Reporting the News Even When a Competitor Gets There First

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/opinion/11pubed.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fThe%20Public%&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

Reporting the News Even When a Competitor Gets There First
By BYRON CALAME

WHY were readers of The New York Times left without a word of news coverage of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal for six days after it had been exposed by The Washington Post? That was the question posed to me in the wake of The Post’s Feb. 18 scoop by readers thirsty for news of the poor care given those wounded in Iraq.

“I first learned of the Walter Reed story when I turned on the news on Monday evening,” Margo Muccino of Pembroke Pines, Fla., wrote to me in an e-mail on Thursday, Feb. 22. “Not knowing that the Post had printed it on Sunday, I couldn’t wait for Tuesday’s Times to read your take on it.”

She continued: “I have been perplexed, shocked and angry that to date the Times has not printed a single article or word on the conditions at Building 18, Walter Reed Hospital! Truly, you must explain this terrible lapse in journalistic judgment to those of us who read and love the Times.”

Ms. Muccino and other readers have every right to be angry about The Times’s slowness in telling them about the compelling news in The Post’s two-part series. The stories, totaling 9,400 words, provided a detailed look at the life of outpatients, including the mold, mice droppings, dead cockroaches and stained carpets in some rooms. In short order, the series sparked the departures of the secretary of the Army and the top general at Walter Reed, and an investigation by a bipartisan presidential commission.

The Times eventually took note of the scandal almost a full week later, on Saturday, Feb. 24, with a 620-word article on Page A10 that credited The Post. It reported the warning of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, after he had toured the outpatient facilities, that senior officials would be held accountable for the poor conditions. Only a few paragraphs described the conditions at the facility, so readers like Ms. Muccino remained without details.

The Times acknowledged the impact of The Post’s exposé by making the firing of Walter Reed’s commanding general the lead story on Page 1 on March 2. The next day’s article on the ouster of the secretary of the Army also led the front page.

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[bluerum]

1. Is this not how news organizations keep each other honest? Or am I

being naive?

[Patsy Stone]

2. Pride goeth before a fall

Tell me The NYT has never heard of interviewing someone to give the story a local angle? That would save their pride, allow them to publish the Post's info, and prevent their lazy reporters from having to work very hard.

[FogerRox]

3. THis is why the same comany should not own the WAPO & the NYT