They never checked their facts.
They printed lies about Chaz.
They defended their article.
And then they issued an editor's note saying "Oops! We got stuff wrong..."
Here is that note:
Ed. Note: This story refers to a letter of reprimand received by Eric Chesanoff for a 2002 incident in which he allegedly put his arms around a student’s waist. Although the Department of Education recently supplied that letter to the Daily News, we have since learned that an arbitrator ruled in 2004 that the allegation was false and ordered the Department to remove the reprimand from Chasanoff’s file.
Not good enough.
The reporters on this story should be fired for failure to do their jobs.
Not only did they not "add value" to the knowledge of their readers by failing to check facts before acting as stenographers for the crap the DOE gave them to print, they helped to ruin somebody's reputation.
As Pissed Off Teacher wrote, these reporters are always looking to hold teachers accountable.
How come nobody holds these reporters accountable?
Hey, Reality-Based. Ben Chapman here. I appreciate your enthusiasm for this issue but I'm also compelled to defend myself and my colleagues. We told no lies about Chaz. Our reporting came straight from the investigator's reports. Your issues are with those reports, not with us. We did check our facts. I questioned DoE officials and FOILed for the records. I called Chaz many times trying to get him to speak with me. He refused. Anyway, thanks for reading and feel free to contact me if you ever wish to speak with me, bchapman@nydailynews.com
ReplyDeleteBen,
ReplyDeleteChaz refused to talk to you because he knows the way the DN treats teachers - as presumed guilty. I don't blame him for not talking to you. I know Arthur Goldstein wrote that he DID talk to you, but nothing he said to you made it into the DN piece. So why should Chaz talk to you when you'll just print whatever you want no matter what? Or worse, when you'll take something he says out of context and use it to bludgeon him? That's the experience teachers have when the DN comes calling and nothing I've seen in this episode changes that M.O.
As for the excuse that you questioned DOE officials and FOILed the records and they all back up what you printed - so what? The records were false, whoever you talked to at the DOE told you jive. You've been around long enough to know the Tweedies are pushing a political agenda and they phony up the records and the data to make their case. Any reporter worth his/her salt would look at anything a Tweedie gives them with skepticism. But not you or your colleagues, Ben. Oh, no - you printed the jive they handed you like it was gospel truth come down from the mount. Even if Chaz didn't trust you enough to talk to you, you could have checked with the arbitrator before you printed the accusation that Chaz had been reprimanded for sexual misconduct back in 2002 and found that was false.
The DN track record on teachers is horrific - the TDR coverage, the APPR coverage, the school closure coverage and the crime coverage are all written with an anti-teacher, anti-union slant (and don't even get me started on the editorial page where the DN blamed teachers for the murder of Tysha Jones!) I get why that is - you're writing for the union-busting Mort Zuckerman, so in order to get your bylines in the paper, you write the stories the way Mort wants them written. And that means vilifying teachers as greedy good-for-nothings, lazy lay-abouts and pervs.
But you do not serve truth, honesty or justice in your journalism. You act as an unofficial public relations service for Bloomberg, Walcott and the Tweedies. That's what you did here and what's worse, you don't seem all that broken up about it. A man's reputation, career and life are on the line here. But oops - we'll print a retraction that no one will see and just go about our business.