An Article Gone Wrong (Part 2)

We continue to look at Philips article and the complications to consider. If you missed Part 1 check it out here!

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Given the lack of cause to rush the story to press why wasn’t it investigated more fully? What prompted them to run the story with admittedly less scrutiny than usual?

“An investigative piece will usually be looked at by an assistant managing editor, a managing editor and probably a lawyer,” says Don Smith, interactivity editor for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of their standards for review.

It is the lawyer element that I’m most curious about. This story of Philips is implicated powerful people within the music industry, who will not take kindly to being portrayed as violent criminals. A journalist’s job is to report the truth and the paper he or she writes for should support them when they need it, but on the flip side of that coin the paper also needs to question their reporter and ensure the vetting process is thoroughly completed.

“Lawyers will begin to challenge the facts,” Smith explains about the role they can play in the editorial process. Their role here, I imagine, would have been to take these documents – legal court records something they should have plenty of experience with and look at their validity.

While this should also have been expected of Philips, Jack Shafer of Slate.com points out one possible explanation as to why Philips could have ran with the information he had:

“Avoid confirmation bias. It's a universal human trait to seek evidence that confirms what you already believe, to interpret the evidence you've collected to bolster your existing view, and to avoid the evidence that would undermine your notions. "Philips said in an interview that he had believed the documents were legitimate because, in the reporting he had already done on the story, he had heard many of the same details," the Times reports today. Did Philips' willingness to believe what the documents said blind him to the typographic clues that the Smoking Gun says point to forgery? "[The documents] confirmed many of the things I'd learned on my own," Philips said in an interview [this interview has since been pulled from the Times site] before the debunking.”

While this is understandable, it is still inexcusable. Philips is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter. He knows what it takes to investigate something and he knows, or should know, that he can’t allow his own opinions and biases to get in the way of the truth – that is what he should be in search of.