Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Albom inquiry under fire

Critics say probe downplayed lifting, changing quotes from other publications.

By Ron French and David Shepardson / The Detroit News

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Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom lifted quotes from other publications without attribution and in some stories quotes appeared to be slightly changed from how they appeared elsewhere, according to a Free Press investigation of their embattled star writer.

Now the investigation itself is under fire, as several reporters who worked on the review say editors emphasized elements that supported Albom rather than criticized him.

The issue matters to more than those who work in the downtown Detroit office that houses both The Detroit News and the Free Press. At a time when public trust in the media is low, credibility is a treasured commodity.

Free Press investigative reporter David Zeman said Monday he and other reporters who conducted the five-week investigation were disappointed that editors chose to emphasize "what we didn't find, instead of what we did find."

What the reporting team found was a number of cases in which Albom used quotes from other publications without telling readers, making it seem as if he had gathered the quotes himself. Such a practice violates the ethics policy of the Free Press, posted on the paper's Web site.

Instead of leading with the ethics violations, the headline and lead of the Monday story in the Free Press emphasized that no pattern of deception had been found.

"There's a sports metaphor for this -- it's called pulling a punch," said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader for The Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.

"From what you describe to me, it sounds as if their loyalties were not with the reader, but with their own."

Free Press Publisher and Editor Carole Leigh Hutton denied in an interview that she had sought to water down the story. She said the lead and headline were changed to be more "newsy."

"We were just trying to be more clear and more newsy. God knows if we were about taking care of Mitch, there wouldn't have been any investigative report."

At a contentious staff meeting Monday at the Free Press, an emotional Hutton said editors shoulder some of the blame for columnists not knowing the paper's policies on attribution.

She said the paper plans to rewrite part of its ethics policy and institute a procedure where staffers will be required to tell a top editor of any questions from readers of alleged violations of the ethics policy.

A reporter at USA TODAY was fired recently for lifting quotes from the Indianapolis Star without attributing those quotes to the other publication.

Such a practice also violates the ethics policy of The News. "Lifting quotes without attribution from another publication or from a broadcast report would be a violation of our ethics policy -- for reporters and for columnists," said Mark Silverman, publisher and editor of The Detroit News.

Albom is a multimedia star, with two best-selling books, movie deals, a popular radio show and a regular spot on ESPN. He's won numerous national awards for his columns and sports stories in the Free Press, and is among the best-known journalists in Detroit.

Albom came under fire in April, when he wrote a column describing two former Michigan State basketball players attending a Final Four game. Neither player attended the game. Albom had written the story before the game, assuming the players would attend after he interviewed both.

The Free Press then assigned several investigative reporters to dig into more than 600 past columns written by Albom, checking for previous ethical breaches from their star columnist.

While the investigation uncovered no other instances in which Albom wrote about events that didn't happen, it did find that Albom had on occasion lifted quotes from other publications, including The Detroit News.

"The report documents pretty clearly the different standards between news and sports, and the different standards between sports reporting and sports column-writing. The question I have is, are we willing as journalists to let that gap in standards exist, or do we want to tighten things up a bit?" Poynter's McBride said.

The investigation also uncovered instances when Albom lifted quotes from other publications and apparently changed them, either intentionally or accidentally. In several instances, the quotes as appearing in Albom's stories "seemed to be livelier," the Free Press reported.

While journalists argue about the proper levels of attribution in stories, there is no debate over changing quotes, McBride said. "That was one of the most troubling things about the report," she said. "What's in between the quote marks is sacred. If you need to make it more lively, you paraphrase it."

Asked about the allegation reported in the story that Albom had livened up quotes, Hutton said she believes the changed quotes were merely "a matter of sloppiness."

Albom said in a statement Monday, "I am glad that this long investigation has validated my hard work and my reputation." In the Free Press story, he defended his practice of using quotes without attribution, saying Free Press editors "approved using quotes without attribution, which his sports editor acknowledged," the Free Press said.

Jerry Ceppos, corporate vice president for news for Knight-Ridder newspapers, which owns the Free Press, helped edit the Albom investigation story, a sign of how sensitive the story was to the newspaper and the company.

Zeman was critical of aspects of the editing of the story. Another Free Press reporter involved in the project, Jennifer Dixon, said Zeman's concerns were typical of those of other reporters on the team. But Zeman said Hutton and Managing Editor Thom Fladung did not ask reporters to cut anything from the story.

"They never quibbled about any passages that included them, including passages that they weren't crazy about," Zeman said.

"I don't think anyone disagrees that our ethics policy requires attribution on outside quotes. Where there.is disagreement is whether that policy applies to columnists," Zeman said.

That won't be question in the future. Hutton said the Free Press planned a small revision of its ethics policy to clarify its procedures on citing the source of information -- specifically if a reporter or columnist was using a quote that appeared in another publication. "We're going to add a couple of lines. I think it's a really clear policy."

You can reach Ron French at rfrench@detnews.com.