"IT'S A DREAM": CHICAGO TRIBUNE PUBLIC EDITOR SAYS THE FARM AID STORY WAS "INTERESTING," BUT WAS IT THE TRUTH?

The Chicago Tribune’s public editor, Donald Wycliff, responded to complaints from Farm Aid in today’s edition of the Tribune.  See, Watching How Money Flows: Farm Aid Officials Claim a Tribune Article `Misled the Public about Farm Aid's Financial History (September 29, 2005). 

The response was murky and confused at best.  Mr. Wycliff begins by recounting events for half a page, wasting...

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valuable space.  He also ignores the cardinal rule of journalists—the inverted pyramid—put the most important information first.

Mr. Wycliff then indicates that he has reviewed the six inaccuracies brought to his attention by Farm Aid.  He says that these alleged inaccuracies don’t warrant a formal correction, but he concludes “that’s not to say that the Farm Aid story is above reproach.”  Mr. Wycliff should have detailed the six alleged inaccuracies, responding to each one.  Mr. Wycliff then writes:  “The problem with the Farm Aid story is not inaccuracy; its naivete."  What does that mean? And who is naïve?

Trying to justify the Tribune’s focus on aid to farmers, Mr Wycliff states that this is what concertgoers expected to happen with the concert proceeds.  How does he know what the concertgoers expected?  We would assume concertgoers expected a lot of music, but were probably annoyed with the likely announcements from the stage talking about what Farm Aid does—but we weren’t at the concert so we can’t say what was said.  It is notable that Farm Aid just released a coffee-table book that has articles about its program activities—not just glossy pictures of rock stars.  Moreover, nothing stops the concertgoers from going to Farm Aid’s  website to obtain information. Nor does anything stop them from going to Guidestar for free access to Farm Aid's tax returns.  Granted rock music fans tend to be pretty passive, but that is their problem.

Mr. Wycliff then appears to admit that the Tribune’s focus on grant making might have been wrong—although his sentence is so convoluted that you have to read it several times to reach that conclusion.

At this point in the article, Mr. Wycliff indicates that he punted the issue to the Tribune’s associate managing editor for business news.  In summarizing this editor’s conclusions, Mr. Wycliff writes,

[T]he story accepted the grants/expenses dichotomy as legitimate for purposes of the Farm Aid story. It did so, he said, because grants are a relatively straightforward thing, while an organization can shove all sorts of spending under the category of "expenses," whether or not it is legitimately related to the organization's purposes and the expectations of donors.

Essentially, Mr. Wycliff and his managing editor are saying:  “Because there could be reporting abuses, we will assume there were abuses.”  One can only wonder how the Tribune can report any business news in the wake of Enron, AIG, Shell Oil, Worldcom and any number of other recent corporate scandals. Using Mr. Wycliff's logic, all financial statements must be inaccurate because financial statements were inaccurate in those cases.  Mr. Wycliff ignores the fact the Form 990 has three columns for expenses, one for programmatic, one for administration, and one for fundraising.  He further ignores the fact that the Form 990 is signed under penalties of perjury. Finally, he ignores the fact that his reporter could have asked for certified financial statements.

Mr. Wycliff then embarrasses himself and undercuts any credibility that the Tribune might have left when he writes:

The Tribune’s story told readers something interesting about Farm Aid.

Had the Chicago Tribune written that Neil Young was from Mars or that Willie Nelson is Voldemart, that too would have been interesting. But it wouldn’t have been true.  Just to make our point more relevant, many of the stories that came out of New Orleans during the early days of the Katrina story were very interesting.  But four weeks later, the press has some explaining to do about exaggerated body counts and overblown stories of looting.  That's the problem:  If it is interesting, people buy newspapers and tune into CNN.  Have journalistic standards slipped.

During the last several years the Knight Foundation has held a summer training camp for journalists that focuses on the non-profit sector and how journalists can better understand and cover it.  If the Knight Foundation is planning to repeat the training camp in 2006, both Mr. Wycliff and Mr. George should consider attending.  We plan to forward our posts to the Knight Foundation, suggesting that they use this incident as a case study.

Mr. Wycliff hasn’t described the reaction of the experts who provided background for the Farm Aid article.  We’d like to see their response to how their quotes were used.

And for all you Neil Young fans out there, hope our continued "annoying use" of Neil Young song titles is driving you nuts.  Get a sense of humor.  Even Dylan laughed during the recent No Direction Home PBS documentary.

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