Re:Re: Boston Globe Online / Metro | Region / WPRI reporter's link to club stirs ethical questions

[Dave Faneuf <tklaundry@juno.com>]

---------- "Dan Billings" <billings@suscom-maine.net> writes:
Why go to the once club in the area owned by an
employee of the TV station?
-- Dan Billings, Bowdoinham, Maine

Dave:
As you stated, convenience.  So using those criteria you wouldn't be able to do stories about any firm that anyone at the station had an interest in, including investments or family interests?  Come on, how do you decide to pick the stories you cover?  What is news and is of general interest is the way I decide what to run and quite frankly if I have access to a club (in this case) where I know I am not going to be hassled by mgmt setting down all kinds of ground rules limiting where the crew can and can not go, or what they can and can not do, what decision would you make?  Are you telling me that you would pick the most uncooperative club in your market just to make a point that it wasn't owned by anyone you know?   Disclosure of who owns the club is necessary for the story, that would be the case no matter who the owner is, also necessary to the story is whether there have been violations or not and what they are/were.  Since that partucular story never aired this is all academic, on the other hand since the crew was at the club there now exists professional and very chilling documentation of what happened which no doubt makes the investigation much easier.
df