The businessman, whose company was a polluter, asked me, “Is that your typewriter I hear? Are you typing down what I say?”
I said I was.
And he said, “That’s unethical!”
Huh?
I was working on a story we called “A Sewer Named Sugar,” about companies that were polluting Sugar Creek, a creek that runs through the heart of Charlotte and through its most popular park.
I had waded and walked the creek for more than 15 miles, from its headwaters to a point south of Charlotte, along with some tributaries, and I had found a number of polluters. Now I was trying to interview them.
I said to the man, “I told you my name; I spelled my name; I told you I was a reporter, that I worked for The Charlotte News; I told you why I called you, that I was working on a story about polluters; and I told you I wanted to ask you some questions.”
But he said he was done talking and he hung up. I waited, and I didn’t have to wait long.
The guy I was interviewing was the son-in-law of a top executive at my paper. A few minutes later I saw that executive get off the elevator and walked straight into the editor’s office.
I have no idea what he and Perry Morgan, the boss of The Charlotte News, talked about. I wasn’t there.
I do know Perry did not allow me to name that man’s business, or quote him. I could only identify it as a “heavy industry” and the general location.
That was bad, but it got worse.
The newspaper I worked for was also polluting the creek. The News dumped chemical solutions used to develop film into a storm drain that eventually drained into Sugar Creek.
I was not allowed to name my paper either. Perry told me, “Now you’ve gone too far!”
Postscript: Nothing, and I mean nothing, like that ever happened to me in the 37 years I worked for The New & Observer in Raleigh. If I could find it and prove it The N&O would publish it. No one and no thing was off limits.
Coming Friday: Navy Propaganda