Determination 117: Rachael Martin v. Duluth News-Tribune
Attending the hearing was the complainant, Rachael Martin, director of the Fairlawn Mansion and Museum in Superior, Wisconsin. Representing the Duluth News-Tribunewere Craig Gemoules, managing editor; Steve Aggergaard, city editor; Chuck Frederick, reporter; and Jim Heffernan, editorial page editor.
Background: On October 31, 1996, the Fairlawn Mansion and Museum hosted a Murder Mystery Dinner. Guests were asked to dress and act as if it were 1918 and they were attending a Mother Goose costume party at the home of a wealthy widow, played by Martin. One woman attended the party in blackface and, as part of the evening’s program, recited the nursery rhyme “Ten Little Nigger Boys.”
On Thursday, November 7, News-Tribune reporter Chuck Frederick called Martin to ask about the Murder Mystery Dinner. Martin answered several of his questions, then asked why he was interested one week after the event had taken place. Frederick said the paper had received a complaint from one of the guests about the guest in blackface and he was working on a potential story.
On Friday, November 8, the News-Tribune published a story describing the Murder Mystery Dinner and reporting that a guest had attended in blackface and had won first prize for her costume. The story also reported that some guests and community members were offended by what they perceived as a racist incident. After reading the story, Martin faxed the paper a letter to the editor apologizing to anyone in the community who was offended by the guest’s blackface costume.
On Saturday, November 9, the News-Tribune published a follow-up news story about the event that contained quotes from Martin’s as-yet-unpublished letter to the editor. The same day, the paper ran an editorial denouncing the event at Fairlawn.
On Sunday, November 10, the News-Tribune published Martin’s letter to the editor. The paper published numerous other letters on the subject during the two months that followed the event, and stories about the controversy were published in papers around the country.
The Museum’s board of directors issued a press release on November 19 apologizing for the situation, but supporting Martin. On November 22, the News-Tribune published a story reporting that the NAACP was considering asking for Martin’s resignation. Two days later, the paper published an editorial criticizing the incident at Fairlawn, but saying Martin should not lose her job.
Complaint: Martin complained that the first news article was inaccurate and inflammatory, and that the ensuing coverage was unfair to her personally. She cited two errors as most damaging: the story’s lead paragraph reported that the guest in blackface won first prize when, in fact there was no first prize, every participant won a prize; and the version of “Ten Little Nigger Boys” quoted in the story was a different, more violent version than the one read at the event. She said the Duluth News-Tribune sensationalized and exploited the event at Fairlawn, causing great suffering to the community, to her organization, and to her professional reputation.
Martin also said the story lacked balance because it did not make clear that the guest’s actions were out of her control and that she did not know that a guest in blackface would be attending. She also complained that the story did not give her credit for upholding the guest’s First Amendment rights. Martin said that it was unfair that she, rather than the guest in blackface, became the focus of the coverage and that she was the subject of personal attacks in editorial cartoons. She rejected the paper’s contention that she became the focus because she declined to release the guest list; she said it was not her responsibility to do the paper’s reporting.
Martin also complained that her letter to the editor was used without her permission as part of the follow-up news story of November 9 and not published in full until November 10. She said she had no idea something like that could happen and was furious when it did. Martin said she submitted the letter to be published as her full statement to the community about the blackface costume, not to be presented in parts to suit the newspaper’s needs.
Response: The Duluth News-Tribune responded that it did not intend to hurt Martin personally or professionally, and denied that it sensationalized the story. Rather, the paper said, it was trying to find out the truth about a situation it deemed newsworthy, especially in the context of what it called its concerted effort to cover “subtle racism” in the Twin Ports area.
Managing Editor Gemoules said the paper placed the story on the front page because there had been a great deal of public discussion that summer about racism in the area, which has a population that is 97% white. The News-Tribune said it tried to keep the focus off Martin, but that was difficult because she kept the guests’ identities from the paper and she took responsibility for the incident by offering a public apology.
The News-Tribune said it took extra time to report this story because it was more important to be fair and accurate than to beat the competition. The paper said it received the call of complaint about the guest in blackface one week before it published the first story about the incident. The News-Tribune said the reporter used that time to develop the story and to put the incident in the context of local concerns about subtle racism and the national debate about dealing wiyth historical racism. The paper said it took the highly unusual step of reading the story to Martin prior to publication to ensure accuracy.
Regarding Martin’s complaint about excerpting her letter to the editor in the follow-up news story, the News-Tribune said the reporter called Martin for her comments for the follow-up news story. Martin declined to comment for publication, but said she was composing a letter to the editor that she would fax to the paper later that day. The editors’ considered the information contained within the letter so significant to the story that it would have been unfair to Martin not to include it in the story. The News-Tribune did not then run letters to the editor on Saturdays (the day the news story ran) and felt that it would be wrong to do so with her letter because readers would not know to look for it. Further, instead of allowing for the usual lag time between submission and publication of a letter, the paper said it spent extra time and money recomposing the Sunday editorial pages to publish Martin’s letter. Even more beneficial for Martin, it said, the paper’s Sunday circulation is significantly larger than on other days of the week.
Discussion: Council member Carol Pine asked Martin if she had reviewed the first news story before publication as the paper had claimed she had. Martin said she had not seen the story in full, but that when Frederick called back after interviewing her on November 7 to confirm that a story would appear on the next day’s front page, he read to her only the parts that quoted her. Council member Mollie Hoben asked theNews-Tribune when it had let Martin review the story in full. Frederick said that he let Martin read the story when he interviewed her in her office in the afternoon of November 7, he remembered, because it was the only time they had a face-to-face meeting. Martin disputed Frederick’s answer, saying that when he came to her office, he said he still did not know if the paper would publish a story.
Council member Don Smith asked Martin if she agreed that the event was newsworthy, and if so, how she would have liked to see it reported. Martin said she did not think the incident itself was newsworthy, but that it presented opportunities for good journalism — opportunities the newspaper missed. For example, she said, the paper could have explored the First Amendment rights of the guest in blackface who paid to attend the event in a public building, or what the private, non-profit organization hosting the event could have done had it considered the guest’s costume inappropriate, or how to present parts of history that offend people.
Council member Terry Thompson asked Martin to explain her reaction to the guest in blackface. Martin said that blackface offends her deeply, as she is a strong proponent of civil rights. She said that while she was horrified by the costume, she also had a job to do. Martin said that in keeping with her character, she asked the woman which nursery rhyme she was representing and the guest responded by showing her the copy of the poem, which was not the same as the one quoted in the paper.
Council member Dave Hage asked the News-Tribune if the version of the nursery rhyme quoted in the story was shown to Martin prior to publication. Frederick said several lines of the nursery rhyme were contained in the story that he showed to Martin, but conceded that it was later edited. He said he obtained that version of the nursery rhyme from the library and read it to the guest who complained and to the two anonymous sources, all of whom agreed that that was the poem the guest in blackface recited at the event.
Martin responded that Frederick did not read to her excerpts of the poem contained in the story, that he said only the title of the poem and asked her if that was the poem the guest in blackface had read. She responded yes because she did not know there were different versions of the poem until she read the paper the next day.
Council member Nedra Wicks asked the paper if it had sought out a spokesperson other than Martin; for example, the president of the Museum’s board of directors. Frederick said that he contacted as many board members as he could, but none was at the party or knew about the incident, and they referred him back to Martin.
Council member Tom Keller asked the paper why, if it took an entire week to ensure the accuracy of its report, it led the story with the inaccurate fact that the blackface costume won first prize. Frederick said the paper maintains that fact is accurate because the guest who complained told him that the guest in blackface had won a prize for best costume; a fact that he said two anonymous sources and Martin all corroborated.
Council member Laurisa Sellers asked the paper to explain its policy on using unnamed sources. Managing Editor Gemoules said that generally the paper frowns on using unnamed sources but may use them if they have first-hand knowledge of the information they’re providing and if he knows the sources’ names. Gemoules also pointed out that this story did not quote unnamed sources, but used them only to corroborate information given by on-the-record sources.
Council member Maureen Reeder asked the News-Tribune if it traditionally excerpts parts of letters to the editor in news stories. Editorial page editor Jim Heffernan said that that issue doesn’t come up very often, but that it has happened before. On the infrequent occasions when he receives a letter to the editor pertaining to a hot news item, he said, he will take it to the news editors for their consideration and possible use. Reeder then asked the news editors if they traditionally ask for a writer’s permission to use a letter to the editor in a news story. City Editor Aggergaard said that during his years with the News-Tribune this was the first time he was faced with such a situation. Heffernan added that the paper considers anything written to it usable on receipt, and that readers understand that letters may be edited for style and syntax.
Martin responded that she never would have expected her letter to the editor to be used in the news pages. Having said that, Martin said that Heffernan had told her it usually takes several days before a letter to the editor is printed, and she appreciated that he made the effort to publish it in Sunday’s paper.
Council member Syl Jones asked the paper if, in the future, it would excerpt letters to the editor in news stories without a writer’s permission. Gemoules answered yes, and clarified that in this case, when the reporter called Martin for her comments for the follow-up news story, he reasonably interpreted Martin’s statement that she was submitting a letter to the editor to mean that her comments could be taken from her letter.
Council member Ann Barkelew asked the paper if it considered other ways of running Martin’s letter to the editor on the news page, such as running it in full in a separate box, as the Star Tribune had done recently with a letter from Louise Erdrich about a story on her late husband Michael Dorris. Gemoules answered that virtually all of Martin’s letter was quoted in the story, though not together in one place. He said at the time they didn’t feel obligated to run the whole letter but, in retrospect, they could have.
Council member Jim Pumarlo told Martin he appreciated that she did not expect to see parts of her letter to the editor in the news story, but asked her what harm it had done. Martin responded that it was unfair for the paper to excerpt her letter because in so doing, it ceased to be a complete statement by her, but rather was used by the paper to fit its needs.
Deliberation: Wicks said that she would have liked the paper to expand accountability for what happened at the Fairlawn event. Reeder agreed, saying the paper placed the blame for what happened only on Martin when it could have asked why other guests or employees didn’t speak up at the event. Barkelew countered that when Martin refused to release the guest list or the name of the guest in blackface, she allowed for fewer sources that could have taken the focus off of her.
Smith said he felt the incident was a news story that needed to be printed. “I don’t believe the article itself was inflammatory, I think it’s an issue that inflames the public,” he said. “You can’t write about it without reaction, and I’m impressed with the balance in the coverage.” Council member John Kostouros agreed: “This was one of the better jobs I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “These things stir up a hornets nest.”
Jones said that as a person of color (he is African-American), he found it frightening that a situation like this had happened. “It’s also frightening that the paper can’t even identify who did it, and that parts of the community, including you, Ms. Martin, cover up who did it.” Jones acknowledged that the paper was trying to do a good job of covering the issue, but was handicapped by not having more people of color on staff to inform its discussion.
Sellers said that while she didn’t think the news coverage was unfair, she also didn’t think it was a great story. She said the paper missed a lot of opportunities, as Martin had pointed out.
Kostouros said that although he could understand why Martin wanted her letter published it its entirety, he could not see the problem with how it was used, considering it quoted her letter accurately. Smith agreed, saying its use actually made a stronger argument for fairness in that her statement was published twice. Hage said he has worked in both news and editorial departments and is “troubled by leakage through the firewall.” In this case, however, he was satisfied that the paper was acting in good faith.
Pumarlo said he could understand how the reporter could have interpreted Martin’s letter to the editor as comments for publication. However, had the situation occurred at his paper, the Red Wing Republican Eagle, he said he would have published the full letter alongside the news story on Saturday and would have disclosed that it would appear in the letters-to-the-editor section on Sunday.
Other members were troubled by the use of Martin’s letter to the editor in the follow-up news story. Reeder said that readers think of the news and editorial departments as separate entities. “I know if I’m not happy with the news, I can go to the editorial page,” she said. “It lessens my trust in the editorial page if I think my opinions may be shuffled over to the news department.” Reeder added that she would not be so bothered if the news editors had obtained Martin’s permission.
Hoben sympathized with Martin and other news sources who submit letters to the editor. She said after cooperating with a paper’s agenda and pace, she could understand why news sources would want their letters to be published in full as their statements, separate from the confines of news stories.
Sellers agreed with Hoben. “I think of the editorial page as the place where I have my say,” she said. “I appreciate the paper’s good faith, but I assume (that page) is for me.”
Determination: The Council voted to deny the complaint that the Duluth News-Tribune’s coverage of the Fairlawn event and its aftermath was unfair to Rachael Martin, director of the Fairlawn Mansion and Museum.
Concurring: Amaris, Barkelew, Hage, Hoben, Jones, Kostouros, LeGrand, Pine, Pumarlo, Reeder, Sellers, Smith, Thompson, Wicks
Dissenting: Keller
Abstaining: Anderson
The Council voted to uphold the complaint that it was unethical for the Duluth News-Tribune to quote in a news story from Martin’s as-yet-unpublished letter to the editor.
Concurring: Amaris, Barkelew, Hoben, Jones, Keller, Reeder, Sellers, Thompson
Dissenting: Hage, Kostouros, LeGrand, Pine, Pumarlo, Smith, Wicks
Abstaining: Anderson
Tags: Duluth News-Tribune