Ooops! A hot news story about golfer Phil Mickelson being in trouble over insider-trading allegations turns out to be overblown at best ... total nonsense at worst. This intrigues me, because over the years Ive had multiple chances to see how newsrooms engage on so-called investigative stories of this kind. Its a very swampy area. The best work wins Pulitzers and deservedly so. But theres a temptation to get too close to government sources ... and to lose track of the reasons why they are talking to journalists. The feds generally dont leak their best cases. They just prosecute them. When salacious tidbits get funneled to the media, sometimes its because a case is losing momentum, and someone thinks airing a lot of theories and fact-fragments in the press might make the case move faster. I cant fault the feds and their allies for trying to plant stories that will help them in their jobs. But thats all the more reason for journalists to dig deeper. Three questions to ask: Why is this source talking to me? What isnt my source acknowledging that might be relevant to the case? And what do the people on the other side of this controversy have to say for themselves? There may still be a story in how Phil Mickelson makes such darned good investments. But thats going to be a different piece than what we read at first.
Posted on: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:18:39 +0000