Memory loss

GREENSBORO, NC -- Former New & Record editor John Robinson bemoans the N&R's loss of institutional memory. It seems the paper has a short term memory problem too.

From a letter to the editor today:

The complete list of candidates who have filed to run for mayor of Greensboro, from the Guilford County Board of Elections:

Horrible, horrible; just pathetically and absolutelty the worst

GREENSBORO, NC -- Yesterday, the News & Record reported of a robbery in which a gaming console was stolen at gun point:

"Armed men tried and failed to rob two people... The suspects ran from the scene without taking any property." (Emphasis added.)

That story is still online.

It's bad enough the News & Record turned a press release from the police advising of a "robbery from person" into a fiction completely contrary to the facts, but today, when the police issued another press release about that crime, consistent with their first but adding new suspect information, the News & Record "reported" it again, this time writing that one of the suspects pulled a gun and took the gaming console:

"[O]ne of the two men pulled a handgun, took the system and the two alleged suspects ran off."  (Emphasis added.)

So now, at the illustrious News & Record, one can simultaneously find two accounts of the same crime, one where suspects fled without taking any property and one where property was taken. Both contradict each other, only one is accurate, the other remains uncorrected and yet both are online together.

It Matters

For all the thought and effort that various people and institutions put into advancing Greensboro, I am firmly convinced we will be forever held back from making the kind of progress we could as long as we are burdened by the dung heap that is the News & Record.

How can we as a community ever properly address our shortcomings and understand our strengths if our primary "news" outlet is a sloppy and indifferent pustule of perpetual misinformation and ignorance undemanding of itself and deceiving us about who we are and what's going on?

Day after day, the News & Record offers up mistake after mistake and each reveals a troubling fact: Our daily newspaper is not careful, not a checker of facts, rarely a source of insight or enterprising inquisitiveness* and not even any good at the simple task of regurgitating press releases.

Greensboro deserves better.



* This makes the situation even worse—that there are one or two reporters there who manage, against what must be monumental institutional momentum to the contrary, to occasionally deliver some quality reporting. I feel as bad for them about the burden of the News & Record's institutional incompetence as I do for my city.

Making it up: Another day, another News & Record fail

GREENSBORO, NC -- It's pretty bad when your local newspaper cannot even accurately regurgitate information from a press release.

The News & Record "reports":

"Armed men tried and failed to rob two people who arranged on Craigslist to sell a gaming system, according to a police news release." 

and:

 "The suspects ran from the scene without taking any property, police said."

The police did not say that. The robbers did not fail. Exactly the opposite. The suspects did not flee the scene without taking any property. They took property. That's what made it a robbery and thus the headline on the police press release: "Robbery from person."

All of this was clear in the police press release. It only became confused when the News & Record put their hands on it. From the police press release (emphasis added):

"Officers discovered two victims in the parking lot who stated that they had been robbed at gunpoint during the sale of a PlayStation 4 that had been arranged on Craigslist. No one was injured and no other items were taken."

I wonder what the News & Record sees as their mission and if they think they are doing a good job at whatever that is.

News & Record's huge error on drunk driving stats

GREENSBORO, NC -- There is a certain type of reporting error that astounds me, I call it an affront to common knowledge, where an assertion goes unchecked even though, on its face, it seems to violate common sense. It is the kind of thing a reporter or editor with general curiosity and some basic knowledge of the world would be compelled to stop and double check.

Today at the News & Record:

"In the United States, a drunken driver causes someone to die every 52 seconds." 

Reporter Danielle Battaglia doesn't cite a source for that tidbit but, on its face, it sounds hard to believe.

Just some quick math challenges the possibility this is true: If there is a drunk driving fatality every 52 seconds, then that's 69 drunk driving deaths every hour; 1,661 a day; 11,630 per week; and 606,000 per year. 

And here is where a lack of general knowledge comes in: That is a huge number of deaths per year for any single cause. It should jump out to a professional reporter and her professional editors as extremely unlikely. 

A quick search of "leading causes of death" would show that such a number would make drunk driving fatalities the leading cause of death in the United States, ahead of the roughly 598,000 per year from heart disease, the 577,000 from cancer and the third place 143,000 from lung disease. (source: Centers for Disease Control)

The fact is, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "In 2011, 9,878 people were killed in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes." That's far from insignificant, but it is nowhere near the hysterical one every 52 seconds the News & Record reported. It is about one every hour to give you a sense of just how far off the N&R is.  

And a big thumbs down to WGHP MyFox8 who copied and pasted this error to their website from the News & Record without correction.

For Pete's sake

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record mocks congressional candidate Laura Fjeld today "for thinking she could carry the primary victory into the general election in a district that has been a Republican stronghold for decades."

A Republican stronghold for decades?

Sigh...

No.

If the staff at the News & Record are going to belittle someone, they might want to make sure they aren't making fools of themselves in the process.

The district in which Fjeld ran was newly drawn in 2012.

As of 2012

Prior to that, it included much of the Democratic leaning 13th district, held by Democrat Brad Miller for a decade.

Through 2011

Fjeld was not running in a district that has been a "Republican stronghold for decades." It is a newly drawn district in existence for only two years and which actually has more registered Democrats than Republicans.

Fjeld was not crazy for thinking she had a shot. On the other hand, what does it tell us about those on the political beat at the News & Record that they are so ignorant of their home turf?

News & Record contradicts itself

GREENSBORO, NC -- This is why reporters should not make assertions without attribution.

From Danielle Battaglia in the News & Record today: "Williams walked off the property only to return to the hospital's entrance"

Yesterday, Sarah Newell Williamson wrote in the N&R: "He [Williams] got within 150 yards of the entrance, on hospital property."

Which is it? If two sources are contradicting each other, that's one thing; but without attribution, the News & Record is contradicting itself. These are the reporters' assertions, the reporters are claiming responsibility for their veracity and one of them must be wrong.

2014 Reckless Reporting of the Year Award

GREENSBORO, NC -- The long knives are out at the News & Record for those currently in control of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum (ICRCM), and it's not pretty. It's embarrassing. Reckless, actually.

On the heels of last week's political hit piece based solely on anonymous sources taking aim at the controlling majority of the ICRM board, reporter Margaret Moffett launches another unfounded salvo so preposterous it seems as if it should be beneath even the very low standards of the very terrible News & Record.

Let's break it down (it won't take much). Moffett begins with:

"The sit-in museum's chief financial officer and interim leader may be violating North Carolina law by representing himself as a certified public accountant."

Says who? Nobody. Although Moffett has demonstrated her willingness to print unfounded assertions* in the past, this one isn't just unfounded, it's unattributed—to anybody. So it is Moffett's accusation. Can she make her case?

For all the rolling around Moffett does in the law and regulations, it all is predicated on one criterion. It's what we programmers recognize as a conditional statement: If a is true, then b; Moffett writes it like this:

"[A] CPA licensed in another state who moves to North Carolina to practice accounting 'must obtain a certificate of qualification from the board prior to using the CPA title in any way in this state,' according to the law."

What is the condition? What is the if that must be true for the law to apply? "WHO MOVES TO NORTH CAROLINA." If a person does not move to North Carolina, the laws Moffett says Swaine may be violating do not apply.

So has Swaine moved to North Carolina? Has he satisfied the condition that would make these laws apply? No. According to whom? According to Moffett herself, who writes:

"Swaine, who commutes to Greensboro from his home in Roanoke, Va., has held a CPA license in Virginia since 1999."

Her conditional fails. MOVED TO NORTH CAROLINA does not equal true. So all that stuff about what is required of a CPA who moves to North Carolina—those laws Moffett says Swaine "may be violating"—do not apply.

Additionally, Moffett cites as examples of Swaine "representing himself as a CPA" in North Carolina posts to Twitter and Linkdin. That's absurd. Such posts are no more "in North Carolina" than they are in Texas or Sri Lanka.

Moffett doesn't let logic and the facts get in her way though. With no regard for whether or not the law even applies in Swaine's case she doesn't hesitate to write that he "may" be breaking the law. Maybe—maybe he's double parked—but Moffett offers nothing to back up her suggestion that Swaine may be breaking the laws pertaining to CPAs. This is the kind of untenable character assassination that has had bloggers kicked off of Greensboro 101. It is shocking to find it in the "professional" media.

Whatever one's opinion on the best policy for the ICRCM, and there are advantages and disadvantages to the options on the table, we cannot allow slander to influence our decision making. Advocacy journalism has its place, but to do it, one must get her facts straight and think.

This is not journalism, it is a horrible and unconscionable smear piece. Greensboro deserves better.


* Moffett is Margaret Banks in the post at this link.

Paper tigers

GREENSBORO, NC -- From the News & Record's digital editor on the refusal of the Greensboro Police Department to make public video footage captured by officer worn body cameras:

"We'll continue to make the requests, and to fight for the information any way we can." 

Two points:

First, I have repeatedly asked the City of Greensboro for copies of the News & Record's requests for these videos and the city's denials. There are none. The News & Record makes these requests verbally and the city, therefor replies verbally. This matters because, without a documented record, it is harder for those of us interested in affecting public policy on this matter to participate. Policy makers, the ACLU or other interested groups or individuals do not have at their disposal a record of the requests and denials they could use to document the circumstances and nature of the City's refusals. The News & Record, ironically, is not contributing to the public record of the City's actions.

Second, it is simply untrue that the News & Record is continuing to "fight for the information any way we can." That sounds good and we might wish it were so, but it's empty rhetoric. The most forceful and definitive means by which the N&R could "fight" for this information would be to sue for it. Under North Carolina law, people or entities denied access to what they believe are public records can take it to court. The News & Record has not done that. They should if they think these videos are public record, but they haven't; so they are clearly not fighting for the videos any way they can. They are, quite contrary to their claims, confining their efforts to the mildest and least effective means: begging and pleading.

News & Record gets crucial sitcom lawsuit fact wrong

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record is reporting that the City of Greensboro is getting sued for a loan it approved then "pulled." The city council approved loan offer was made to Black Network Television (BNT) to help finance their production of a television sitcom titled Whatcha Cookin'. Reporter Joe Gamm writes:

"BNT owners Michael and Ramona Woods sued the city, seeking more than $50 million in connection with a loan the city had approved for the sitcom but then pulled." [Emphasis added.]

That is contrary to the facts, and the News & Record, with a reputation for repeating the assertions of sources without checking them against the available record, gets another crucial point wrong.

The Greensboro City Council, in June of 2013, approved a $300,000 low interest loan to BNT with the condition that the loan be collaterized by a lien on the BNT's owners' house. That condition stipulated that the city of Greensboro was to be in no worse position than second in the line of creditors for liens on the house. It was subsequently discovered that there were two liens, a mortgage and a home equity line of credit, on the owners' house already. That would have put the city third in line, a condition not in conformity with the agreement passed by council.

In July of 2013, council considered (p. 46) revising the terms of the loan so that the city would accept third position. Council rejected that change, with a majority voting to deny it. That left standing the original agreement. Indeed, in responding to a letter from BNT's attorney claiming the city reneged on its loan offer, the city attorney, on October 31, 2013, reiterated that the loan was still available. He wrote:

"If anything, the City and your clients could proceed under the original terms as was mentioned during the meeting. The original terms are still available."

The News & Record is wrong, the city did not "pull" the loan. It declined to modify the original terms of the loan offer, but left it standing.

UPDATE: Owen Covington at The Triad Business Journal makes the same mistake. These reporters need to review the video record of the July, 2013 Greensboro City Council meeting. The council voted to deny modifications to the original loan agreement, they did not rescind the original loan offer.

Summer reruns: Prepare for stories of mobs and riots

GREENSBORO, NC -- School is out, and around here we know what that means. It's time for local TV stations to rev up their scare machines and crank out wildly distorted fear mongering stories of marauding teenagers.

Cub "reporters," recently graduated with degrees in Personal Branding and minors in Hair and Makeup for the Camera, will find some downtown fight or incident of disorder and breathlessly exaggerate it beyond any resemblance to the facts. Dutiful anchors will read what's on the teleprompter, revealing the perfect amount of panic from behind their facades of sage concern while failing to recognize the mendacity of the words they are burping forth. If we're lucky, local politicians may even seize upon the fakery, deny the clear protestations of the police that the media have it wrong, and fan the flames to pursue some public policy for which they would otherwise have no support.

The bar is set pretty low, though, so it will be tough to beat previous years' winners.

WFMY, 2011: A Month of Violent Flash Mobs

In the summer of 2011, WFMY took a single assault and an overturned flowerpot and turned them into an entire month of "police [battling] large flash-mob beatings and vandalism." This whopper, refuted by police, lead the City of Greensboro to stop communicating with WFMY and to demand a meeting with station management to express their displeasure with WFMY "creating storylines." The story fanned all sorts of racist reaction to the detriment of our community.

WFMY never publicly corrected their story or apologized..

WGHP, 2013: 400-Teen Street Brawl

In the summer of 2013, WGHP reported a "massive brawl" downtown involving "400 teens." They even showed surveillance camera video of what they said was the fight. It never happened though, and the video, while showing crowds of people, some running and agitated, did not show a single punch, kick or any people fighting—much less 400 people—but WGHP played the video over and over, instructing viewers to see in the grainy and out of focus footage something that did not exist. This whopper, picked up by the Drudge Report and other media across the country, was also refuted by police, who described, and records document, a series of small and unrelated fights over a seven-hour period on a Saturday night, resulting in eleven arrests. Police accounts did not stop then-mayor and downtown resident Robbie Perkins from repeating the falsehood in an effort to rally support for a downtown youth curfew. The story also inspired  racist reactions to the detriment of our community.

Like WFMY before them, WGHP never publicly corrected their story or apologized (nor did Perkins who subsequently was voted out of office).

Pro-Berger Jr. PAC behind attack ads

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record reports that a political action committee has launched attack ads against Republicans running for the retiring Howard Coble's seat in congress. The N&R reports of a mailer attacking Mark Walker and an online video ad attacking Bruce Voncannon.

Although such political action committees (are supposed to) operate independently of candidates, this particular pac, the ironically named Keep Conservatives United, recently conducted a poll in support of candidate Phil Berger, Jr. That the ads target Walker and Voncannon may be an indication of whom the poll found to be the front runners.

Another one gets by the News & Record

GREENSBORO, NC - On March 9, 2014, the News & Record published a letter to the editor in support of Congressional candidate Zack Matheny. Although the author was identified merely as Nick Wilkinson from Greensboro, the fact is Wilkinson is a paid consultant to the Matheny campaign. Wilkinson received over $2,300 from Matheny in the weeks prior to the publication of his letter in the News & Record.

From time to time, the News & Record will append information to a letter if it further explains the author's relationship to the issues or parties being discussed. This was certainly a circumstance where such an explanation was warranted. Wilkinson's position as a Matheny campaign consultant should have been revealed.

Socially connected and wrong

GREENSBORO, NC -- WFMY has recently taken to promoting themselves as "the source for the socially connected." The source for what, they don't say, but if I had to guess, it would be error-prone information.

It's one thing if the station wants to carve out a nice little sugary space of vapid small talk for themselves—car dealerships seem to think it's the perfect demographic—but please, then, stay away from stories that might involve the conveyance of actual facts. You're not the ones to tell us.

On their website today, WFMY reports of yesterday's celebration of Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene:

"On Saturday, people came out to celebrate General Greene's 271st birthday at Guilford Courthouse National Battlefield in Greensboro.  It's the same sight [sic] where Greene earned his victory over the British."

Greene did not win the battle. The British won and took the courthouse. In fact, Greene is perhaps the war's most celebrated loser. That's one of the things that made this battle, and Greene as a military tactician, so remarkable. Outnumbered and poorly equipped, Greene had his Southern army and the Virginia Regulars who joined him in defending the Guilford Courthouse take defensive positions in wooded areas where the usual advantage of British General Charles Cornwallis' tight and disciplined formations was diminished. The British ended up paying a high price in casualties for their victory.

With heavy losses and dwindling supplies, the British were in no condition to continue to fight so far from their supply lines. Three days after the battle, Cornwallis withdrew his troops to Wilmington.

I tried emailing the WFMY news desk about the error, but the message bounced as that mailbox is full.

News & Record misses mark on reportedly fake council representaive emails

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record misrepresented a key portion of the emails sent by someone Greensboro City Council person Zack Matheny says was impersonating him. It reported:

"The emails questioned the complexes’ policy on renting to people with criminal records and related the story of a 29-year-old man who was denied an apartment based on his record."

The email I obtained did not purport the age of the person supposedly denied access to rental housing, instead, it said that the person made "$29k per year." [The News & Record confirms the error and says they are correcting the story.]

More importantly, though, the supposed person with the supposed criminal record was represented, in the emails, but not in the N&R story, as one of Matheny's colleagues on City Council. This is how it read in the email:

"I was talking to one of my colleagues on the council and he was educating me that your complex would not accept him because he has a criminal background."

That matters because it reveals possible political motives: to sow suspicion of Matheny with his colleges or to besmirch another sitting council person, possibly both.

Monitoring the N&R's campaign coverage

Greensboro, NC -- I've experienced it first hand. Many, many years ago, when I ran for mayor, the N&R wrote an article about the incumbent deciding to run for reelection. When I subsequently announced my candidacy at a meeting of the Northeast Neighborhood Association with the News & Record's political reporter in attendance, there was nothing—not a single word—written about my declaration in the News & Record.

Today, the song remains the same. Candidate for mayor George Hartzman is running into the same slanted B.S. in an editorial at the News & Record that mentions the two already well-known candidates for mayor and ignores the lesser known Hartzman.

It is my opinion that our city suffers greatly from a lack of attention to new blood. Just how much does the N&R contribute to that?

I will be conducting an ongoing word study of the News & Record's news and editorial coverage of the Greensboro city council and mayoral race where I will report, from time to time, the number of times each candidate receives mention by the News & Record.

Stay tuned for the first analysis.

I missed something important

GREENSBORO, NC -- Earlier this week, I wrote a post faulting some unsubstantiated and incorrect information in a report News & Record reporter Joe Gamm wrote about the fights that occurred downtown last weekend.

I missed something important though. In a sea of hyperbole and what appears more and more to be fabricated stories of hundreds of teens brawling downtown—as reported by WGHP and WFMY (and unchallenged by Mayor Robbie Perkins)—Gamm got the central fact of the size and scope of the fights correct. Gamm did not hyperventilate the story beyond or in contradiction to available evidence and into the type of falsehoods reported by WGHP and WFMY of hundreds of teens fighting in a massive brawl. Gamm correctly reported, "a series of small fights" for which 11 people were arrested.

In my focus on the mile-wide holes in the local media reports of the events (and Gamm's quick pass at previous downtown violence), I missed Gamm's simple but exceptional oasis of accuracy amid the sea of panicked untruths. He got the core facts right. As remarkable as it might seem, he deserves credit for that.

[This post originally had "Gamm did hyperventilate..." That is not what I mean to write. It has been corrected: "Gamm did not hyperventilate..."]

City of Greensboro hoodwinks WFMY: 451 - 4 = 459

GREENSBORO, NC -- Poor WFMY, will they ever learn? The job of journalists/former cheerleaders is not to simply regurgitate the pronouncements of authorities. Even if they don't get how detrimental that is to a democracy — to present self-interested unchecked assertions of the government as having the stamp of approval of the "journalist"— you'd think the embarrassment factor would be enough to compel them not to be tools.

Regarding the proposed City of Greensboro budget, WFMY's Carrie Hodgin reported this:

"City Manager, Denise Turner Routh [sic], presented her first [sic] budget to City Council members Tuesday night. The proposed budget is $459 million. It comes with $4.3 million in cuts across the board."

Actually, there are some cuts and some increases and the proposed budget is, in empirical documented reality, nearly $8 million MORE than last year.

City of Greensboro 2012-13 adopted budget

The proposed $459 million budget does not represent a cut of $4.3 million, it reflects an INCREASE of nearly $8 million

I don't know what reason the City of Greensboro would have for misrepresenting the facts to the people of Greensboro but just as curious is why WFMY didn't vet the information for themselves before reporting it as fact.

Give me a D!

Give me a U!

Give me a P!

Give me an E.!

Give me an S!

(Hat tip: George Hartzman)

Fact check: Greensboro Guardian's claims of Guilford County schools

GREENSBORO, NC -- Charles Davenport, Jr. at the Greensboro Guardian:

"In 2009, according to NAEP results, only 32% of the state’s fourth graders were proficient in reading. Among blacks, the figure was 14%. (These are statewide stats, but GCS [Guilford County Schools] results are approximately the same.) Only 29% of eighth-graders were proficient readers (and 12% of blacks)." 

Davenport provides no link to his source. You'd think the editor of an online publication would have that minimal skill—maybe he doesn't want us taking a closer look. But let's anyway.

According to End of Grade (EOG) test results (p. 8) for 2012, 66.9 percent of fourth grade students were proficient in reading as were 69 percent of eight graders in Guilford County Schools.

(Hat tip: Jeff Martin)

Yes!Weekly: Emails appear to contradict Council representative, city leadership

GREENSBORO, NC -- Yes!Weekly has made available some of the emails that were the foundation for their story Under surveillance which led to a  failed attempt by the City of Greensboro to get an injunction to stop publication of that story and a subsequent attempt to justify that action in an opinion piece co-authored by the City's manager, police chief and attorney.

Yes!'s Eric Ginsberg writes:

"Read the files on Abuzuaiter here, including the e-mails Abuzuaiter claimed she did not send. The councilwoman denied all correspondence with Detective Rob Finch, and also said she never communicated with Capt. John Wolfe about the Beloved Community Center or Latin Kings."

Ginsberg also says the emails call into question whether the city's explanation of its attempts to stop the publication of the article were for the reasons they gave to the public or if the attempt at an injunction was to protect the councilwoman.

But, he said so. News & Record fails to fact check

GREENSBORO, NC -- In touting a new regional DNA database in which the Greensboro Police Department is participating, the News & Record quotes the president of the private contractor:

DNA:SI President Richard Clark said agencies using the system see "a 10 to 15, 20 percent decrease in crime in the first year."

Sounds great. Is it true? The reporter doesn't cite any facts, but what the heck, the guy says so, right?