Mar. 14, 2006: McClatchy's Pruitt On "Credibility"

On March 14, 2006, the same day Crystal Mangum made self-contradicting and transparently false charges of gang rape and other felonies that 10 days later would become headline news, the Raleigh News & Observer published an op-ed by Gary Pruitt, CEO of it’s parent McClatchy News Company.

Although its stock price had in the past few years fallen more than 33% in a rising market and during growing economy; and despite warnings by many that McClatchy was taking on debt that could break the company, Pruitt was upbeat.

Newspapers had a great future, he said, because they told readers the truth. That gave them “credibility” and enabled citizens to gather in a “shared middle” where they could “basically agree about the facts and issues.”

Their “credibility” gave newspapers a place at the “center of democracy” despite what their critics might say.

Here’s some of what Pruitt said in that March 14 op-ed about his company’s recent purchase of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain and the future of newspapers.

I follow with comments below the star line.

Pruitt told N&O readers - - -

… People in the newspaper industry have got a lot riding on this -- our jobs and reputations, for starters; but the stakes for society are far higher.

Self-government depends on continuous civic conversation, which in turn depends on people having a common vocabulary. Without a shared sense of what the problems are, there's little hope of finding solutions.

That shared middle -- a place where people basically agree about the facts and the issues, even if they differ over what to do about them -- is where we believe our responsibilities as newspaper owners lie.

And it is under assault by spinmeisters, partisans and ideologues. They all have their place in a democracy -- but it is not in the center. Our place is. …

Pruitt’s entire op-ed’s here.

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My Comments:

Just 10 days after it published Pruitt’s op-ed, the N&O “broke” what became known for months as “the Duke lacrosse case.” The N&O’s story seven times referred to the then anonymous Mangum as the “victim” or with the possessive “victim’s,” never once using the traditional qualifier “alleged” to remind readers the accuser’s extraordinarily serious charges were just that: charges.

The N&O has so far refused to explain why its reporters and editors decided to call Mangum “the victim” knowing that they were thereby immediately casting the Duke lacrosse players as her victimizes.

The next day, March 25, the N&O ran a five-column, above the fold, page one headline telling readers about a woman’s “ordeal” which ended “finally” in “sexual violence.”

Only the N&O didn’t put qualifying quotation marks around “ordeal,” “finally” and “sexual violence.”

The N&O led readers to believe there was no doubt about what it was reporting.

In case any readers did doubt, a short way into the story the N&O said it had granted “the young mother” anonymity for an interview because its policy was to do that for “victims of sex crimes.”

There was much more in that “sexual violence” story that the N&O knew was false.

There was also much more the N&O knew that was exculpatory for the players but which it withheld from the story and didn’t publish for another 13 months; and then only after the NC attorney general had declared innocent the three young man indicted in the frame-up attempt.

I’ve posted on some of that before and will be posting again on it as we move through the 3-year anniversary of what was a transparent hoax followed by a frame-up attempt and its ongoing cover-up.

For now, I’ll just close with this:

Since March 14, 2006 many factors have interacted to influence the price of McClatchy’s stock.

I don’t know how much, if any, weight you’d give the credibility of the N&O and the other McClatchy papers as a factor influencing McClatchy’s stock price.

There are those, including journalists, who maintain credibility isn’t much of a factor influencing news organizations' stock prices.

In fact, thinking back over McClatchy and N&O reports of the company’s financial situation, I can’t recall a single instance when loss of credibility among readers and advertisers was cited as a factor influencing the calamitous plunge in McClatchy’s corporate fortunes and share price.

Be that as it may, on March 13, 2006 when the N&O put Pruitt’s op-ed “to bed” for delivery the next day, McClatchy’s share price stood at $52.99.

Yesterday, March 13, 2009 its stock price closed at .52 cents a share.

Make of that what you will.