Readers need to know that reporters and editors give their best effort to the package of reports that gives readers a window on the world each day. But, according to phone calls and e-mails this week, The Salt Lake Tribune has lost a portion of the trust and credibility its staff spent decades building.
That is a shame for readers and for Tribune staff. All of us lost something as the credibility of a venerable Utah institution was questioned. But we learned something, too.
In short, this is what transpired between Sunday, when former Tribune Editor James E. Shelledy disclosed in his column that reporters Kevin Cantera and Michael Vigh had accepted money from The National Enquirer for salacious and unsubstantiated information concerning the family of Elizabeth Smart, and Thursday afternoon when Shelledy resigned.
In his regular Sunday column, Shelledy said the reporters had provided a “roadmap” for Enquirer reporters to follow in covering the kidnapping of Elizabeth, taken at knifepoint from her bedroom June 5, 2002, and found walking near Salt Lake Cityin Sandy in the middle of March.
Shelledy said he bawled the two out and took disciplinary action. Most reporters, photographers and editors at The Tribune were blindsided by Shelledy’s column.
Monday in the Tribune newsroom was like the inside of a hornets’ nest after some fool whacked it. A meeting of many staff members focused on how betrayed they felt by the two reporters’ actions. They were concerned with how the newspaper might be hurt by the situation and with how the Smarts had been affected. Some staff members wanted to create a statement on ethics and print it in the paper.
On Monday evening and Tuesday morning the situation worsened when The Enquirer demanded a retraction of portions of Shelledy’s column and word came out that the tabloid had audio tapes of Vigh and Cantera discussing the Smart case with an Enquirer reporter. Cantera and Vigh were fired Tuesday morning.
Shelledy posted a statement indicating that he first became aware of the Enquirer situation April 17, and that his initial column on Sunday was based on false information. By Tuesday afternoon, many reporters and editors began to understand that there were serious ramifications from this incident for Tribune readers, as well. The paper had broken their trust. And trust takes a long, long time to build.
There are many strings to this ball of trouble. Let’s take them one by one.
The reporters: Cantera and Vigh entered into some sort of business relationship with a reporter from The National Enquirer on June 14, 2002, nine days after Elizabeth’s kidnapping.
In order to get the emotion out of this situation, let me say that the sensational identity of the National Enquirer, the content of the tabloid story in question (allegation of a sexual scandal within the Smart family) and the amount of money ($20,000) paid to the reporters is irrelevant. Why? Because the determination of whether someone is a prostitute is not the size of the fee or the importance of the client, it is the fact that he or she exchanges sexual favors for cash.
If Vigh and Cantera chose to enter a business relationship with another form of media that did not compete with the interests of this newspaper, that would have been permitted under the manual “Rules of the Road for the Professional Gathering and Editing of News for The Salt Lake Tribune.”
But, according to Shelledy, the two reporters failed to disclose their business relationship in advance and did not admit it until they felt threatened that the Enquirer relationship would be exposed. Although they broke the rules of the road, the reporters might have made it through the initial disclosure of the business relationship if they simply got paid $10,000 each for “consulting” with The Enquirer, because other such working relationships (with media other than The Enquirer ) have been tolerated and the guidelines do not pair punishment with violations of ethics policy.
But, it did not stop there. According to The Enquirer, the two reporters vouched for the veracity of some material they passed along to the tabloid and the pair shared their “work product,” information gathered while working for The Tribune, on the newspaper’s dime. SinceBecause some of the sources the reporters used for background were not named in the Enquirer story, vouching for material from them would make Vigh and Cantera a part of The Enquirer story.
If what The Enquirer says is true, then Vigh and Cantera crossed over to what most daily newspapers consider the dark side: They worked as sources for a news publication that pays for information. When The Enquirer covers a story such as the O.J. Simpson case or the Smart kidnapping, teams of reporters and photographers come in with checkbooks at the ready. Those teams write out checks in exchange for details. This is called “checkbook journalism” by mainstream newspapers. The National Enquirer tape records everything from negotiations to interviews.
The Enquirer refused to play those tapes for The Tribune until the April 27 Shelledy column was retracted. But the tabloid played portions for The Associated Press and Deseret News, which reported on their content.
Vigh and Cantera should have known better. One indication they may have realized what they did was wrong is that it took them 10 months to disclose the deal to Shelledy. Like all of the people who staff The Salt Lake Tribune, Cantera and Vigh are human beings who make human mistakes. They did excellent work over a long period of time in covering the Smart kidnapping. But they broke the rules and they will pay for it emotionally and financially for a long time. This is not a forgiving business.
Management: The most egregious failure in this entire story is that of the top newsroom manager. An editor-in-chief serves many functions: taskmaster, motivator, strategic thinker, arbiter, big-picture person, idea machine and hall monitor. This is not a business of huge salaries, and temptations are legion. Once top management realized that Vigh and Cantera were out front of the pack on a compelling story that drew reporters from around the globe, red flags should have started to go up. When the pair started appearing as talking heads on cable TV, someone in top management should have seen a need for monitoring. That didn’t happen.
The gap in time: Top management at The Tribune knew about the incident on April 17, according to Shelledy’s statement. The first thing written about it appeared in Shelledy’s column on April 27. Ten days is a long time in the daily newspaper business. And it was 11 days before a news story appeared. The staff learned about this ethical mess when they read the Sunday paper. The newsroom should have been told ahead of time, before the story appeared to the general public.
A news story concerning the early details of the incident should have been in a prominent place in the April 18 or April 19 newspaper. It was not. Newsroom notification is a Shelledy miss that affects the staff only, but the delay in putting news in the paper about the incident is a breach of trust by management that has not adequately been explained to the public.
The punishment: It is essential that inappropriate actions have inevitable and unpleasant consequences. The problem with the implementation of such a code in the newsroom of The Tribune is that the “Rules of the Road” on ethics are squishy. The determination of an ethical violation and any consequences are left to the discretion of the editor in chief. This presents a danger because it relies on the whims of a single individual. If that person fails to heed input from other top management, then poor decisions can be made. At first, Shelledy refused to name in his column the punishments given to Vigh and Cantera. On Monday, he revealed the initial punishment: Vigh and Cantera were placed on a year’s probation, taken off the Smart kidnapping story and forbidden to do any freelance work, and they would be financially responsible for any judgments in the case. Finally, on Tuesday, Shelledy fired them. The initial punishment apparently was based on Shelledy’s understanding of what the two reporters told him on April 17. Shelledy should have probed his reporters’ involvement until he discovered the truth. He was the 800-pound gorilla; Vigh and Cantera were just the monkeys.
A bigger failure: One thread exposed in this situation was the lack of management ability to respond to abnormal situations in the newsroom. The beats that reporters cover and the way they cover them is vital to the life and credibility of a daily newspaper. In some businesses, two employees might be fired for taking company property and the business would go on without a blip. This is not such a business. When staff members found out on Sunday what Vigh and Cantera had done, it disrupted the rhythm of the newsroom. Attention and energy that should have gone to covering politics, health, the courts, communities, gardening, science, the Girl Scouts, education and hundreds of others areas of human interest were spent on anger and hurt by Tribune staffers.
That’s too bad, because our readers deserve better.
Considerable time was spent crafting the passionate ethics statement that appeared in Wednesday’s paper, signed by about 40 staffers. I am not sure that publishing it was wise. It is a pretty high horse to fall from. In their book Doing Ethics in Journalism, authors Jay Black, Bob Steele and Ralph Barney offer the following guiding principles: “Seek the truth and report it as fully as possible; act independently and minimize harm.” Those guidelines alone could have avoided this pain.
An apology: Here is what many in the community have asked for and deserve an apology. Most of the staff of this venerable institution has not had a chance to speak on this issue. On behalf of the staff of The Tribune, many of whom I have talked with this week, I offer this: We are sorry for the damage done by former reporters, because they forgot their ideals. The Smart family already wounded by a terrible crime suffered again through the actions of two people who used to sit next to us. We are sorry.
This week’s stats:
2 Number of readers who complained about size of type in The Tribune
132 Number of readers who want to know why The Tribune had reporters with no ethics
94 Number of readers who wanted The Tribune to keep Jay Shelledy as editor
117 Number of people who are confused by what has happened at The Tribune in the past six days
The Reader Advocate’s phone number is 801-257-8782. Write to the Reader Advocate, The Salt Lake Tribune, P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110. reader.advocate@sltrib.com
