen some response pieces and heard the Bill Maher bit on this concept of “emotional truth.” I had not actually seen Minhaj’s response video, which I did explain to the class. After watching it, I might have changed a couple things (which I’ll touch on after the main answer), but overall, I think the answer itself stands up.)
It felt kind of strange to me that a writer at The New Yorker would spend this kind of reporting capital on fact-checking a comedic routine. There did seem to be some problems with what he said in his comedy and the ramifications of those statements for other people.
(In one part of his comedy that was examined by the writer, Minhaj mentions that he tried to take a white girl to the prom, only to be turned away at her doorstep because her family didn’t want her in prom pictures with a “brown boy.” According to the story the girl (now woman) and her family caught a lot of online harassment for this, even though it didn’t happen in that way, and she ended up marrying another “brown boy” later in life. )
When you make up stuff and it negatively impacts real people, that’s not good, even if you’re doing it for comedic effect. Minhaj is operating in a world of comedy that’s different from the past days, as comedy and fact have become blurred. That means there is a greater risk when you bend the truth or play to broader issues with made-up examples.
Comics have always made up some parts of their act. The late Rodney Dangerfield notoriously made jokes about his wife cheating on him. (“When I come home, the parrot says, ‘Quick! Out the window!'” would be one of those.) While “Fat Albert” in Bill Cosby’s routine was based on a real person, there’s no real proof of people like “Mushmouth” or “Dumb Donald” existing. Richard Pryor, while turning significantly terrible aspects of his life into true comedy, did add elements to his comedy that didn’t exist or were untruthful.
(I’m not linking to any of Pryor’s stuff here, as I don’t want my editors at SAGE to have a heart attack. Speaking of which, one of Pryor’s go-to bits was about how his father died, which is both truth and fiction. If you look it up on YouTube, listen with headphones and don’t say I didn’t warn you…)
That said, those tweaks didn’t create significant negative impact for real people. If people had spray painted “WHORE!” on Dangerfield’s wife’s car or she got kicked out of her ladies at church because of his jokes, yeah, that’s something he’d need to answer for. If something terrible happened to “Fat Albert” because of Cosby’s comedy or significant harm happened because of Pryor’s tweaks to the truth, the same thing applies.
Here were two things that stuck out with me about the Minhaj situation:
First, I’m not doubting that he experienced negative things like the ones he mentioned in his comedy specials. The racism he discusses has been well documented in far too many facets of life for this to be viewed as just lies for the sake of a laugh. (Just like Pryor’s routine about being pulled over by the cops because someone “looked just like you” probably didn’t happen the way he said it in his routine, I have no doubt he and others experienced that kind of thing and that it was terrible.)
Using humor to draw attention to social inequality and similar issues has merits. I think Minhaj just “punched up” a few of his real examples to make the comedy better while trying to make a bigger point. (I often joke about 12 years of Catholic school and getting battered about by nuns. We did experience some significant smacking around and some emotional trauma from more than a few people, but it wasn’t all nuns and it wasn’t all the time.) Comedy creates awareness in some significant ways.
Second, I think that doing a deep dive on Minhaj just felt a little shady. There are hundreds of comics out there talking about “real things” that weren’t 100 percent verified. For the sake of the exercise, go through this Jeff Foxworthy routine about his “Cousin Sherry’s Wedding.”
I have no idea of Foxworthy has a cousin named Sherry. If he does, I have no idea if she actually had a “hurry up wedding” in his Uncle Wayne’s backyard. I also don’t know if she was 8 months pregnant when she got married or, as his mother supposedly said, “That’s the same dress her mother got married in.” I found it funny, regardless.
But we could take apart that routine or a dozen others about his family (“The Clampetts go to Maui” is a classic for this kind of analysis) in the same way The New Yorker went after Minhaj if we wanted. Dare I say, we probably wouldn’t, which probably points toward the racial inequity Minhaj was trying to raise more than anything else.
POST SCRIPT: After I got done with the class, I went to find the video the student referenced that I hadn’t seen. Minhaj does a 21-minute video where he picks apart the article and explains himself. He does apologize if he led anyone astray with his comedy, which I think is fair. I also think he’s probably more accurate than the New Yorker gave him credit for being. He “brought the receipts” in the form of emails, texts and other supporting evidence.
In most cases, he’s more right than wrong and where he did bend the truth, he made some solid explanations for why he did so. He also pointed to some of the spots where the article’s writer made choices that put a decided slant on how he was coming across. He’s not “emotional truthing” this thing to death, making claims that are untrue but feel like they should be. He realized some of the stuff he said could be a bit further out than maybe he intended initially, but he probably never figured someone would fact check him within an inch of his life.
If nothing else for me, this demonstrated the key principle I always try to push to my students: Before you make a decision, get all the facts you can.
BACKGROUND: Lillard joined the Bucks in the off-season from Portland in a blockbuster trade. His debut against the 76ers lived up to the hype, as he scored 39 points, grabbed eight rebounds and handed out four assists.
The problem is that people started figuring out this wasn’t legitimate, as the game was on TNT, so why was ESPN alone on this interview? Also, what was up with the weird pole thing? More detailed sleuths took issue with the fact the Bucks arena floor and Lillard’s jersey didn’t look right compared to the game footage they’d seen.
ESPN then issued a statement trying to explain away the fact they’d taken a video from the 2020 “Bubble Era,” removed TNT’s logo, PhotoShopped a Bucks jersey over Dame’s old Portland jersey and basically made stuff up:
“We occasionally look to connect sports moments of the past with contemporary imagery and storylines as part of our social content. While it was never our intention to misrepresent anything for fans, we completely recognize how this instance caused confusion.”
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE:
Uh-huh. SURE you didn’t mean to mislead people.
It’s hard to know the motivation of any one person and any one post, but this self-serving statement is total crap. That said, here’s the bigger problem: When you are the purveyor of actual content (games, SportsCenter, breaking news on athletes’ lives etc.), you are held to an actual ethical standard higher than that of a dipshit teen playing with an Instagram filter.
The spin that ESPN put on this thing about trying to “connect sports moments of the past with contemporary imagery” is laughable at best. If they had done something like a series of clips of Lillard over his career, with that audio over the top, fine. That’s at least “past meets present” (sort of).
But what they did was fabricate reality in a way that they KNEW would lead people to believe this was a contemporary moment, captured in its entirety by ESPN. (Also, what, exactly, was the need to PhotoShop out a competitor’s logo and PhotoShop in yours, if this was only an issue of trying to “connect sports moments?” Seems more like a cheater’s attempt at self-promotion to me.)
The ethical problems revealed by ESPN’s inexplicable lack of judgment are complex but illustrative of the battle currently being waged in sports media, and in news media overall.
First, there’s the problem of much of society seeing sports as entertainment, rather than news. If you justify sports as a space where people come to have fun — especially NBA Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, which is undefeated in terms of passionate fans who continually make hilarious memes and videos — then pretty much anything is ethical, right? After all, we’re all just having fun; no one thinks any of this is real.
And that’s very much the attitude had been many in the sports media space including, apparently, whoever green-lighted the Dame video at ESPN. And with the loss of shows that featured actual investigative reporting in sports, like ESPN’s Outside the Lines and HBO’s Real Sports, the space for real journalism in sports media continues to shrink.
In short, if you want people to take you seriously, you can’t do stupid crap that says, “Hey, we’re just screwing around with stuff for fun!”
DISCUSSION STARTER: What, if anything, should ESPN be doing in this arena?
Should it be making stuff up, but telling people enough to let them know it’s made up? Or will that just perpetuate a problem and keep sliding toward the line between journalism and fiction?
Should it get the heck out of this kind of “construction of reality,” in that it’s not ESPN’s gig, even if everyone else is doing it?
Should it find ways to use the digital technology that helped them do this in specific ways but not other ones?
The front page of The Spokesman, Morgan State University’s student newspaper, after someone shot five people during a homecoming event overnight. I’m not sure if it’s irony, coincidence or just a damn shame that the publication covered an event aimed at stanching gun violence two days earlier (see the recent stories rail).
I woke up to a news alert in my email to find that Morgan State University joined “a club we don’t want to be a member of and we don’t want any more members in it,” to quote a friend who survived a mass shooting on a college campus. Five people were shot overnight during a homecoming event at the Baltimore-area institution. The injuries are not life-threatening, according to officials, and the shooter hasn’t been captured.
The first stop on the Filak Furlough Tour covered the issue of crime, chaos and disasters. We discussed how to cover them and what kinds of things you need to do to keep yourself safe, both mentally and physically. In covering this topic, I’ve mentioned before the discussion I had with my friend Kelly Furnas, who was the adviser of the student newspaper at Virginia Tech when a mass shooting took the lives of 32 innocent people on that campus.
When I was able to secure him for a presentation at a college media convention less than a year after that event, it was a huge “get” because he and his editorial staff had experienced something so rare and mystifying that we all were desperate to hear what he had to say. He told me later that as he continued to do the “convention circuit,” he went from being an anomaly to being one of an increasingly growing group of people who had dealt with this. His sessions, he said, went from being a “here’s what happened” to a “here’s how you cover it when it happens to you.”
The students at The Spokesman did a good job of strong journalism on this one, and I’d argue they were stronger than the national outlets who somehow managed to not get the last names of sources or time elements into their stories. The Spokesman promised additional updates as more information becomes available and I’m sure by the time authorities capture this person, the big-wig media will have moved on to something else. Meanwhile, the folks at Morgan State will be left to pick up the pieces of their shattered sense of security.
Please keep an eye on this story via The Spokesman and think about those kids on that campus. They need to know we are watching and that we care.
The Filak Furlough Tour posts will continue next week.
Vince (a.k.a The Doctor of Paper)
EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this called the paper “The Spectator” for reasons past my understanding. I think I had a brain glitch. Thanks to the folks at The Spokesman for bring it to my attention. You deserved better from me on this. Keep doing great work. –VFF
We’ve bandied about the various pluses and minuses here of letting artificial intelligence do our work for us. Whether it was the complete lack of quality writing or using incorrect synonyms, there have been a few amusing moments here and there. Some argue this is a disgrace while others are in the “the AI is getting there, just be patient” camp.
That said, I think we have officially hit one thing we can all agree on: AI shouldn’t be writing obituaries. Case in point, this piece on former NBA player Brandon Hunter:
The headline kind of says it all in terms of why nuance matters. In some cases “dead” and “useless” are easily interchangeable:
“The flashlight is dead.”
“The flashlight is useless.”
In a case like this, however, we shouldn’t be swapping those words, and they actually do create harm. I’d hate to think of what Hunter’s family members thought when this popped up in the news feeds. Also, nothing says, “We don’t think your loved one matters,” like letting a computer take the wheel on the obituary. (MSN has since removed the story, but it lives on in screen shots and the wayback machine.)
That’s to say nothing of the godawful writing this thing did, from the line “performed for the Boston Celtics” (Was he doing a Mr. Bojangles routine at halftime or something?) to the line about how he was “handed away at age 42.” (Still not as bad as the “Maris traded to the Angels” obit headline, but pretty close…)
As with most things, we shouldn’t let the machines do all the work without at least checking on them from time to time.
Today’s “Mass Com Monday” post takes a look at the idea of how the choices journalists make in their work can shape the way we see a person, an event or a concept. Broadly speaking, the idea of inclusion or exclusion of content to paint a specific picture is known as framing, a theory most journalism students learn about.
For example, let’s look at like Sunday’s Broncos/Commanders game: The Broncos led 21-3 early in the game. The Commanders scored enough points to take a 35-24 lead. The Broncos then scored twice to make the final score 35-33, after they failed in an attempt at a two-point conversion with no time left on the clock.
This could be framed as an epic comeback if you want to look at it from the point of view of the Commanders. It could be framed as an epic collapse if you looked at it from the Broncos side of the deal. You could also frame it based on the final play (Commanders held on to win/Broncos failed to complete the job and lost).
Framing isn’t always about picking a side, but in most cases, it’s about how the media can shape our view of thing, including bigger topics like race, gender and other social issues. Let’s look at one example of that:
AUSTIN — The star witness swept into the Texas Capitol on Wednesday, red coat and flashy Balenciaga-emblazoned handbag tucked under her arms, her white sheath, red lipstick and signature platinum pixie all a dramatic contrast from the somber-suited individuals who have testified for the past week in the historic impeachment trial of state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The star witness was Laura Olson, person who prosecutors said had an extended affair with Paxton. What she would bring to the table in terms of supporting the case against Paxton was unclear and eventually she was cut loose from having to testify.
What is clear, based on the thread and a general reading of how Olson has been portrayed, is that there is a heavy emphasis on her appearance. Her fashion and her physical being (sweeping in, being flashy etc.) are front and center.
It’s fair to say that this kind of framing wouldn’t be something you’d see in a description of a man in a situation like this.
Or as I put it, I’d hate to see how these esteemed journalists would have described me in that situation:
“The star witness awkwardly shuffled into court with the confidence of a drunk doing a field sobriety test, clad in a wardrobe likely abandoned outside a Goodwill by a homeless elf, his head shaped like a decaying russet potato with a horse shoe of graying mane around a shiny bald top that gave him the look of a cue ball wearing a hula skirt, a dramatic contrast to the other witnesses who clearly own mirrors and possess a sense of dignity…”
The authors also make some interesting choices on what to include, such as this tidbit about her shoes:
Olson arrived with her attorney in the morning, entering the Capitol rotunda and ducking into a restroom where she traded red, kitten-heel mules for tan pumps.
Wait! WAIT! Who is the fashion designer associated with these amazing pieces of footware? Were they Manolos? Louboutins? And did she go into a stall or was this done near the sink? Come ON, Washington Post! Are you committed to serious journalistic digging or not here?
And let’s look at how the authors framed her compare to how they framed Paxton in the realm of non-essential clauses: (I bolded certain spots for emphasis and clarity.)
Paxton, a three-term incumbent reelected last year, has been among the state’s most prominent allies of former president Donald Trump.
<SNIP>
According to her LinkedIn profile, which she took down earlier this year, the four-times-divorced mother of two previously worked as district director for Sen. Donna Campbell (R) in San Antonio.
Paxton has not been seen in the Senate chamber since he entered a not guilty plea on day one, though his wife of more than 35 years, Sen. Angela Paxton, has been ever-present.
The picture being painted here is this: Married, thrice-elected civil servant is accused of philandering with a mother of two who apparently can’t keep a man.
This is not the only article that focuses more on what Olson looks like than what she might have to say in Paxton’s impeachment trial. Here’s one where they really dig into the clothing choice, as well as the way her high heels click-clack around the Capitol. Maybe that’s why she made the strategic move to the tan pumps…
One other thing that came up in this discussion of the Olson/Paxton situation was how Olson was described as a “mistress.” The question came up: “Is there even a male equivalent for this term, which seems to admonish her as a man-stealing home-wrecker?” As much as we had trying to make a term (“man-stress” and “side-weiner” were two I particularly enjoyed contributing), we couldn’t find one. That says something about the framing and the English language…
The point is, when we see content like this, we have our views on people like Olson shaped in one way while we have our views of people like Paxton shaped another. That’s not to say a story should never describe someone’s appearance or clothing or that all people should be treated exactly the same. What this is saying is to examine how we treat people in the media and if there is inequitable treatment based that unfairly shifts the frame.
In writing, we talked about this before on the blog, and these lessons merit a second look. As consumers, however, it really pays to pay attention to these issues as well and how they frame our views.
EXERCISE TIME: Read some stories on topics that interest you and look for specific frames that you think shape how a reader would perceive a person, event or outcome. Also keep an eye out for stories that frame individuals based on issues of race, gender, social status, sexual orientation or other similar elements. What do these frames present and do you feel they are fair?
Also, can you imagine framing people of a different group in a similar way? For example, would a man’s clothing be described in as intricate detail as a woman’s was in an article? Or would a story on a rich person focus as much on their single-parent household as a story on a poorer person does? Are there words that apply only to one group and not another, like the term “mistress?”
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Today we’ll kick off the start of the academic year schedule with our “Mass Com Monday” post, geared toward a broader discussion for those folks doing intro classes or those looking for bigger topics to examine. I am apparently at the last university that still has yet to start classes, but since you all are going to work, we go to work on the blog.
If you like this content, style or approach, let me know. If not, let me know that, too, as this is a transition in progress for the blog.– VFF.)
A BRIEF RECAP:Artificial intelligence is nothing new, but its more recent applications in education and journalism have brought the topic to the forefront over the past year or so, when OpenAI released its ChatGPT. The chat bot could craft reasonably decent written copy that could lay waste to the ways in which we once thought of writing as a humans-only skill.
Given the general freakout about all this, it looks like we’re about six months from this happening…
Or maybe not…
THREE KEY THINGS PEOPLE FORGET ABOUT AI:
IT OPERATES OFF OF WHATEVER IS AVAILABLE: The concept of “garbage in, garbage out” is usually credited to IBM programmer George Fuechsel, who coined the term in the 1960s. Simply put, the computer (or any logic-based system) will do what it’s trained to do with whatever input it receives. If the input is good, the output will be good. If the input is crap, the output will be crap. To this point, ChatGPT and other similar programs have been the beneficiaries of a wide array of high-quality content from a vast group of sources. That might not always be the case and even if it is, ChatGPT might not know the difference.
One major concern raised here is that ChatGPT doesn’t really distinguish between the work of high-quality sources that have created tomes of knowledge and chuckleheads who run blogs. Another is that, as ChatGPT continues to generate more and more content, it becomes a self-feeding loop, like a snake eating its own tail.
At the point of its launch, any and all material online was the company’s oyster, because nobody really realized what these folks were doing at the time or how they were doing it. Now that folks are digging in a bit deeper, those open lanes on the information superhighway are likely to become restricted, thanks to copyright issues and the folks who own those copyrights. This leads us to…
COPYRIGHT OWNERS TEND TO GET TESTY WHEN PEOPLE STEAL THEIR STUFF: The folks running ChatGPT are already getting their first taste of what the legal battle could look like regarding copyright infringement issues regarding the training and output associated with this program.
In the simplest of terms, copyright basically says the person who created a work owns the ability to do with that work whatever they see fit. If someone else takes that work and does something with it that you don’t want them to, you can seek some sort of restitution. (Yes, I’m oversimplifying this, but it’s the first week of classes or so and law won’t hit you until mid-semester at the earliest…) Several authors have already sued the tech company over the use of their work to help build this thing, as has comedy pro/author Sarah Silverman. The bigger concerns are coming down the road, as a class-action suit in California states that the OpenAI’s data scrapers violated “terms of service agreements and state and federal privacy and property laws.” In addition, the New York Times has put a blocker on the ChatGPT webscraper and is “mulling” a lawsuit against the company. (As a good friend used to say, “It ain’t a lawsuit until it’s filed,” but when an organization as big and powerful as the Times publicly ponders something like this, it’s at least a shot across the bow for OpenAI.)
If this kind of thing continues, it could substantially limit the effectiveness of AI programs like ChatGPT and potentially force OpenAI to start the process over from scratch.
CHATGPT IS ONLY AS GOOD AS OUR FAITH IN IT: If you want to see an amazing look at how simply “believing” in something can both rocket something to stardom and crash the hell out of it in a few short months, watch John Oliver’s look at cryptocurrency and then come back here.
As much as the people building and playing with ChatGPT might not want to believe it, this system fits that same mold: We use it because it does something for us that we think is good, but the minute we figure out that it might not be all that and a bag of chips, our faith in this thing can crater rapidly. According to the Washington Post, the “neat new toy” vibe of this thing is already starting to wane. Additionally, the earlier look at what the Columbus Dispatch has done in pulling out of the AI writing gig demonstrates that we’re not on the road to SkyNet quite yet.
DISCUSS AWAY: Consider a few angles for potential discussion about discussion in class from these angles:
BASICS:
To what degree have you played around with GPT? What’s your early sense of what it can do and what it can’t?
How and why would you or wouldn’t you use ChatGPT?
HISTORY:
Look back at some of the other “early innovator” elements associated with our media (Napster, Friendster, AskJeeves etc.) and see how each of them either started a revolution or fizzled out. What kind of pattern do you see for ChatGPT based on these previous efforts?
LAW:
Do copyright issues concern you generally speaking and do you have concerns about them as they relate to the ChatGPT situation?
Is there a way to balance the rights of copyright owners with the interests related to developing software like ChatGPT?
If these suits eliminate significant sources of quality material from which ChatGPT can draw, how confident would you be in using this kind of program?
ETHICS:
Given what you’ve seen about how ChatGPT can write essays and even get you through a freshman year at Harvard, how do you feel this could impact your education or the education of others in your peer group?
Is it fair to use a program like ChatGPT to do some of your work? If so, what kind and how much?
Texas A&M University reached a $1 million settlement with a Black journalism professor who said her tenured position offer fell apart after backlash to her work on diversity and equity efforts, the university announced Thursday.
The university’s leadership apologized to Kathleen McElroy for “the way her employment application was handled” in June when the terms of her proposed contract changed dramatically.
The Texas A&M University System reached a $1 million settlement with Kathleen McElroy and made a public admission that then-President M. Katherine Banks derailed the potential journalism director’s hiring after alumni, including a conservative-leaning group called The Rudder Association, voiced concerns about McElroy’s experience in diversity, equity and inclusion.
The system’s Office of General Counsel released a lengthy report about its internal investigation Thursday, following mounting pressure from faculty who fear that outside interference at the university has infringed on their rights in the hiring and promotion process and chilled their speech in the classroom.
While then-President M. Katherine Banks told faculty leaders in a public meeting that she did not know of any regressive changes to McElroy’s contract, the texts prove otherwise. They show her and José Luis Bermúdez, then-interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, orchestrating a plan to move the journalist to a multiyear nontenured professorship and multiyear at-will directorship, which they said would be necessary to get her approved by Texas A&M’s Board of Regents.
The texts show the pair drafting a public defense as to why the changes made sense for McElroy’s purposes. Banks told Bermúdez, “If you get this done, you get a bonus.” They also indicated that nothing would be guaranteed for McElroy.
Bermúdez said McElroy lied in much of her interview with the Tribune, and Banks responded that she had already told A&M’s chancellor that was the case.
“Just think if she had accepted!!! Ugh,” she texted.
When it came to “dodging a bullet,” I think Banks saw herself this way in this situation:
But it was really more like this…
SHORT SUMMARY: McElroy landed relatively well, in that she has a job back where she was, an apology from the people who messed with her and $1 million settlement to boot. One good friend of mine who is a professor down there noted that the bigger concern is how political pressure came to bear on the academic world in this truly terrible way, and she’s right. That needs some serious overhauling, but for a one-person, one-situation thing, this arc has now closed.
KEY LESSONS FOR JOURNALISM STUDENTS: The whole point of the blog is to help you learn something from everything we see or do, so here are three key things journalism students can take with them in analyzing this mess.
DON’T ACCEPT THE PUBLIC NARRATIVE: We’ve said this a dozen different ways on the blog, including “Trust but verify,” and “If your mother says she loves you, go check it out,” but it bears repeating here: When people tell you something, don’t take it at face value until you are satisfied that it is accurate.
The image Banks put out of being as innocent as a newborn kitten when it came to all of this basically fell apart once people started digging into what she knew and when she knew it. It also didn’t help her case that she put a lot of her “less-pleasant opinions” in writing via text messages.
As a reporter, you should listen to what people tell you and you should definitely record and report what they say. That said, you can’t just rely on that alone, or else your less reporter and more stenographer. Take what they say and use other people, documents and resources to challenge what you have learned. In some cases it will support that narrative, but in many others, you’ll find significant deviations from the public script.
SOURCES MATTER:This whole situation started to unravel in early July when the Texas Tribune published the key story about the situation unraveling. Texas has literally scores of outstanding major media outlets in print, broadcast and web that are capable of handling a story like this, but the Tribune got there first.
Why? They had McElroy as a source and a connection:
Disclosure: Kathleen McElroy, Texas A&M University, The New York Times, the Texas A&M University System and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This is in no way a rip on the Tribune, the staff there or anyone else involved in this really important and well-crafted story. It’s merely to point out the fact that a source found the Tribune to be a trustworthy media outlet that would tell a story and do so in a way that gave the source faith. McElroy could have picked up the phone and called the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, the Austin-American Statesman, WFAA or a dozen other places and probably been fine. However, when she and the Tribune connected, an appropriate level of trust and understanding between source and media outlet emerged and we all benefited from this symbiosis.
This is why getting to know sources and developing trustworthy relationships with people we cover can matter so much. I don’t know if I’d trust a random reporter who called me about a story, but there are specific reporters I’d gladly help in many ways because I know who they are and we have established a strong relationship over the years. This is the bedrock of good journalism, and it needs to be something we get back to, now that we don’t have to do every interview on Zoom, for fear of COVID.
JOURNALISM HAS INFLUENCE:There are plenty days in this field when it seems like we don’t do a lot or that we don’t matter for much, but stories like this reinforce the value we have as a profession. Had it not been for the media spotlight and subsequent digging, this situation would have likely gone away in a quiet fashion and no one would have really been the wiser.
However, because someone decided to put the public eye on this issue, a number of changes have occurred. (You can argue if those are big enough changes or the right ones, but that’s not the argument I’m going for here…) You had leadership change, you had a report on this issue, you had the exposure of outside influence on this, you had a financial settlement and you had an apology. It might or might not be enough, but it’s more than it would have been, if not for the role of journalism.
You don’t have to overthrow a government or right a social wrong through your student newspaper to have influence. My favorite story was one in which the student newspaper I was advising got wind of the university’s decision to start charging students 10 cents for a cup of ice water at the campus eateries. They reported on the issue and the students made such a stink about it, the admin backed off. You can say it’s just a dime, but it’s another example of local journalism having a direct impact on a situation in favor of its readers.
FINAL SIDE NOTE: During the debacle that was, I wrote an open letter to Dr. McElroy, tongue mostly planted in cheek, telling her to “drop those zeroes” and get with the heroes over here at UWO because everything here was amazingly cool. In the intervening week, we some how managed to make Sam Bankman-Fried look financially well-balanced:
UW-Oshkosh plans to cut about 200 non-faculty staff and administrators this fall, while furloughing others, UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Andrew Leavitt said Thursday, as the university faces an unprecedented $18 million budget shortfall. The cuts amount to about 20% of university employees.
“It is no longer sustainable for us to operate without dramatic reduction in expenses,” Leavitt said in an email to employees.
THE LEAD: The Daily Cardinal, the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 
