A newspaper can never afford a lapse in fairness or completeness. These days, that’s especially true when it comes to coverage of Muslim-Americans.
With that in mind, it’s worth taking a closer look at the Globe’s Sept. 14 account of three men detained in Florida. The front page story recounted the ordeal of three traveling medical students – US citizens of Middle Eastern and Central Asian heritage – whose breakfast conversation at a Shoney’s restaurant in Georgia made another patron suspicious.
Eunice Stone listened as the men, one wearing a Muslim cap, chatted at a nearby table. She thought she heard them joking about 9/11 and plotting to bring down Miami, so she called the State Patrol. The students, detained a day later, explained they were talking about bringing a car down to Miami from their home in Chicago, to drive while they completed their clinical rotation at a South Miami hospital.
They denied plotting violence or joking about 9/11. They also denied authorities’ later suggestion that they spiced up their conversation for Stone’s benefit once they realized she was eavesdropping – making them sick tricksters, if not terrorists.
Unfortunately, Globe readers, unlike readers at other major papers, didn’t learn about this final denial and were left with the undisputed impression that the men did, indeed, perpetuate a hoax, or at least a bad joke, at Stone’s – and, ultimately, the public’s – expense. The scare shut down a major Florida highway.
The gist of the Globe’s account was summarized in one unsourced paragraph: ”Under questioning, the men said they had made their comments because they felt that Stone was unnecessarily paying attention to them because of their ethnicity.” Indeed, it was widely reported, in The Miami Herald and elsewhere, that the men made off-color remarks when they realized that Stone was eavesdropping. Those accounts were attributed to authorities.
The primary flaw in the Globe’s account was its failure to include the students’ denials, which were available to the Globe via the Associated Press by 8:15 Friday night, well before deadline.
Why didn’t the denials appear in the Globe’s story? The short answer is, it was an oversight. To wit:
By the time the students were free to talk to journalists, the Globe’s reporter on the scene, Glen Johnson, was frantically filing his story via a gas station phone. With no access to television or fresh news wires, he was unaware of the denials. Like many reporters on the road, he relied on his editors for updating.
But back in Boston, editors failed to spot the denial on the wires and write that very relevant development into the story. National editor Kenneth Cooper acknowledges the lapse.
Without denials, not only was the Globe account one-sided, so was its headline: ”Apparent bomb hoax closes highway.”
It was that headline that most irritated longtime reader Bob Wolf, a Boston consultant who, drawing on information from other news sources, challenged the idea that there was an ”apparent hoax.”
”On public safety issues, newspapers need to play a role in making us aware. But if there are signs of hysteria, the Globe has to take some responsibilty for helping moderate that,” he said. ”We can’t give in to stereotypes … of the kind that led to the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II.”
Another reader, Jacob Walker of Boston, was ”surprised” that the Globe would assert without attribution that the men had admitted making comments in response to Stone eavesdropping. That, he said, is ”talk radio-ish, not Globe-like.”
It is, of course, possible the medical students did change their story.It’s hard to know exactly what was, and wasn’t, said at the Shoney’s breakfast table. Georgia authorities are still investigating the possibility of a hoax.
To the Globe’s credit, its account did include comments from the students’ relatives expressing doubt about Stone’s allegations. And the paper did set the record straight a day later by publishing the denials – on page A18. But those efforts don’t offset the omission of the students’ denial in the initial front page story. Their words were essential for a fair portrayal of confusing events.
The shortcomings of the Sept. 14 story stand as a reminder that, in the wake of 9/11, the Globe must be doubly attentive on stories involving citizens whose appearance, ethnicity, or beliefs put their civil liberties at risk.
Post Script: Larkin Community Hospital in South Miami, where the men were to have trained, has withdrawn the invitation. The three men hope to be placed at other hospitals.
