I've been reluctant to get involved in this fray about Shorter and Frenn and who said what, but it does involve the inner workings of the place where I work, so I will make a couple of remarks:Did the reporter get it wrong? Actually, there was more than one reporter on this particular article. I don't know which one interviewed Shorter. I can tell you that if you misquote someone here, your reporting career is over.
Marty Post was good enough to print the Editors' Note that was printed on Page 2. It said, "the article cited a comment by Frank Shorter... who said that before a meet in France in 1969 he saw the hammer thrower George Frenn inject a steroid into his leg." By wording it in this manner -- and I can tell you that editors' notes here are done very painstakingly and checked and double-checked -- it means that the reporter and his editor were consulted on the "comment by Frank Shorter." They would have been asked to confirm not the accuracy of whether George Frenn did this, but the accuracy of whether Shorter said this to our reporter.
There would then be the followup journalistic issue of whether Shorter's remarks were checked for accuracy, and obviously they were not, because no one bothered to check to see if Frenn was still alive. (He had been the subject of a piece in SI just a few weeks ago, actually.) If they had known that, then clearly it would have been our duty to locate Frenn and ask him about this incident. If he had denied it, then Shorter would have been called again, to ask him if he was sure about this. We don't know what would have happened then, because Frenn was never contacted.
Is this too much journalistic Inside Baseball? The fact is, this is the sort of thing competent reporters and editors go through to try to get things right, including when you're dealing with conflicting stories, or with people who don't want to answer your questions, or who won't return your phone calls. (I do resent it when people on this chat line harp that newspapers only write articles to sell papers. What a tired line. We report what we feel people have the right to know, what we feel will interest our readers and even our non-readers, and what we feel we have an obligation to report even if no one wants to read it.)
Also in the Editor's Note, Frenn is quoted as saying, "Frank Shorter never ever saw me inject myself." That remark isn't saying he never injected himself, only that Shorter never saw him.
JP
As a reporter myself, I have to agree, I suspect the reporter got something scrambled, not Shorter. This was a pretty long story, and stories of this length involve lots of notes. I try to tape every interview I do, but sometimes I get caught without a recorder and have to scribble on a pad. In those situations, I will openly admit that my quotes are not absolutely 100 percent, word-for-word correct. And sometimes, even with a recorder, I just get confused. The important thing is to make sure you do not change the intent of the person you are quoting (a standard that, last time I checked, had been upheld in federal court).
Now obviously, if the reporter did err here, he did not meet that standard. The reason I'm leaning toward the reporter as guilty is because I can't believe Shorter wouldn't remember who Frenn is, and that he would think he was a Frenchman. So if we can reasonably assume the reporter got that wrong, then the part about shooting steroids in the leg could be wrong, too. However, I'm stunned this would get past the Times -- an operation of their magnitude has fact-checkers, I assume, and has much higher standards than, say, the community weekly for which I work.
Now if the error really was with Shorter, then he'd better check himself into an Alzheimer's clinic.
Lee Nichols
Austin
John, With all due respect, why do you chose to believe that Frank really said this and it was not a mistake. Just because a reporter gets the quote in the paper it doesn't make it true. If the reporter wanted to retract the statement, it would appear on page 38. It really is just another story-maybe it's true, maybe not. Heck, I remember reading a story about the Ivy League going to DII. JohnJohn Sun wrote:> But I am disappointed that as a lawyer in charge of > an organization as > important as WADA that he'd attack a guy he didn't > really remember and > didn't have ironclad facts about. That's the > credibility issue that concerns > me. > Exactly. It's a bit disturbing that the head of USADA, which has so many protections in place to ensure US athletes are afforded privacy and due process in their doping cases, would openly accuse a fellow athlete of doping with no solid evidence. Then again it doesn't surprise me given USADA's spotty record. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com-- Lee Nichols Assistant News Editor The Austin Chronicle 512/454-5766, ext. 138 fax 512/458-6910 http://austinchronicle.com
