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10/28/2009 Lawton rumors a cautionary tale for journalists, bloggers, talk radio By Erik Gunn For WisPolitics.com Only hours after liberal Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton's surprise withdrawal from the governor's race Monday, a conservative Green Bay talk radio host was online with claims he knew why. Jerry Bader of WTAQ-AM used a two-minute podcast Monday afternoon to make sensational claims about Lawton's personal life, claiming that he was only reporting "an open secret in Madison" and attributing the information to multiple sources. Bader assured his listeners that "I am reporting this factually." By noon Tuesday, however, Lawton had angrily denied Bader's claims in media interviews with WisPolitics.com, WIBA-AM, and the Associated Press. Bader himself backed away from the story in a written statement on his blog at the station's Web site. Until Lawton's denial, no news media had picked up the story. Once they did, it was to focus on the lieutenant governor's reaction. But the way the incident played out was an object lesson in both the limits of partisan talk radio and the blogosphere as journalistic outlets and their power in driving a story. The episode also raised questions about the boundaries of politicians' privacy. Lawton was offended at journalists' questions about the rumors. Said Lawton: "When you do a story why we have such a paucity of good people running for office, pull this out. Because who would submit willingly to this kind of garbage?" The story's nature -- and the denials -- also faced media with the challenge of how to describe the rumors Bader reported without giving them further airing. Most media using the written word referred to the rumors in vague terms, while radio stations gave more description and made available cuts of the question and response on their Web sites. Charlie Sykes, the conservative talk show host at WTMJ-AM in Milwaukee, played a large portion of the WIBA-AM interview on the air, then reported Bader's retraction, with the comment: "I am not a fan of Barbara Lawton (but) if it turns out that this in fact was a complete fabrication then there's no defense for it whatsoever." He agreed with Lawton that these kind of episodes keep good people out of politics. And he said that when he first heard Bader's podcast, he thought "either he has actual documentation or he's crazy." Bader was on the air as usual in his Tuesday morning 8:30 a.m. - 11 a.m. time slot, and listeners indicate he did back away from the story during the broadcast. Bader didn't respond to this reporter about his original podcast. At the radio station, Jeff Flynt, a reporter/anchor who answered the phone Tuesday afternoon, said all comment from the station was being confined to a statement on Bader's blog that the talk radio host posted Tuesday morning. That comment, timed at 11:23 a.m., stated in all capital letters: "I have lost confidence in the sources that provided information yesterday regarding Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton. Therefore I cannot stand by the story posted yesterday." But until then, conservative bloggers helped spread the word of Bader's original claims. After Bader posted his original podcast some time Monday afternoon, links appeared to it on at least six conservative blogs. One, "Dad29" a Milwaukee-area blogger, went so far Tuesday morning as to mock the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's coverage of Lawton's original announcement: "Keep up with the news, fellas!" "Dad29" titled the post: "JS' 'Reporting' on Lawton is woeful." Another conservative blogger, James Wigderson in Waukesha, was more guarded, suggesting that if Bader didn't have the goods, he "just opened himself up to a serious slander lawsuit." Wigderson also asked his readers: "Did she think it wouldn't eventually come out?" In an e-mail to this reporter Tuesday, Wigderson pointed out his use of the word "supposedly" in relating the allegations. "I try not to care about any politician's personal life. What interested me that Bader was going out there with the story, and if any of the `mainstream' media was going to go with it," Wigderson observed. "Bader was pretty strong in his insistence that he was reporting 'facts,' but the story just didn't ring true enough to venture out onto that tree limb with him. I feel pretty good about what I wrote and how I handled it." After the Green Bay radio station stepped back from the story, several bloggers who had linked to the original Bader claims posted apologies to Lawton and her family. In an interview Tuesday with Madison radio station WIBA's news director Robin Colbert, Lawton warned of possible legal action against WTAQ if it didn't remove the story from its Web site: "They will face tremendous legal pressure immediately if it doesn't come right off." Despite Bader's retreat from the story, Lawton might still have grounds to sue, says Katy Culver, on the faculty of the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication; the host's disavowal doesn't undo the earlier publication of it, she notes. The question is whether Lawton would want to call more attention to now-discredited claims. "Suing for libel can amplify the original message in a way that you never would want to," Culver said. WIBA's Colbert, in her interview with Lawton, explained the journalistic quandary in this edited exchange. Lawton: I am incredulous that I keep fielding questions about such an outrageous lie. I have to ask: if someone said that about the governor, would you pose the question to him? Colbert: I would, personally. ... Lawton: It really diminishes the dignity of the office I hold to give credence to such an extraordinary lie. ... Colbert: I apologize ...(but) you look at the John Edwards debacle, what happened there. Nobody would have believed the (National) Enquirer. Culver, however, says that such reporting on politicians' personal lives goes back further. The bigger change, she says, is the instantaneous nature of media. "We are in an age where we have a mass media means of rumor-mongering. The Internet can amplify things that have no basis in truth in ways that we never would have imagined when I was in a newsroom 20 years ago. So reporting has to keep up. Mainstream journalism has to keep up and recognize that this may not be a question we would have asked about 20 years ago. But if this rumor is out in the public sphere, it may be something we have a responsibility to ask about now." But Culver also said that the case isn't just one of the blogosphere run amok. "These are the kinds of accusations that can come out somewhat regularly in talk radio. This isn't just a blogosphere question. It's more of a question about talk radio and about how much we care about the accuracy of information in that medium. Are we just blasting away with salacious comment after salacious comment hoping that at some point we hit a bull's-eye or are we actually caring about what information is out in the public sphere?" At the Wisconsin State Journal, editor John Smalley says he wasn't aware of the original Bader report until after Lawton's denial had already been public. Had the rumor come to the paper's attention before her denials, Smalley says, it might have become a subject of a reporter's inquiry -- but that wouldn't automatically translate into publication. "We certainly wouldn't have reported it in the way that the guy in Green Bay did without any corroboration. "If it had been on the table we would have asked about it, and if we wouldn't have been able to confirm it, or if it had gotten blown up as nothing more than apparently what it was, then we could have just let it go and not included it in our report. "I think the lesson is you can't leap to conclusions and you can't publish or broadcast things that you don't know to be true." UPDATE, 9 a.m. 10/29/09: WTAQ announced that Bader has been suspended for two weeks, with a decision about his future to come after that. -- Gunn, of Racine, writes the Mediawatch Column for WisBusiness.com and writes on media and other topics for Milwaukee Magazine and other publications. |
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