Commentary: One Very Small Step For Yolo County

Back in June, Jim Smith acknowledged the problematic nature of simply re-printing press releases.  Mr. Smith writes, “Years and years ago, The Democrat — like many other newspapers — had a policy of not publishing a “press release” from any public agency until it had been “fact checked.” Preferably, the release was taken and rewritten with appropriate attribution provided, as well as reviewed for background information with a trip to the agency, or office, in question if necessary.”

That said, this week it became very evident to myself and many in this community that the current practice of re-printing press releases verbatim under the byline of “staff” or “special to” obscured this fact in the minds of readers.  This is not about picking on one particular paper, many papers are doing it.  It is about fixing the problem.

In June, Mr. Smith continued, “So, we who work for mainstream media newspapers (which again have fewer writers than at any time in their history) have to decide if a press release warrants checking out, or running as it is, basically unchanged.”

“I don’t always get it right, but with limited staff I have to decide daily just how much time will be spent on a specific topic. Too much might erode our ability at covering something else of greater significance to the community. There are only so many hours in a day, and writers can produce only so much per day. I have to do this and still stay within our year’s budget.”

“It’s a dance I’ve never felt comfortable doing, but I know must be done for this paper to survive and be profitable,” he concluded.

Unfortunately, I think Mr. Smith realized this week that this was not a viable solution.  The most recent problem arose when the Yolo County DA’s Office sent a press release that distorted what happened during a trial that ended a week ago.  They sent out the press release on Monday, and local papers and other entities picked it up.  As most readers know by now, in that case the defendant was acquitted on the main charge, but the press release made no mention of that and even implied that he had done things that the jury had acquitted him of.

The papers, including the Sacramento Bee and the Woodland Daily Democrat, posted the article verbatim, or slightly re-written, on their websites.  The Bee ended up publishing that exact version, and on Thursday as we covered, had to run a correction.  The Woodland paper was able to at least talk to defense attorney Kathryn Druliner prior to print publication, and they inserted her comments at the end of the article.

While there were some defenders of the press release, the majority of the people on this site acknowledged that the practice is problematic and misleading.

To me, there were three basic solutions.  The ideal would have been simply to have a reporter call up and get both sides of the story.  That would produce a fairer and more balanced picture.  The drawback is that it would take up staff time that perhaps the papers lack.  The second solution would be not to run the story at all.  Two drawbacks to that are that the public would not be informed about what happened and the newspapers would have to find another way to fill that space.

The third solution would have been to simply change the byline.  It does not cost anything and at least the people will know the source of the article was not the newspaper.  The drawback is, of course, if the story is inaccurate, then it is inaccurate regardless of the headline and the public would have no way to know.  But at least there is a disclaimer that this came from a source that may be biased and the typical person could weigh that.

Now this morning I opened the Woodland Daily Democrat website and saw an article about a Davis Man Convicted of Vehicle Burglary.  But this time something was different.

The byline now properly reads, “The Yolo District Attorney’s Office.”

I am not here gloating, I am not going to rub it, I think Jim Smith is a good and decent man.  I do not believe for a second he was trying to mislead people.  I think he feels horrible about having to make the decisions he has had to make.  I hope some day things turn around for the newspaper industry and people like Jim Smith can conduct their newsrooms the way they would wish for them to be run.

But from the standpoint of this county and this community, something needed to change.  This change costs the local papers nothing, and tells the public what they need to know when they read the article – that the article was written by a member of the DA’s office, not a member of the impartial press.

To me that is a viable solution, I can live with it.  It is a small victory.  But an important one.  My hat is off to Jim Smith and the rest of his staff for making a change, and I can only hope the Davis Enterprise and Sacramento Bee will follow suit.  We still have work to do, however, as the same article this morning appears in the Enterprise under the byline, “Enterprise Staff.”

Now, I am sure the Woodland paper will be happy to know that the focus of our and the public’s concerns will shift away from their newspaper and back to the government entity, which is really what we are all here for.

—David M. Greenwald reporting