Breaking Rank (61 page)

But neither was it, as the Seattle
Times
suggested, the
Crime of the Century! Bigger than O. J.! Bigger than Rodney King! Bigger than Pee-wee Herman!
Not only that, to hear the
Times
tell it, the theft was just the tip of the iceberg. There had to be, lurking below the calm surface of our increasingly progressive, community-oriented PD, a churning ocean of venal and mortal sins. And, by God, their ace investigative reporters would fish until they reeled those sins to the surface.

Thus began a transparent, clumsy hatchet job—on me. I witnessed
sole-source reporting, references to ancient history, the invention of nonexistent “patterns” of police misconduct, and yes: a reliance on the proverbial “disgruntled employee”—including individuals I'd disciplined, refused to promote, or fired. A couple of ace investigative reporters from the
Times
gave voice to cops who were too lazy, too incompetent, too bigoted, or too dishonest to warrant promotion, or retention. Now, they were elevated to “informed sources.” And, given my own press philosophy and policy, utterly free to talk to reporters. Maybe my chief of staff had been right?

For months, cops and ex-cops who were unhappy with my policies dished and dissed: I cared more about community policing than catching crooks; I delegated too much; I hired an “outsider”—a
female!
a
civilian!—
to run the Community Policing Bureau;
*
I made “affirmative action” appointments, passing over more deserving white male candidates; I was aloof; I spent too much time in the community; I didn't know what the hell was going on in the department; I, too, was an
outsider.

This indictment, presumably
symptomatic
of why none of us at the top had learned about the Sonny Davis theft, was offered up, according to the
Times,
“by more than a dozen” sources, most of them tapped over and over. Yet, the steady drip-drip-drip, splash-splash-splash of “revelations” took its toll.

The
Times
was in full feeding frenzy, and I couldn't figure it out. Why were they not even
trying
to be “fair and balanced”? Why did it feel so—so
personal
?

Because it
was
personal, according to an “informed source,” a mole deep within the bowels of the newspaper. The
Times
had made a decision to target the police and was deliberately “beating up” SPD, me in particular.

The newspaper had just announced it was moving from an afternoon to
a morning paper. That signified nothing less than mortal combat with the city's existing morning paper, the
Seattle Times
, also known as the
PI.
No informed observer believed the Puget Sound area could or would support two morning papers. (The two newspapers have been warring in the courts for several years now, the
Times
striking first but losing a recent case to the
PI
—which is hanging on by a thread.)

It's funny: in a more innocent day I would have pooh-poohed the mole's “scoop,” chalked it up to a conspiracy-happy theorist . . . or one of the paper's own disgruntled employees. But I accepted its veracity the second I heard it. It made perfect sense: I'd been caught in the crosshairs of a newspaper shooting war.

But was it true? It didn't matter. Any casual misgivings I'd had about the basic truthfulness or fairness of reporters had ripened into a mordant distrust of “the media.”

Within a couple of months, with some genuine as well as cosmetic PD reforms in place, the whole thing blew over. I regained my emotional resilience (it's hard not to buy in to the characterizations when you're constantly referred to in the press as “beleaguered” or “embattled”) and reclaimed my sense of humor. But the experience left me deeply concerned about the effects of “campaign journalism.” And not just on policing.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that the “believability” of the daily newspaper has dropped from 80 percent in 1985 to 59 percent in 2002. The Project for Excellence in Journalism reported in 2004 that the press's “credibility crisis” is part of a “cultural divide.” “Journalists think they are working in the public interest. The public thinks they sensationalize and report articles to make money . . . This sense of a lack of professionalism and sensationalizing to sell papers was clearly seen following the scandal in 2003 at the
New York Times
, particularly the news that the reporter Jayson Blair had engaged in extensive fabrication. But one of the saddest revelations to come from the scandal was that many people thought such unethical conduct was typical of newspapers.”

The Pew survey in 2003 revealed that 22 percent of Americans believe
that Blair-level dishonesty happens “frequently,” while 36 percent believe it happens “occasionally.” And 58 percent think journalists do not care about complaints of inaccurate reporting. I'm surprised the figure is that low.

I see some obvious parallels between policing and reporting. Cops work under constant pressure to meet the traditional expectations of their bosses: investigate crimes, develop snitches, make arrests, write reports, stick around until the job's done. Reporters work under similar stress, ever on the lookout for newsworthy stories, being assigned stories, cultivating their own sources of information, writing their copy daily, getting it in on time—often under pressures that demand double (or, occasionally, triple) shifts. Most cops, like most reporters, want to get ahead. To do so they must please their bosses. In order to do that, some of them, like Herm Wiggins and Jayson Blair, resort to “shortcuts,” a euphemism for cheating and lying.

The parallels at the executive and management levels of the two institutions are also striking. Whether you're a police chief or an executive editor of a newspaper, you want your people to “produce.” You demand timeliness and top quality. Your push for results might be interpreted by the rank and file as authoritarian, top-down management. When you observe and reward the kind of work you want done you can be accused of “favoritism.” If you believe in cultural diversity, in giving everyone an equal shot at plum assignments, you may be accused of failing to see the failings of women or people of color.

I liked Howell Raines's book on fly-fishing, but from what I've heard of his management style I suspect he would have been as large a failure as a police chief as he was an executive editor at the
New York Times.
According to his replacement, Bill Keller, the “Blair fiasco . . . was made possible in part by a climate of isolation, intimidation, favoritism, and unrelenting pressure.” Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., claimed surprise at the “depth of anger and frustration” within the ranks of the
Times.

The recent scandal involving the
Chicago Sun-Times, Newsday
of Long Island, and the Spanish-language
Hoy
points to top-level corruption. They've all admitted inflating their circulation numbers by the tens of
thousands—for years. How does this qualify as corruption?
Ad rates.
They're based on circulation. According to the
New York Times
, fifty car dealers are suing
Newsday
for $125 million. As Lauren Rich Fine, a Merrill Lynch analyst who studies “profits and the press,” wrote, “Newspapers are not supposed to be the subject of scandal, they are supposed to report on it.”

The Seattle Police Department had a thieving homicide detective, the
New York Times
a lying reporter. Outside experts in both instances, impaneled to investigate what went wrong, homed in on structural and cultural changes to prevent recurrences of such behavior. In police work it's always: Give your cops more training, create a civilian review board, fire the bad apples.

Well, the
New York Times
recently imposed a ban on “anonymous pejorative quotations” (
Seattle Times
: Make a note). That's terrific, it really is. But it speaks to
policy.
What about changes to the infamous
structure
, the
workplace culture
of the newspaper? How do you penetrate the deeply ingrained hubris of that venerable institution? How do you relieve untoward pressures on reporters to “produce”—to the point that production becomes “manufacturing”?

Most PDs have detailed standards of performance and conduct. They recruit and screen using these standards. They don't hire anyone they haven't vetted through a background investigation—which, in the best agencies, includes shoe-leather tracking of previous employment, academic records, family and other personal relationships, crime and traffic records, and financial responsibility. They subject prospective employees to rigorous psychological screening. Some departments polygraph their candidates. Once hired, every recruit undergoes an intensive training program. Periodic (usually annual) retraining is mandated by law. Officers are supervised, evaluated, and inspected on a regular, formal basis. At least that's the theory, the official policy.

Compare this to a typical news organization. Most newspapers “prefer” but don't require a bachelor's degree in journalism; many extend internships solely on the basis of success on a high school or college newspaper. Candidates for full-time jobs are hired on the basis of their resumes and
portfolios, usually following a phone call or two to previous employers. To say that prospective reporters are “screened,” beyond a reading of their work and on word-of-mouth assessments? That's a real stretch.

Yes, I know. Journalists are not responsible for protecting public safety. They don't have the power to detain and arrest people. With rare (and usually bizarre) exceptions they don't pack heat. But they affect the lives of many people, including the subjects of their reporting and their readers, who rely on them for accuracy and honesty. I'm not suggesting journalist candidates go through as exhaustive a process as most police officer candidates are exposed to. But shouldn't their bosses know who they're hiring? Shouldn't they know whether their prospective reporters are more at home with journalism than fiction?