Why the St. Pete Times didn't publish the Foley e-mails

[seafan]

Why the Times didn't publish the Foley e-mails

By NEIL BROWN, Executive Editor
Published October 5, 2006

In the days before the September primary, this newspaper was tipped to allegations about the personal life of Republican gubernatorial front-runner Charlie Crist, including a charge that he was involved in a paternity dispute over the birth of a girl 17 years ago.

Although it was just before the primary and we understood that his political enemies might well be behind it, we vigorously pursued the story. The moment we had a story that we believed was fair to the attorney general and that went no further than the facts we could substantiate, we published it. That happened the day before the primary.

We deliberated extensively before publishing that story. Newspapers are reluctant to run controversial stories so close to an election, when the subject has little time to react. Still, we decided to publish a story we were convinced was relevant, accurate and fair. In fact, the St. Petersburg Times was one of only three newspapers to print the paternity story, though many others had much of the same information.

In short, we try whenever possible to publish what we know rather than keep it out of the paper.

snip

Last November, we chose not to publish a story about how the Republican congressman sent cryptic, though arguably inappropriate, e-mails to a former congressional page from Louisiana.

Let's be clear: The e-mails we obtained were not at all sexually explicit. As Tom Fiedler, my counterpart at the Miami Herald, said, they were "ambiguous." Further, the page had provided Foley with his e-mail address voluntarily and had acknowledged in an e-mail to a friend that he initially had no suspicions about the congressman. We later tracked down the page, who told us that the e-mails made him uncomfortable. We also interviewed another page who had received e-mails from Foley and found nothing inappropriate.

snip

Our decision not to publish was a close call. We decided to hold off. Why?

I led deliberations with our top editors, and we concluded that we did not have enough substantiated information to reach beyond innuendo.

We were unsuccessful in getting members of Congress who were involved in the matter or those who administer the House page corps to acknowledge any problem with Foley's ambiguous e-mail or to suggest that they thought it was worth pursuing.

Emphasis added. So, the coverup by certain members of Congress is substantiated further by this statement.

It's past time for testimony under oath for those involved in this coverup.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Two salient points...

First, this story certainly suggests that there was no nefarious Dem conniving behind the timing of the story.
Second, as things turned out, Foley made it past the primary & irrevocably onto the ballot, so the seat is probably ours. I can't imagine that the GOP would succeed in theirsurrogate-candidate effort.

[Demit]

2. I'm really torn here. Their explanation sounds entirely plausible, and not

at all self-serving—until I get to the part where he says, "But so many other allegations are aired online with little regard for accuracy and fairness. The political online world is full of those who trade in rumor and gossip, tout the instances when they were right, but pay little price for the mountains of information that prove to be false and hurtful."

Newspapers used to employ gossip columnists who would print juicy little ambiguous tidbits all the time, that everybody reveled in, including I'm sure executive editors. So Mr. Brown's sanctimonious "That's not the standard we aspire to" rings a little false to me. Of course one of his purposes here is to get a little dig in at blogs, competition at which executive editors absolutely bristle these days, and are compelled to delegitimize.

So while I think perhaps at the time they made a not-too-horrible call in not running with the story, I think the audible sniff of "we just don't do gossip" is a little overplayed.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

3. The GIGANTIC point in this story is the SPTimes says THEY

meaning THEM, - A NEWSPAPER, had been in touch with "members of Congress who were involved in the matter" AND those "who administer the House page corps" about Foley's emails last November!! How is it possible that the Republican leadership did not know at that point that they were sitting on top of a volcano destined to blow? If I were a Republican member of Congress and I found out that my leaders had not acted after being contacted by the press about this issue nearly a year ago - I would blow a gasket. If I were a Republican period, I would blow a gasket.

[gratuitous]

4. The Times is usually pretty good

They carry a lot of stories and do a lot of editorials that other Florida papers don't touch (looking hard at the Miami Herald and its pay-for-play columnists). It's a bit disappointing that they had the e-mails and couldn't develop more information from them, even though they had hold of them for several months. Brian Ross and ABC appear to have had the e-mails for a matter of hours before tracking down the IM messages that really sank Foley.

But at least the Times is acknowledging that they could have done more and a better job with this. A lot of news organizations and a lot of government officials won't concede even that much.