Category: Newspapering

The Answer To A Puzzling Question

When I did a story about broken traffic signals in Raleigh I stumbled across the answer to a question that had bothered me, and here it is:

Why did the percentage of black drivers who were charged with traffic offenses by the N.C. State Highway Patrol increase so dramatically in Raleigh after midnight?   I knew that was so because I examined the troopers’ citation database on several occasions when I was an investigative reporter at The New & Observer.

[The trooper database enabled The N&O to answer a question most drivers ask themselves: How fast can you go in North Carolina without getting caught?  The answer: nine mph over the limit.  About 98, 99 percent speeding tickets written by troopers charged the driver with going 10 miles per hour or more over the limit.  “Nine you’re fine, 10 you’re mine,” one trooper told me.]

But what about the disproportionate number of black drivers charged after midnight in Raleigh?   Was the patrol profiling, stopping black drivers, looking for evidence of other crimes and, not finding it, writing traffic citations?

I had helped report a Driving While Black story earlier.  Joe Neff, another N&O investigative reporter, and I wrote about a State Highway Patrol drug interdiction team operating on Interstates 85 and 95 that had charged black male drivers at nearly twice the rate other troopers had charged black males working the same highways, during the same time periods. In most cases, those black men were charged with minor traffic violations and no drugs were found.

Was something like that happening in Raleigh or was it just because there are a lot more blacks, and a lot fewer whites, up and about in the wee hours of the morning?    I didn’t write that story because I didn’t know the answer to that question, and the answer matters a lot.

IMG_6807The traffic signal story forced me to go to work at 4 a.m., when traffic was light in some areas and pretty much non-existent in others. I drove all over Raleigh, in black and white neighborhoods, filming traffic signals that weren’t operating properly.  At that time of the morning, when there is little or no traffic, they really stick out.

I discovered, at 4:15 a.m., I have could have parked my car in the middle of Six Forks Road, the main artery from  Raleigh into mostly white North Raleigh, got out, peed, and a lot of times no would have noticed. I didn’t, but I could have.

Sometimes there were no vehicles on Six Forks as far as I could see in either direction. People who lived in North Raleigh and other mostly white sections must have been asleep at that time of the morning.

But in South Raleigh, which was predominately black, a lot of people were out and about. I saw people sitting on their porch, smoking cigarettes. People on sidewalks, headed somewhere. People standing on the corner, listening to music, talking with their friends.  And a big majority of drivers I saw before 5 a.m. were black.

I wouldn’t bet my life on it but I think that is the explanation for those weird highway patrol stats.

NOTE:  Reporting on broken traffic signals doesn’t sound like much of a story, but it turned out all right.  I expanded the story, reporting that a lot of signals on U.S. 70, toward the coast, didn’t work properly either. The N.C. Department of Transportation responded with a multi-million dollar statewide signal improvement program.

Coming Monday: My Father’s Advice: Don’t Do What I Did

Flacks

When I was an investigative reporter for The News & Observer I ran into some government public information officers who put the public’s interest above the interest of the politician or political appointee they worked for.  They told the truth.  Sometimes, at the risk their job, they went off the record and gave me a road map, so to speak, of wrongdoing in their agency.

But not many.

I had to battle constantly with government PIOs to get access to records which the public, and The News & Observer, were entitled by state law to have.

 And they often ran interference for officials I wanted to talk to.

Sometimes they would ask me to pose questions in writing, which I did not do. Usually they insisted on sitting in on interviews, which I could not prevent.  In a few instances they tape-recorded my interview and made a transcript to prepare other officials I planned to question.

In press releases they sent to the media they sometimes made up quotes and attributed them to their boss, an offense that would get a newspaper reporter fired.

In one instance a PIO fixed an error in a press release after the information had been published in The N&O, to make it look like the reporter who rewrote the press release had made the mistake.

In my day newspaper reporters sometimes, OK, often, referred to PIOs as “flacks.” Here’s an example of the kind of stuff flacks did that drove me crazy:

I called a guy in the Department of Administration that I had talked to on, and off, the record for years. The administration had just changed, we had a new governor, the department had a new flack, and the guy said he couldn’t talk to me without the PIO’s permission.

Here we go again.

I called the new flack and I said, words to the effect:

“Would you do me a big, big favor?  There’s a fellow in your department who has been doing his job since you were a little boy who says he can’t talk to me about his job without your permission. Would you mind calling him and telling him, ‘It’s OK. You can talk about your job.'”

And the flack said, words to this effect, “Oh, Pat, I’m so sorry this happened. That’s something left over from the last administration. I’ll call him right away and fix this.”

A few minutes later I called my source again and asked him if the flack had called and given him permission to talk.

“Yea,” he said, “he called. He said to answer your questions but don’t elaborate.”

I interviewed the man and, next morning, I called him again with a couple of follow up questions. He told me, in effect, to make it snappy because he had already spent hours dealing with me.

“What are you talking about,” I said. “We talked for less than 30 minutes.”

And then he explained.

“After we got through talking the public information officer made me write down every question you asked and every answer I gave.”

NOTE1: I tried never to say anything good or bad to a PIO’s boss about something they had done for me or to me. I figured if I complimented a good one, they might get reprimanded. And if I complained about a bad one, they might get a raise.

NOTE2: Over the years I met several PIOs who did their best to serve the public. I’ll name one, who is dead now. Juan Santos, a PIO for the Department of Labor, was a truth teller and a friend.

Coming Friday: Unfortunately, My Lips Are Sealed