Brad Smith Tells the Truth?

Brad Smith will never work in this town – or any other town, for that matter – as a journalist again. He knows that.

Over a decaf at a Starbucks, Smith seems both resigned to that fact and somewhat OK with it. For the award-winning former Tampa Tribune reporter who resigned in disgrace after acknowledging he had fabricated part of a story about towing, the entire incident and the resulting publicity still has him in a state of disbelief.

"The reality is this was a one-time aberration," Smith said in an exclusive interview.

"I don't want to scapegoat anybody because I did this to myself," he said. Even with the cautionary examples of Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, "it just proves that it is humanly possible to do this."

I ended up at Starbucks with Smith after I wrote my May 4 column about the story that brought him down.

A few days later, I got an e-mail from him. "Ah, how the sloppiness, laziness and, sometimes, cowardice, of the news media suddenly becomes all too clear," he wrote, "when one finds oneself a ' newsmaker ' instead of vice-versa." While he acknowledged that he'd broken the first rule of journalism – "Don't make stuff up" – he accused me and other members of the media of breaking rule number 2:

"Try to tell both sides. You stand accused there. You aren't alone. I'm not that hard to find, especially with all your contacts at the Trib and the Times. Then there's the property records with my address. But that's work.

"What you missed: The full story."

I pleaded guilty to count #2 and offered to talk with him about the full story.

Smith, while repeatedly willing to take his lumps, reserves contempt for his former employer and for Tracey Sievertson, the woman he falsely claimed was "club-hopping" the night her vehicle was towed from S. Howard Avenue's restaurant row. Sievertson, at the time a friend of Smith's girlfriend, had not gone out that night, instead lending her Jeep to an out-of-town guest, who joined Smith and the girlfriend for a night in Soho. Sievertson found out her vehicle had been towed after the trio discovered it missing and told her she would have to pick it up at the impound lot.

In an interview for my May 4 column, Sievertson told me she was upset with Smith's story for two reasons – it harmed her reputation (she is starting a public relations firm after years in television news) and offended her journalistic sensibilities.

"I had to chuckle at your Tracey Sievertson quote about her problem with a reporter 'not being honest,'" Smith's e-mail said. He accused Sievertson of being deceptive herself at the impound lot when she presented a Channel 28 news business card (her previous employer) in trying to get out of paying the towing fee.

The employees at Pete's Towing confirm Smith's version, and a videotape from that night shows a clearly unhappy Sievertson getting angry with the night manager there.

Smith said doing a news story on the towing industry was Sievertson's idea and that she agreed to let him make her a central part of the story.

"After a 30-year career in journalism, why would I think I could just put Tracey at the scene of a Page 1 story if she wasn't there?" he said. "The answer must either be I'd lost my marbles, or that the story subject had agreed to it."

Sievertson denies most of Smith's account but declined to discuss details, preferring that the story just go away. Her portrayal in the original story, as a 2 a.m. club-hopper, continues to raise questions from her clients, especially a Tampa church for which she does P.R. She doesn't dispute the account of the Channel 28 business card, but she takes exception to the rest of Smith's assertions of her involvement in the fabrication. Sievertson said after the night of the towing, she discussed it only once with Smith, a month and a half later when Smith called to say he was writing a story about towing industry reform legislation. She said she had no idea that Smith would make her the centerpiece of the tale and place her – inaccurately – at the scene of the towing when she was really at home caring for her child.

Smith then turns his disapproval on the Tribune, which he believed had a responsibility to tell the entire story of that night in its 1A retraction.

"And that's become how this story has spun out rather one-sidedly everywhere from [the Washington Post's] Howard Kurtz on down," Smith said in his e-mail. "I deserve my fate for writing the words 'club-hopping' instead of 'baby-sitting.' I accepted full responsibility to the Trib and now. Every other word in that story is accurate, including the lede. Tracey was out at 2 a.m. retrieving her Jeep. She did experience the same shock everyone else feels when they get towed."

The guys at Pete's Towing – the folks who hooked up Sievertson's Jeep that night – know all about that shock. Just about every person who comes in to get their car, SUV or truck back is unhappy, said Pete Rockefeller, the owner.

Rockefeller is unhappier than his customers, however, that his company was portrayed in the story as price-gouging and threatening.

To the contrary, Rockefeller asserts that he is one of the good guys in an industry that doesn't always have the best reputation. He supported the reform legislation that Smith wrote about and showed me his insurance policy for $2 million, well above the levels set by county regulators for his industry. But since the article ran, he has seen his business drop off dramatically and has lost two contracts.

He's not happy.

Rockefeller directed his attorney to demand a retraction from the Tribune. He has not had a response. Nor has the Tribune called him (as they have called subjects of other Smith stories) to check on the veracity of the rest of the towing story.

Tribune Executive Editor Janet Weaver responded to me in an e-mail, "I really don't have anything to add to what I've already said on the subject. We're continuing to check past stories. After that process is complete, we'll report back to our readers in the Tribune about what we've found."

I can't wait to read that.

MEDIA WATCH: Associated Press Tampa bureau chief Vickie Chachere has resigned to become a member of the Tampa Tribune's editorial board, taking the spot vacated by Diane Egner when she left to become WUSF's director of content. Chachere, an old friend from my days at the Tribune, left that newspaper some years back to go to the AP and now returns. Chachere had also done the lion's share of Al-Arian reporting for the AP.

DUELING HEADLINES:

"Will eco-warriors ride again?" St. Petersburg Times, 1B, Sun. May 15. "Powerful Friends Aid Environment in Session" Tampa Tribune, Metro, p. 1, Sun. May 15. The Times' Michael Van Sickler lamented that environmentalists' days have come and gone, citing examples both local and national. Over at Mother Trib, Mike Salinero touted recent Florida legislative measures as being the most environmentally friendly since Gov. Bob Graham's administration. Got a favorite dueling headline that we missed? Send us an e-mail to headlines@weeklyplanet.com.

Political Whore appreciates the irony that Pete's Towing has the contract to haul illegally parked cars away from the Tampa Tribune's Parker Street lots. The PoHo can be reached by e-mail at wayne.garcia@weeklyplanet.com or by telephone at 813-739-4805.

This article appears in May 18-24, 2005.