Salzman: Post's Ritter story a shameful deceit

Misleading interview tactics, failure to prove wrongdoing kept news value low

Published October 14, 2006 at midnight

Text size  

• 0 Comments
• Email
• Print

'I'd rather not talk to you," Denver Post reporter Karen Crummy told me Wednesday when I called to discuss her Oct. 1 story headlined, "Ritter helped immigrants stay."

That's awfully hypocritical, coming from a reporter, I told her.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said.

Anything she says "can be taken certain ways," Crummy told me, and referred me to her editors.

If I were Crummy, I wouldn't want to defend the article either, because I'd be ashamed of it.

But I'd talk about it anyway. It's part of her job.

Crummy's front-page piece focused on 152 plea bargains negotiated between Bill Ritter's district attorney's office and immigrants, allowing them to "plead guilty to trespassing on agricultural land instead of the crimes they were actually accused of" and, at least in some cases, avoid deportation.

Crummy's tactics in reporting the article make all journalists look bad.

If you're a reporter, you want to be straightforward with the people you interview, so that they can respond directly to the issues involved - and you can report their answers in the proper context.

But in reporting the Ritter piece, Crummy apparently played "gotcha" journalism, and the article suffered for it.

Crummy interviewed two sources quoted in the article without telling them what she was working on - and later printed their comments accurately but without proper context.

In paragraph three of her story, Crummy wrote that former Denver District Attorney Norm Early "laughed" when he heard about the agricultural trespass plea bargain, making it appear that Early disapproved of Ritter's use of the plea.

In fact, Early told me he has no problem with the plea, even though he hadn't heard of it before.

During her one-and-a-half minute interview with Early, Crummy didn't tell him what she was investigating and why, according to Early.

"\[Crummy's] intent was to get my name in there, and have it look negative toward Ritter," said Early.

Crummy treated Jeff Joseph, an immigration attorney also quoted in the article, the same way.

Joseph told me that Crummy claimed to be writing a "general article about immigration and crime."

"I don't mind that she has an angle," said Joseph. "But tell me, and let me respond to it."

Not only were the tactics used in reporting the Ritter piece flawed, but the piece was overplayed on Page 1 of the Sunday Post.

The "agricultural trespass" plea sounds unusual, for sure, but Republican and Democratic prosecutors have said that it's standard procedure to allow defendants to plead guilty to crimes that aren't factually related to the charges they face. Any illegal immigrant who enters into a plea bargain is subject to deportation.

Ritter told the Post that he used the trespass plea to get the toughest convictions possible, given the evidence and resources available.

By the Post's deadline, Ritter had not provided evidence proving that he had done this in the cases cited by the Post.

Still, it was up to the Post to prove Ritter did something wrong in the cases cited, like letting immigrants off easy, if the Post was going to make a big deal out of the story.

Because the Post failed to do this, the news value of the story was low - especially because the agricultural trespass plea is commonly used across the state, and you see it more in Denver because there are more drug crimes here, according to Joseph.

"The Post article didn't ask the critical questions," said Joseph. "Why were the pleas offered? Why were they accepted?"

I asked Post Assistant Managing Editor Chuck Murphy why he thought the Ritter article was newsworthy.

He said it was newsworthy because Ritter's office constructed plea bargains using the unusual agricultural trespass statute for crimes in an urban area, specifically to allow legal and illegal immigrants to stay in the country.

He added that Ritter has now had two weeks to show what justified the plea bargains. If Ritter provides such proof, he'll run another article.

With the election coming, journalists should treat negative stories about candidates with even more restraint than they would normally.

The Post overplayed this story, possibly making voters think, for no reason, that Ritter wasn't a tough prosecutor.

Ad dissection. Local TV journalists owe it to their profession and us to try to separate fact from fiction in the political ads flooding their programs with falsehoods and their bank accounts with cash.

Just when I'm about to vomit after seeing a political ad that's even worse than the one before it, Raj Chohan pops up on CBS 4 News and explains what's true and false in the ad. Adam Schrager does the same for 9News.

I don't always agree with them, but they're fair.

Denver's other local TV stations should be ashamed of themselves for making so much money on these ads without assigning journalists to fact-check them for viewers.

Jason Salzman, president of Cause Communications and board chairman of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.

Featured

• Through Your Lens

  

  Submit your photos or see the Editor's Choice slide show here.

• Rocky Multimedia

  

  The news comes alive in our videos and slide shows. Catch up on what's happening today.

• Holiday Lights

  

  Is your house the jolliest on the block? Submit your holiday lights display.

• Holiday Gift Guide

  

  Looking to get a jump-start on the holiday shopping season?

• Mount Crushmore

  

  Which four Broncos greats should be immortalized on Mount Crushmore? Vote here.

• Bronco Dean's rant

  

  Listen to Bronco Dean's midweek rant on the Chiefs.

• Broncos Video

  

  Get the latest from Dove Valley as the Broncos prepare for Sunday's matchup.

• Calendar wallpaper

  

  Download this month's desktop wallpaper calendar

• Sam Adams' Open Mic

  

  Open Mic: Stirrin' the Soup with Matt Iseman