The truly strange - and still unfolding - tale of the Notre Dame football star and his nonexistent dead girlfriend has lessons for journalists, including those at The Times.
Joe Sexton, the sports editor and a former Metro editor, put it bluntly: “Trust but verify.â€
It’s one of the cardinal rules of reporting, and something that can’t be emphasized enough.
The Times was not among the most prominent offenders in taking at face value what turned out to be a hoax, as revealed by the Web site Deadspin.com on Wednesday.
But Times reporters still wrote about the Fighting Irish linebacker Manti Te’o’s girlfriend at least five times in recent months.
A Nov. 25 article said that Te’o was “dealt a full deck of adversity when his grandmother and his girlfriend died within hours of each other.â€
Another, on Oct. 14, noted, “His girlfriend, who lost a long fight with leukemia, was a Stanford alumnus.†That last word, by the way, is just wrong: She would have been an alumna, according to my high school Latin. Far more important, her status as a Stanford alumna would have been easy enough to check - and the fact that she wasn’t one might have created enough suspicion to start asking bigger questions. But that never happened.
Mr. Sexton responded to my questions about The Times’s role as follows:
The death of his grandmother and ostensible girlfriend were never the focus of! any article we did. They were mentioned, glancingly, as part of the accepted, to date unchallenged public narrative of a prominent athlete. I could never imagine in editing such a story, with the references existing as they did, asking the reporters: Do you know for a fact his grandmother is dead Do you know for a fact his girlfriend is dead Do you know for a fact his grandmother existed Do you know for a fact his girlfriend ever existed And any editor who tells you they would have or should have asked those questions is kidding you.
I’d like to think that, had we been doing a more substantial and focused story on the player and his dead grandmother and girlfriend, we â€" reporters and editors â€" would have pushed to fill out the picture of those relationships: to reach the player’s parents, say, to hear more about the dead grandmother; to reach the family of the dead girlfriend, to understand who she was and what the player had meant to her. Can I guarantee we would have done that No. That’d e both smug and suspect. But I like to think we would have. The first month I was Metro editor we got taken in by an alleged Katrina victim. She had been the focus of our piece, and we had not verified her particulars. We took our medicine and pledged to recommit to our operating ethos: trust, but verify. Indeed, everyone on the Metro desk was required to attend a round of presentations by our researchers and data reporters called just that: Trust but verify.
Might be a good idea to have another round of those presentations, for Sports and every other department.
Meanwhile, the Te’o story - with its bizarre twists and large cast of characters, and hard-to-determine motivations - continues to unspool. Times reporters are among many chasing it down.
I asked Mr. Sexton what lessons, at this early date, can be learned
“I’m not sure the full assortment or exact nature of them have yet become clear,†he said. “First, we have to figure out the truth. It’s ce! rtainly a! story that makes that effort a formidable one.â€
He’s right. In the meantime, and very soon, a refresher course in verification for every newsroom department would be a very good idea.
