More Bad Journalism, This Time from the Washington Post

BOULDER, Colorado -- This post has nothing to do with bandy, but I recently posted about my row with the New York Times, so I thought I would also post this correspondence I had with their sister paper, the Washington Post.

An article appeared in the Washington Post yesterday about a New Jersey restaurateur named Bobby Egan who has had a number of weird diplomatic dealings with the North Koreans. This article shockingly resembles stories that ran last fall in both the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. So I wrote the Post's ombudsman to find out what was going on.

Dear Sirs,

I am writing in regards to the article that appeared on washingtonpost.com on April 9, 2008 titled "Kitchen Diplomacy" by Peter Carlson. I am somewhat concerned as this article is strikingly similar to an article that appeared in the October 8, 2007 issue of the New Yorker, titled "Our Man in Pyongyang" by Rebecca Mead. The articles use many of the same sources, retell several similar anecdotes, and most troublingly, even some of the quotes in the stories are identical. The subject of the story, Mr. Egan, may just be a very predictable person, and he tells all reporters the same stories; if that is true, then ethically, there is probably nothing wrong with the reporting in this story. However, the fact that your paper wrote a story with essentially the same facts and the same angle as the one that appeared previously should be cause for concern. It shows a lack of ingenuity, creativity, and frankly, credibility on the part of your newspaper, and this article should probably never have been written. If your reporter went to interview Mr. Egan, and he gave him the same old rope he did to others, this story should have been left alone. Remember that you are a newspaper, and you should not be publishing old stories.

Sincerely,

Andrew Gustafson

This was their ombudsman's response (note how badly my name is butchered, and I think I'm going to start referring to North Koreans as "NKs" in my daily speech).

Mr. Guftafson:

Peter Carlson wrote me the following explanation. "Yes, the New Yorker did do a story on Bobby Egan last October (So did vanityfair.com) As it happened, I had been talking to Bobby long before either came out. Then he abruptly stopped talking to me, probably because he was talking to VF and the NYer. So I quit calling him. Then he called me out of the blue a few weeks ago to ask why I wasn't calling him and to invite me to come up when the NKs were dining at Cubby's."

Back to me: I don't see nothing wrong with The Post covering something the New Yorker or Vanity Fair did. Their audiences may overlap, but not that much. The anecdotes are similar, Peter said, because all reporters use the best ones. Peter also thinks his story was better than the New Yorker story. I haven't read the NYer story, so I can't say.

I hope this answers your questions.

Washington Post Ombudsman

What a surprise - the guy that wrote it thinks that his piece is better than the original. And the ombudsman did not even bother reading the original story when there are accusations of plagiarism.

But she's probably right - as the ombudsman, she doesn't need to be too concerned about similar stories if the reporter actually did do all the reporting for their story. However, my point about newsworthiness and integrity still stands; no editor should have allowed this story to go out. And what a lame response - "I had been talking to Egan way before either [New Yorker or Vanity Fair] story came out." So what? It doesn't matter who talked to the source first - it's about who got the story first. And this piece added no new dimensions or angles, or even facts, to this story.

I seem to write this letter all the time to newspapers, telling them to stop being lazy and to stop writing fluff crap. And I always get a snarky response. I guess journalists are just like the rest of us - they don't like to work hard either.