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October 03, 2005
Email oddity
In what I consider a strange development, I received an email purporting to be from Brian Thevenot (whose bad reporting and failure to admit mistakes I heavily criticized in at least three posts). In the email, he admits his "own mistake," and argues that I didn't "expose" him because he already "exposed" himself. While I'm not sure what to make of this, I updated this post accordingly. Mr. Thevenot's admission of his "own mistake" came as news to me, because I had not seen any clear previous admission by him, nor had I seen anything confirming that he exposed himself, as he says. I know people tend not to scroll down to read updates, so here's the text of the email: From: "Sports laptop" (xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.net)And my reply: I'll note your response in an update to my post, but I reread the last report carefully and it's not clear to me where you admitted your own mistake or exposed yourself.If there is any admission that I have missed, I will certainly note it, along with my apologies to Mr. Thevenot. In any event, I was glad to see that he's at least admitting his mistake now. He is, isn't he? It's strange, but the more I thought it over, the more I wondered whether the email was in fact sent to me by Brian Thevenot. I have to assume in good faith that it was, but out of curiosity I decided to run the email's originating IP number -- 12.16.159.38 -- through arin.net. To my surprise, it appeared to be the same as the IP of a hotel in San Diego, California: OrgName: STARWOOD HOTELSThis raised my suspicions, because Brian Thevenot is a major reporter for the Times Picayune, who has claimed what's almost a proprietary interest in the story: ...we've cranked out better journalism in the last two weeks than we have the last two years, and we're getting stronger every day. And Katrina remains our story to own, and we mean to own it.Thus, I'm scratching my head over email appearing to originate from a San Diego hotel. While there's still lots of reporting to be done in New Orleans, it's certainly possible that Mr. Thevenot was in San Diego on October 1, and I suppose it's possible that his email was routed through a San Diego hotel IP. (After all, I am not much of a geek.) As of this morning, I haven't heard back from Mr. Thevenot. I hate to sound so skeptical, but something just looks odd about this. Sheesh. I can't assume anything anymore. UPDATE: In the interest of being thorough, I also forwarded a copy of my reply to Mr. Thevenot at xxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.com (one of the email addresses listed in the above email -- and the same one provided by the AJR.) MORE: As a courtesy to Mr. Thevenot, the email identifiers have been deleted. UPDATE: Brian Thevenot appears to have been in New Orleans this past weekend and not in San Diego. (No doubt there is some other explanation for the San Diego IPs on the email.) To reiterate a bit, what most bothers me in this matter are the following: I think this touches on a key difference between the blogosphere and the print media. If I said something in a blog post that turned out not to be true or quoted people whose stories turned out to be wrong, I'd correct myself by pointing out the specific error in the place where I made it. Maybe I'm missing something, but this does not strike me as a retraction: One widely circulated tale, told to The Times-Picayune by a slew of evacuees and two Arkansas National Guardsmen, held that "30 or 40 bodies" were stored in a Convention Center freezer. But a formal Arkansas Guard review of the matter later found that no soldier had actually seen the corpses, and that the information came from rumors in the food line for military, police and rescue workers in front of Harrah's New Orleans Casino, said Edwards, who conducted the review.There's nothing there to indicate that any specific story -- or any particular writer -- was incorrect. Much less where. posted by Eric on 10.03.05 at 08:54 AM
Comments
Thanks, Bonnie. I agree with you. BTW, the email is genuine, and the San Diego IP address does not mean it was sent from San Diego. Eric Scheie · October 3, 2005 10:36 PM |
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How interesting! (If the e-mail really is from Thevenot, that is.)
I do not consider his "follow-up" a proper debunking of his "own myth," especially when you consider the Sept. 27 Times-Picayune editorial "OUR OPINIONS: Hurricane-force rumors" that called for Compass and Nagin to "set the record straight."
If the Times-Picayune held itself to the same standard it holds Compass and Nagin, Thevenot's debunking would have included a forceful statement about his part in passing off rumor and hearsay as fact.
It's understandable that reporting mistakes might be made during crisis situations. However, once the floodwaters recede, a journalist should make every attempt to "set the record straight," rather than point fingers at field combatants who repeated what they heard from their men.
On this issue, Compass and Nagin make rather convenient scapegoats.