Posted on 12/30/2005 1:53:38 PM PST by Pikamax
When a story is too good to be true
The story of the UMass Dartmouth undergrad who lied about being questioned by agents for the Department of Homeland Security had everything.
It played directly into the split between Red and Blue states. It was made for the Internet and Fox television and talk radio. And it was timed perfectly because of the firestorm that erupted two weeks ago when The New York Times broke the news that the Bush administration had authorized federal agents to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens calling abroad.
Critics of the Bush administration threw themselves in front of microphones and reporters with notebooks to charge that the president had broken the law, while Bush supporters leapt to the president's defense, saying that his first job as commander in chief is to protect Americans from attack, and that in times of war it is proper and prudent to use almost any means to get information that might derail an enemy's plans.
Standard-Times editors asked one of our best political reporters, Aaron Nicodemus, to contact people for their reaction to the Times story. Among those he called were two local experts, UMass Dartmouth history professors Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand.
Professor Williams, who has traveled and researched the Middle East extensively, was asked whether he believed the president's authorization for tapping the phones and e-mails of U.S. citizens talking with foreigners was going too far. He told reporter Nicodemus that he believes his own calls were tapped while he was speaking once with the foreign minister of Chechnya, scene of a bloody civil war with Russian forces and numerous acts of terrorism..
Almost as an aside, professor Williams told the story of one of his students who said he had been visited by FBI agents after he tried to take out a library book by the infamous Chinese premier, the late Mao Zedong.
Mr. Nicodemus recognized immediately that that was a pretty good story and started to check it out. Dr. Williams provided the student's name, and Mr. Nicodemus did a little research to find his home address and telephone number. He spoke with the student's father, who would not talk about the case and referred our reporter to his son, saying the student was in the shower but giving Mr. Nicodemus his son's cell phone number.
When Mr. Nicodemus called the son several times, he didn't answer and did not return phone calls, so Mr. Nicodemus went to the house. Nobody answered.
What he had for a story then was a tale from a single UMass Dartmouth professor -- someone who has been an excellent source on numerous occasions. It made me uncomfortable, however, and we decided not to publish the story without corroboration. Mr. Nicodemus went back to work and found a second source, professor Pontbriand, to whom the student had told the same story, but with one important difference: The agents were from the Department of Homeland Security and not the FBI, as professor Williams had said.
Troubled by that inconsistency, Mr. Nicodemus called back professor Williams, who said he had been wrong the first time and that, in fact, the student had said the visit was from representatives of Homeland Security. Otherwise, the professors' stories corroborated one another.
"I knew depending on a second-hand source was problematic," but professor Williams had been reliable previously, Mr. Nicodemus said. Next, he called the FBI, who said they couldn't discuss individual cases but that they will visit someone's home only if they are conducting a criminal investigation. Then he called the Department of Homeland Security, which did not return his message for several days.
The Dec. 17 newspaper included the student's story but did not name him. We did not believe it would have been right to identify him if, as professor Williams suggested, the student was afraid that talking to anyone might bring him more unwanted visits. We published the story on Page A9, a sidebar to the front page stories about the phone taps and the failure by the Senate to pass the Patriot Act.
Almost immediately after the story was published, it hit the Internet, and Mr. Nicodemus' computer mailbox was flooded with e-mails from groups and individuals all over the country who sweep the Internet for news stories that they can use to bolster their arguments for or against the Bush administration. Almost immediately, we got letters from all sides and began publishing them.
Mr. Nicodemus began working on a follow-up to the story, which several other UMass Dartmouth professors now said they also had heard from the student and found him credible. He finally managed to get the student to talk to him -- on the record -- with the help of professors Williams and Pontbriand, who were eager to ask some questions themselves.
But the more the student talked, the more concerned Mr. Nicodemus became about whether he was hearing the truth. "There were too many inconsistencies and he threw up roadblocks every time I tried to pin him down and have him give me an independent means to confirm something ... plus, he embellished the story," making it more and more complicated and making it harder and harder to confirm information.
Mr. Nicodemus spoke with his editors, and we suspected that the student was lying. We decided to hold the story so we could do some more checking. The next day, as the student's story began to ravel, the student admitted to his professors that he had made the whole thing up. He ducked our reporter's attempts to reach him.
On Saturday, Dec. 24, The Standard-Times reported that story -- on Page One -- under the headline, "Federal agents' visit was a hoax." Again, we didn't name the student, at the request of the university. We also worried about the student's mental state and about the careers of professors Williams and Pontbriand, who were deeply embarrassed by the story and the wide play it got in the news media, on the Web and talk radio.
"I wasn't involved in some partisan struggle to embarrass the Bush administration," Dr. Williams said. "I just wanted the truth." And the truth of this story also is embarrassing for this newspaper because it perpetrated what was a deliberate lie. It is hardly the first time that a news source has lied to a reporter who has reported that lie, whether it be Bill Clinton's denial of a sexual affair with a White House intern or Richard Nixon's denial that he knew anything about Watergate.
But in the end, it really doesn't matter whether a source lied, especially if the lie he is telling causes harm to others, because we in the press are the ones who make it public. We must be as sure as we can that a source is telling us the truth. And it's far wiser to evaluate a source firsthand, even if it means that we don't publish a story as soon as we would like -- or at all. People bring us information for all sorts of reasons: for payback against their enemies, to further a cause they believe in, to do the right thing, to get attention from other people.
It isn't always easy to know the difference between motives that are pure and motives that are not, stories that are true and stories that are lies. We -- reporter and editors -- failed here because we put our faith in what two college professors told us. We should have held off publishing the story until we had a chance to judge the student's credibility for ourselves.
As for the student in the story, he sent an apology to Mr. Nicodemus. It said, in part: "The fact is that my being panicked about this hole (sic) event led me to unfortunately prop up my story (i.e., fabricate it), for that I have to apologize to you and to my professors. I have spoken to my family about the whole issue and the fact is that they were understandibly (sic) angry. My name has been dishonored within my family and so I will spend the rest of the winter trying to restore even a little bit of it back, at least."
"...My name has been dishonored within my family and so I will spend the rest of the winter trying to restore even a little bit of it back, at least."
And by Spring he'll be on to other activities, no doubt.
The only way pinko commies can get people to listen to them is by making up lies.
Not good enough!
I want him to admit that he is a pitiful little piece of Marzist, liberal crap, willing to lie his butt off, to destroy this nation.
I also want him to reveal his screen name, the one he uses at DU!
I'm late to this story. Is the original article on FR?
I'm going out on a limb here, but I believe that the PROFESSOR was the one who made up the story - and then he got a student to play victim AFTER the fact.
It makes a lot more sense that way. Prof makes statement, can't back it up, then finds a student to fake the story and take the rap.
Stay tuned to see if the student receives any favors or compensation from Professor Williams...
--hasn't done too well in Remedial English, either, has he-- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On second read,
"I wasn't involved in some partisan struggle to embarrass the Bush administration," Dr. Williams said. "I just wanted the truth."
Oh for crying out loud. Just because you got caught doesn't change the basic fact that, yes, you were involved in some partisan struggle to embarrass the Bush administration, "Dr." Williams. And it likely won't be the last.
The two professors were not validating the students story.. they were just saying here is what the student said to them. The student was found out to be a liar when one of the profs checked with the students parents. But the media didn't even bother to check that aspect.
THAT'S the scandal!
"The fact is that my being panicked about this hole (sic) event led me to unfortunately prop up my story (i.e., fabricate it), for that I have to apologize to you and to my professors. I have spoken to my family about the whole issue and the fact is that they were understandibly (sic) angry. My name has been dishonored within my family and so I will spend the rest of the winter trying to restore even a little bit of it back, at least."
A quasi-literate college student who fabricates stories for leftist propaganda value? No surprises there.
Really? It would be interesting to see what other "gems" of reporting have been based on Professor Williams' say-so...
He told reporter Nicodemus that he believes his own calls were tapped while he was speaking once with the foreign minister of Chechnya, scene of a bloody civil war with Russian forces and numerous acts of terrorism..
By whom? That uncorroborated accusation was based on what, exactly, Professor? Pure supposition, or do you have even a shred of evidence?
Wrong you will spend the rest of your life as a Liar!
The suspicion will always be there when he makes outrageous charges against the administration.
That's what I noticed, too. The whole story was based on double hearsay, nothing more. Not even the usual anonymous source. It was an anonymous source they didn't know and never spoke to.
I don't blame the student so much. He never retailed this story to the press or the public. At most he told a lie to his professors. Millions of people tell lies every day, but they don't get into the newspapers, and they don't expect them to.
I blame the reporter and editor for making this a headline story all over the country without ever bothering to check it. Oh, wonderful, they called Homeland Security, who never returned their call, so they decided to go with it anyway. Great fact checking.
Disgusting.
just the winter to clear that up eh?..that alone would drop you from my will
Doogle
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.