The St. Petersburg Times last week found itself in a place no mainstream daily wants to be: The newspaper had become a subject of the news instead of a chronicler.
The Times was among a handful of news organizations (the Miami Herald and Fox News being the other two that have 'fessed up so far) that were tipped to a series of e-mails between U.S. Rep. Mark Foley and a congressional page. Foley's e-mails were not overtly sexual, but still freaky enough to prompt the youth to forward the exchange to congressional staffers with the word "sick" written atop it 13 times. Times reporters spoke to the teen, who admitted Foley's e-mails made him uncomfortable. But the newspaper talked itself out of writing the story.
This tidbit came out first in a Times report on the emerging Foley scandal, then in a New York Times examination of how the media handled Foley, and then as an excuse from Speaker Dennis Hastert for why he didn't act more aggressively (as in, well, the Times didn't either).
To stem the growing criticism, the Times first posted a lengthy explanation of its inaction on its political blog, The Buzz, on Sept. 30. It was Oct. 5 before print readers got their explanation, in an op-ed article written by Executive Editor Neil Brown.
Brown justified his decision on various grounds, including the fact that the teen would not allow his name to be used, the blogosphere's unreliablity, the desire not to unfairly taint Foley and the teen's family's desire to let the matter drop.
What I find ironic, not to mention hypocritical, is that the Times reporters, editors and editorial writers day in and day out demand more contrition and self-examination from their news subjects than they are demanding from themselves. When I was a reporter at the newspaper from 1992-94, editors would hold occasional staff meetings to revisit controversial stories or news decisions. I was lucky enough to be kept busy in the Clearwater bureau so I never journeyed down to St. Pete to sit through one of these sessions, but my colleagues joked that the meetings all went the same way: mild probing of the decisions, perhaps some oblique criticisms, culminating always in the editor's pronouncement from on high: The paper had done the right thing and would do it the same way again.
Sounds like nothing has changed.
In the middle of the whole Foley feeding frenzy, it was interesting to see a short anecdote I wrote on our own blog, Blurbex.com, take on a life of its own. A few days into the scandal, I posted an account of a brief 2001 encounter with Foley at a Church of Scientology gala in Hollywood, Calif.
At that time, I was a volunteer with the Clearwater Jazz Holiday, running the annual festival and booking the acts. We wanted to land Chick Corea, and the Church of Scientology was helping to hook us up with him.
Corea was playing a gig in Hollywood, so I flew out to L.A. with another Jazz Holiday official to speak with him about playing our festival. We stayed at Scientology's Celebrity Centre in Hollywood the same weekend as the church's annual celebrity celebration, which usually attracts a cross-section of Scientology's most famous members. There that night were Beck, Giovanni Ribisi, Doug E. Fresh, Mark Isham, Danny Masterson, Catherine Bell and Erika Christensen, among others.
Milling in the crowd before the gala began, I literally ran into Foley, who I recognized from some political work I had done down in West Palm Beach. I didn't get a chance to chat with him as to why he was there, but one thing I can say: He was not escorted by a teenage boy.
Within a day of its being posted, my blog entry made its way onto the nationally read Wonkette. Then the conspiracy theories began in earnest. Some local reporters noticed that the fax announcing Foley's alcohol rehab had come from Clearwater, the international spiritual headquarters of Scientology. The bloggers hit that hard: Was Foley getting dried out in some super-secret Scientology facility?
Doubtful, my Scientology sources say. As the blog post pointed out, Foley is not a Scientologist. And he's certainly not the only lawmaker ever to attend a Scientology event.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2006.