CONSIDER THIS: Getting the story right

By MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ
Managing Editor
editor@sbnewspaper.com

Michael Rodriguez

Have you ever seen “The Paper?” The 1994 film stars Michael Keaton as Henry Hackett, the city editor for a New York City tabloid, Glenn Close as Alicia Clark, the paper’s managing editor, and Randy Quaid as Michael McDougal, a reporter and columnist.

There’s this great scene at the end of the movie involving an argument between Alicia and Henry. You see, Henry and Michael had worked hard to break a story about two young men who were innocent of murder. The only problem is that while Michael was typing out the story, the next day’s paper was already coming off the press; on it was an article written earlier in the day that covered the suspects’ arrest and evidence against them. The headline read: “Gotcha!”

Panicked, Henry yelled at Michael’s enthusiastic behest, “Stop the presses!” and instructed his reporter to return to writing the story and to change the headline on the front page to read, “They didn’t do it.”

Alicia’s issue was that thousands of papers had already been printed and to trash them all would be too costly an expense. Henry argued that, as journalists, they had a responsibility to get the story right. Alicia quipped that they only run what they can confirm “as of presstime” and that they would run Henry and Michael’s story the next day. Of course, the managing editor had the last say and the “Gotcha!” story appeared to have been placed back on the press.

Later, while discussing that evening’s events with Michael, Alicia said in her defense, “We’re not exactly the Washington Post, okay?” Michael responded, “No, we’re not. We run stupid headlines because we think they’re funny. We run maimings on the front page because we got good art. And I spend three weeks (expletive) about my car because it sells papers. But at least it’s the truth. As far as I can remember we never ever, ever knowingly got a story wrong, until tonight.”

The next morning Henry was surprised to see his paper’s front page read, “They didn’t do it,” and it’s implied that Alicia had a change of heart.

So why in the world am I talking about this?

Well, I was told that we had “dropped the ball” when another local newspaper was the first to report the story about the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office pursuing the 2012 terroristic threat charge against San Benito Mayor Joe H. Hernandez. This person, a reader who often comments under the name “WeThePeople” on sbnewspaper.com, expressed interest as to why this occurred.

The following was my answer, albeit tweaked a bit for print.

The public information officer for the DA’s office did not return phone calls from News reporters seeking official confirmation about the mayor’s charge. Those calls were made to the individual’s office and mobile phone on Thursday, April 4, well before the PIO gave a comment to the “other guys,” as reported in their April 6 report.

Now we could have run an article based on the little information we had, we could have even broke the news via the web or on Facebook or Twitter, but rather than rushing a story of this magnitude for the sake of getting the scoop and possibly reporting misinformation as a result, we opted to wait until we could speak to a representative of the DA’s office in hopes of publishing a more comprehensive and accurate article.

The end result was our coverage of the mayor’s case in the April 10 edition… all 1,323 words of it.

Depending on the circumstances, we often give our public servants the benefit of the doubt as to why they could not be immediately accessible to reporters, a courtesy we especially afford to this particular person since — before this last occurrence, anyway — the PIO has always been available to the News. And for that, we thank you.

If I were to die today, or for whatever reason no longer be employed with this proud publication, one of the things I would be most proud of in my career is the fact that we never knowingly got a story wrong. Not ever.

Consider for a moment that if someone such as WeThePeople, a person who once criticized the News for not practicing selective reporting, were in my position they would’ve run an article that, quite frankly would’ve been misleading. Much the same way that Alicia had to choke on a huge loss to make sure that didn’t happen to her paper, I had to swallow a bitter pill to ensure that didn’t happen here. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.