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08/31 2010

Does Mike Florio Really Think Mike Wise Should Be Fired? We Asked.

Posted by Dan Levy.

Mike Florio has a big hammer in our internet media world. He’s earned everything he gets as he built PFT from nothing to a verifiable internet monster. Some people are giving Florio credit today for Mike Wise’s one-month suspension from the Washington Post. Whether or not that’s true (note: I don’t believe it is) Florio, himself, wrote this on PFT:

Frankly, Wise should be glad he wasn’t fired.  Armed with the relevant Postpersonnel policies, including the one regarding the use of social media, a semi-competent lawyer (or me) would have Wise admitting within five minutes or less that his employment should be terminated for cause.

That seemed awfully heavy handed to me, considering it was a joke. A terrible joke (for which Wise has apologized on this site, his own radio show and on Twitter). Wise learned the first rule of being funny: be funny.

I’m somewhere in the middle on the whole “journalistic integrity” thing though. ETHICS have become a four-lettter word. Heck, a site that linked to our interview with Wise yesterday took every single quote I transcribed and put it on their site. Sure, it had a link, but is THAT ethical to take an entire post and add 50 words of your own? Is what we do…taking a graph here or there and framing a story around it ethical? Is, in this particular case, making a ill-fated joke that people took as a legit story ethical?

Frankly, I’m not sure, and if Wise thinks he was righty suspended it’s not going to be me to soapbox on his behalf. But fired? FIRED? That had to be a joke, right? At least, it had to be Florio making a point. He can’t actually believe that… can he?

Rather than rant, or speculate, I asked.

Florio, for full disclosure, has always been very generous with his time for me and until a month ago we both received checks from the same media company (his was probably bigger than mine). So, in full, Florio’s response to my question of whether he was serious, or if he wrote Wise should be fire just for shock value (he even put the quote marks in for me):

“I am not a trained journalist, but I have learned a lot about the industry over the past 10 years.  In The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel articulate nine ‘clear principles that journalists agree on.’  At the top of the list, ‘Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.’

“Wise committed a deliberate and premeditated breach of that concept, in the hopes of inducing others (journalists or not) to spread his untruth.  It resulted in multiple media outlets believing it, and repeating it.  Throughout the country, there are likely hundreds if not thousands of people who saw only the first report, missed the follow-ups, and thus continue to believe that Ben Roethlisberger will be suspended five games.

“I have assumed that termination of employment represents the standard penalty for intentionally fabricating news.  That’s precisely what Wise did.  Even if he had a good reason for doing it, and few reasonable minds would agree that he did, Wise perpetrated a fraud on the journalism community in the hopes that the journalism community would then perpetrate the fraud on their readers.  To what end?  To prove that people regard as credible the words of people who are supposed to at least try to be credible?

“The premise for the hoax makes no sense, and Wise’s excuses are riddled with the kind of holes and inconsistencies that would allow a skilled lawyer to tie him in knots on a witness stand.  But the fundamental problem is that he committed what is — or at least should be — a mortal sin for any journalist.  He intentionally and deliberately fabricated a report.  I can imagine no greater offense to his profession than that.

“Though some may believe I have a bias against Mike Wise because, for whatever reason, he has a bias against me, I’ll admit that I find his narrow-minded and unfair assessment of what I do to be troubling.  But I believe that any journalist who intentionally and deliberately fabricates a report has no business being a journalist.  That opinion applies to Mike Wise or anyone else who has employment in that field.”

The pull-out line, for the record (I’ll bold): “He intentionally and deliberately fabricated a report.  I can imagine no greater offense to his profession than that.”

The issue, of course, is how we treat Twitter in comparison to other forms of media. He did not write this in the paper and did not say it on his radio show with any semblance of veracity. So do we take Twitter as gospel?

And with Wise being suspended at the Post, what does this say about the low level of accountability in radio? He’s on the radio talking about his suspension. Tony Kornheiser was suspended from ESPN for talking about Hannah Storm ON HIS RADIO SHOW, yet was not suspended from that radio show. The lesson here…saying stuff on radio, or doing comedy experiments for your radio show, can get you in trouble. Just not on radio.

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Posted on August 31, 2010 at 12:12PM

 

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