Category: Newspapering

Whose Fault Was It?

The public information officer from the Department of Insurance arrived at The News & Observer late one afternoon –some of them always came late because that left us with less time to check out whatever they had to say– and demanded a correction.

He showed the city editor the press release he said he had delivered to The N&O the previous afternoon, he showed him the story we had published, and he pointed out the difference, the error.

There was nothing the city editor could do but order a correction.  He told Doug McInnis, the reporter who had rewritten the press release, to write what we called a “Beg,” short for “Beg Your Pardon,” the headline that always appeared over our corrections.

But Doug said no, it wasn’t his mistake.  He said the flack must have changed the news release.

Huh?

As much I mistrusted some government public information officers –you couldn’t believe a word some of them said– I thought Doug had lost it. Even a really bad flack  wouldn’t do something like that. “Flack,” by the way, is a derogatory term that was often applied to a PIO in the old days. 

Doug started looking for the news release he had been given and when he couldn’t find it anywhere on his desk, or his trash can, he began going through trash cans of all the government reporters. When he couldn’t find it in the trash he kept right on looking.  He went to the Associated Press office on McDowell Street, next to The N&O, and he got lucky.  The AP still had its copy.

McInnis was right.

The flack had made an error in the original news release and instead of taking responsibility, he changed the news release, told our city editor that the corrected version was the original, and tried to blame his mistake on The N&O.

Coming Friday: My Best Teacher

Pat The Rat

If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out, I guess that’s the lesson.

Entrance sign
Entrance sign

In 1970’s I wrote  stories critical of Soul City, a federally funded “new town” in Warren County, about 50, 55 miles northeast of Raleigh.

The March 1975 stories led to an audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The GAO said “the physical development of Soul City was essentially on target” but it raised “serious questions” about federal expenditures and recommended that various federal agencies recover “all unallowable expenditures” and institute tighter controls over future expenditures.

In May 1979, I reported that Soul City was years behind schedule  –it had achieved less than 10 percent of it’s housing, employment and population goals — and was drowning in red ink.  Six weeks later an agency of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development  announced that it had decided to pull the plug — no more federal aid.

I don’t remember if it was after the first bunch of stories or the second that  WTVD in Durham televised a skit featuring a rat that was trying to tear down Soul City.

The villain’s name? “Rat Slith.”

NOTE: A WTVD news reporter was, indirectly, on the Soul City payroll.  He had been hired by a Soul City contractor to make a movie about the new town.  I never learned what, if anything, he had to do with the skit.

Coming Friday: Proof That We Had Escaped