Away We Go
(Feb. 18, 2010) For reasons that will soon be evident, there aren’t going to be any names in this column.
Earlier this week, we received a call from someone we know and respect, and who has had plenty of useful information and insight in the past. This person — Source X — wanted to pass along some information, but wanted to remain off the record. We said OK. And then, almost instantly, we regretted it.
The story Source X told was this:
A candidate in the upcoming local elections, one that Source X could be expected to oppose, had received a fairly large campaign donation. All well and good. But the purported donor — Person Y — was not the actual donor at all, according to Source X. In fact, it was Person Z who provided the money for the donation. Z used Y as a pass-through, Source X alleged, to obscure the origin of the funds and contravene campaign finance laws.
“How do you know this?” we asked Source X.
Source X replied that he knew someone who had seen Person Z’s bank statements, which showed a check from Person Z to Person Y in the same amount as the donation.
This took us aback. When we recovered, we had more questions. Who saw Person Z’s bank statements? How did this person have access to those documents? Theoretically speaking, how could we be expected to replicate this knowledge? Source X declined to elaborate further, and signed off by expressing faith in our investigative abilities.
It seems to us that there’s two general explanations for what had happened in this conversation, neither of them savory. Was Source X telling the truth about the bank statements or not? If not, then the point was to send the Journal off on an errand, in the hope that it might bring back some useful campaign dirt — or, failing that, to momentarily embarrass both the candidate and Person Z with intrusive questions from the press that had no solid grounding in fact.
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12 Comments
Comment / By Curious / Feb. 18, 7:21 a.m.
One names comes to mind on Virginia Bass’s list of contributers
Truman Renner
Comment / By Anon.r.mous / Feb. 18, 10:28 a.m.
Come on Hank, we all know the Journal goes for the soft and easy stories now. Hell, you haven’t even covered how you had a vile blogger on your staff for years!
Comment / By pics or it didn’t happen / Feb. 18, 5:15 p.m.
so, true or not, you know of a crime being committed, right? unless your defense is fingers in your ears singing “la la lalalalala”. maybe hank would care to update us on the shield law, libel, and ethics.
Comment / By Hank Sims / Feb. 18, 5:55 p.m.
Eh?
I know of an accusation of a crime being committed.
As for the rest of it, you’re going to have to be a little more specific.
Comment / By Tom Fredriksen / Feb. 18, 7:12 p.m.
Scheech…..show a strong journalistic ethic and your “base” starts jumping on you Hank. I would compliment what you wrote…but I don’t want to make it worse for you.
Comment / By pics or it didn’t happen / Feb. 18, 11:55 p.m.
isn’t a false accusation a crime?
either someone told you a true story and you have knowledge of a crime, or, someone made a false accusation to you (that you then printed) and thereby committed a lesser crime themselves, both ways you know the culprit.
for the record, i was just going for irony and not “jumping on you”, i think you’re Dandy.
Comment / By unanonymous / Feb. 19, 8:44 a.m.
hopefully, no-bullshit coverage includes not sending the wife of a staff writer into a political rally to make inflammatory remarks, reported under her maiden name to conceal the relationship from the reader and to fabricate a storyline that supports the NCJ political bias.
objectivity would be nice even with names. let the slanderous whisper campaign begin.
Comment / By Rose / Feb. 19, 3:42 p.m.
I’m staying tuned - there’s a number of possibilities here.
Comment / By Dave / Feb. 20, 10:29 a.m.
Hank,
I’ve been in the position you are now in many times over the years. My experience was 99% of those hot leads were bullshit. I can only recall one tip in nearly 20 years of being an editor, that actually proved out.
I was the managing editor of a group of newspapers in Palm Springs (The Post Newspapers)back in 1991 when I got some real dirt on a local politician (are you ready for this?)it was Sonny Bono who was the mayor of Palm Springs at the time. Needless to say, I jumped all over it when I had my facts in line.
I wish you well in the coming months of mud slinging…
Comment / By Ernie’s Place / Feb. 23, 9:28 p.m.
Hank Interesting, but somewhere a crime has been committed. You might have already been sucked in over your head by printing this, unless you don’t know who deepthroat is. The question is; Are you ready to go to jail to protect your alphabet?
Comment / By Hank Sims / Feb. 23, 10:03 p.m.
Dave: I’ll be a little more generous and say that it runs at about 80 percent bullshit, in my experience.
Ernie: I can only wish that they’d haul me off for a nice couple of weeks in the pen. I need a cheap vacation.
Comment / By ncj “reader” / Feb. 25, 1:51 p.m.
I wipe my ass on this rag.