WFMY news director: Sources? You don't need no stinking sources.

GREENSBORO, NC -- Last February, WFMY News2 faked some "news." A couple of weeks later, the news director departed. Since September, WFMY has had a new news director. He has some views about the responsibilities of his news organization that I think may not fit well with Greensboro. They suggest a lack of appreciation for the recent history of local media failures and the way we hold our media accountable here.

Last week, WFMY reporter Meghan Packer wrote this single sentence paragraph in a story about the U.S. Figure Skating Championship:

The event is projected to bring it [sic] at least $20 million.

Projected by whom and by what method? I wondered. I wrote to Packer and asked:

What is the source for that claim and did you, as a reporter, check it out? Did you see if it came from any study, report or empirical source you could examine?

Meghan never replied, but a few days later, I received a reply from the new news director, Bob Clinkingbeard, that said:

That figure comes from a series of interviews as well as a comparison of an economic impact study from Spokane, Washington, which hosted the event last year.

I replied:

Who made the comparison of the economic impact study from Spokane you say was made? Can you tell me where I can find a copy of that study? And finally, whom did you interview that cited a $20 million impact?

Here is where it gets funny, in a sad way. Clinkingbeard wrote back with:

...I will have to respectfully decline to answer.  Finding previous figures, comparisons, impact studies, etc all came from our journalists digging for, calling on and uncovering factual information. Please understand that I am not in the habit of sharing our sources and techniques of uncovering these facts with any other journalistic entity.  I’m sure you understand the competitive nature of the industry. 

What? That's hilarious. Identifying sources is precisely what good journalists do. It's basic. It's journalism 101 -- click and scroll to "Attribution & Sourcing" where the list includes: "The more specific we can be in describing the source in the story, the better." Quite the opposite of Clinkingbeard's view.

I am flattered that Clinkingbeard thinks of me as a 'journalistic entity" -- but I was not asking him for some trade secret. I was asking him to provide the kind of substantiation that should have been in the story to begin with; the kind of information that any good news organization would have eagerly provided subsequently if initially overlooked.

Unable to identify a source, here's how Clinkingbeard might have handled it:

It was not appropriate to include that kind of assertion without attributing it to a source. Without attribution, it should not have been included in the story. Doing so was below the standards we strive for here at WFMY News2 and I've used it as a teaching moment, asking our reporters to learn from it and do better in the future; to deliver the higher level of professionalism our audience deserves and to which we are committed.

Bad reporting, exemplified by reporters using the passive voice to sneak unattributed, unverifiable assertions into public consciousness is a sore spot in Greensboro and an animating force for our local blogging community. Clinkingbeard may continue to excuse mediocrity or he could come to understand why it gets called out in Greensboro and raise the bar at WFMY. I hope it's the latter.