Synopsis
The St. Paul Pioneer Press, in a three-month investigation in 1999, uncovered widespread academic cheating among University of Minnesota basketball players. When the paper published its findings the day before the Gophers were to play an NCAA tournament game, the public reacted with anger against the Pioneer Press. The university's own investigation subsequently found that the cheating and misconduct had sullied Minnesota's athletic program. Three top university officials lost their jobs as a result of the scandal.
Objectives
This case may be used to teach the issues involved in the public's right to know information once a journalist has it. It goes to the heart of the question, how much reporting is enough? When is a story ready to publish? And what factors determine the answer to those questions?
The case also deals with the ethics of investigative reporting, the cultivation of sources and competition between news organizations.
Discussion Questions
Public's Right to Know
Should the Pioneer Press have run the story earlier?
How would you justify withholding the information from a citizen who asked, "Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?" When does the public's right to know kick in?
Once the paper did decide to hold off, should it have waited until the end of the tournament? Should the potential impact of a story determine when it runs?
Who were making the decisions in this story? Did they pursue the process responsibly inside the newsroom? Who should decide when the story is ready? Should the managing editor have been informed of the possible story earlier?
Ethics of Investigative Journalism
In this case the Pioneer Press investigative journalists went to great lengths to keep the investigation secret and to keep the star witness, Jan Gangelhoff, out of public view. They even kept other staff members on the paper in the dark.
Were they justified? What principles can guide journalists in deciding when to use secrecy to promote a more open society?
Does the citizen have a case? By what constitutional interpretation does one read the word 'watch-dog' into the First Amendment? Are there dangers, as the citizen implied, in the press assuming the powers of the watchdog?
Did the paper present its findings in the proper way? Should it have explained its methods and purposes up front? Why didn't its editors correctly anticipate and understand the reaction of the university and the community? What is your reaction to doing a follow-up article the next day to explain the motives of the newspaper? Should the motto of journalistic organizations be: Never explain, never apologize?
Competition
There is a nagging suspicion that this story was kept secret largely to enable the Pioneer Press to scoop the competition.
How much did the desire to make the story "Sid Proof" contribute to the investigative and reportorial methods used? Is this case did competition promote the public good?
Teaching Plan
The professor may wish to divide the lesson plan into two parts:
Other influences on professional judgment. These would include:
the impact of competition,
the impact of journalists' previous experience,
the impact of the application of standards on sourcing.
Many professors choose to teach these cases in the Socratic style. In this case, the professor could open the class with the major principle, asking the following:
Was the Pioneer Press acting to advance or retard the public's right to know?
Was the newspaper justified in treating this as an investigative story or should it have treated it as breaking news and reported the NCAA investigation right away?
You could proceed by questioning students who have taken alternative sides. Perhaps play one role yourself, maybe the president of the university or the publisher of the paper. Thus, you could have the student who favored the investigation call the president after the story was printed. As president, you would force the student to justify what he or she had done by asking questions and making accusations: "You sandbagged me! You didn't think I—or the administration generally—was honest enough to conduct our own investigation. You felt your own honesty and integrity were superior to ours. Why didn't you call me at the outset and tell me you had gotten wind of the story? Why did you assume I knew the details when I didn't? Why did you withhold information?"
Then lay out a similar series of questions for the students who take the other side, trying to force them to clarify and justify the moral and professional grounds for their opinions. Try to get the students to discuss each point and cite evidence and principle behind their decisions.
Ask factual questions as well as moral ones: Where did you get this 'watchdog' notion of the press? Who enunciated it? In what Supreme Court decision? What kind of case? Does the role apply here? Is there a moral arrogance implied in the judgment that the press should withhold information until it thinks the public is ready to hear it? Do any of the criticisms of the public have moral force or compelling evidence? Try not to give your own opinion—at least until the end of class.
A. Some questions about the public's right to know might include these:
What constraints did the paper face in devoting its resources to this story? Who determined how fast the story would advance? How was the pacing of the story affected by the sports editor's determination to make it "Sid-proof?" By the reporter's quest to handle his source effectively?
What about the decision to publish? Were the right questions asked about timing? Did the editors draw well-founded conclusions to support their decision to run the story when they did? What was the effect of their decision on the public's view of the story? On the university's view? On the newspaper itself?
B. Questions about other influences on professional judgment could include:
What specific skills and principles did each of the central actors—the reporter, the sports editor and the supervisory editors—bring to the story? What were the risks to the paper in running it? Would you have handled the story the way Lundy did, if you were executive editor?
Regarding competition, what were some of the effects of the newspaper rivalry on the early reporting? What was the effect in the end, as to when the story was published? Did more good, or more harm, come from journalistic competition?
Regarding the impact of previous experience, how did the UCLA story affect Dohrmann and Garcia-Ruiz? In what ways did it strengthen the story? In what ways did it make them behave questionably? Did the fact that the two of them had come recently to the Twin Cities make them better equipped to do this story? Did their lack of connection hurt the paper in any way? What about Vicki Gowler's previous experience with timing?
Case Analysis
A. Public's Right to Know
Timing turned out to be almost everything in this story—or so it seemed on publication day. Consider the fact that, after a huge upset loss for the Vikings in the NFC championship game, plus a long and dreary NBA strike, Minnesotans were longing for success. Now, at last, the Gophers—the only big-time college team in the state—were slated the following day to play their first-round NCAA tournament game against Gonzaga. Minnesota's hopes were riveted on them. No wonder, it seemed to many afterward, that the public response was so hugely negative.
In considering the choices the staff made, it's important to remember that they acted without knowledge that those of us reading the case now have.
No one had any idea, for example, at the beginning of the reporting, how big the story would turn out to be.
And no one knew until the pairings were announced the Sunday night before the Wednesday publication that Minnesota was going to the tournament.
With this caution in mind, consider the early decision-making. What if Dohrmann had been pulled off NBA coverage earlier? What if less time had elapsed between his contacts with Gangelhoff? Might the story have broken sooner, and its timing been less incendiary?
In pondering whether the pace of the reporting ought to have been different, it's useful to consider these views:
Lundy, says that, when Emilio first informed him about George talking to Gangelhoff, "Frankly, I wasn't too excited. I couldn't believe there was something there—or that we could prove it." Garcia-Ruiz, similarly, says that when the season started, he didn't have anyone but Dohrmann to cover it. Besides, he adds, "I didn't think we'd ever get proof of what Gangelhoff was saying."
As for the later decisions, after the pairings were announced, says Lundy, "Vicki (Gowler, the managing editor) and I had a brief conversation about the fact that this story was gonna hit somewhere around when they were going (to the tournament), and I thought some would say, 'Hey, wait a minute. Did you time this?' "
'We called the university'
"We called the university on Monday. We had some hope we could go on Tuesday. We were gonna get racks printed outside the building. I called, and they said they could do them at 7 p.m." But the university didn't call back.
By Tuesday, the paper had given the university 24 hours. Lundy was determined he would go with the story Wednesday. Even so, he said, "If they'd called and said, 'we need 48 hours,' we'd have given it to them."
As for Dohrmann, he too thinks the timing couldn't have been very different. "I really needed to give [Gangelhoff] room to breathe for a while."
Moreover, his confirming source, Donahue, was out of the country for much of the reporting period, returning only on March 1.
One other piece of information about what the journalists' expectations were, and how they influenced their decisions on timing: Both Garcia-Ruiz and Lundy contend they did not expect that the story would result in players' being declared ineligible for the tournament. As Garcia-Ruiz puts it, "There is a practice in the NCAA that, if there is an eligibility question about a player, you report it to the NCAA and then you appeal it. So, in a sense you appeal your own reporting. And the NCAA says, okay, pending us checking into this, the kid can play.
"We thought they'd suspend four kids, appeal, and the NCAA would say, you didn't have time to look into this, and they'd play."
It was noteworthy, says Garcia-Ruiz, that the university didn't end up doing that—that "whatever the kids told them that day made them decide they weren't going to appeal." In any case, he says, the assumption he and Lundy made that the players would not be kept from playing was "an expectation based on NCAA rules—that's what commonly happens when players have eligibility issues before big games."
As they look back on the brouhaha, the editors say they feel that, in fact, the timing was not as bad as it could have been. If the story had run in Sunday's larger paper, instead of the following Wednesday, would it have had more impact? Would a Sunday story perhaps have kept the Gophers out of the team selection that was to occur that day?
Pressing on in this line of thinking, Garcia-Ruiz asks: What time would have been painless? Before the big Indiana game in February? Or before the Big 10 opener in January? Was there ever a truly acceptable time?
Or, as Lundy runs though the timing possibilities: "What if we'd held it? Let's say they beat Gonzaga. Then what do we do? Let's say we held it again. Now they're in the Final Four. If we didn't run it when they were one of 64, we can't run it now. Now they're national champions. Whatever the problems are, the risk of holding it would have only multiplied those problems."
As Lundy sees it: "The only way we could not be guilty of whatever they thought we were guilty of is if we just ran the story when we were ready."
For another look at the timing issue, here's the David Brauer piece from the city magazine, "Mpls-St. Paul" in June 1999.
Before the Fall;
Was the Pioneer Press's Gopher cheating scoop carelessly timed?
by David BrauerYou know the basics: The St. Paul Pioneer Press broke a big story on alleged academic cheating in the University of Minnesota basketball program one day before the team played its first round game in the NCAA tournament. First Fan Jesse Ventura called the paper's timing "despicable." PiPress editor Walker Lundy responded, "We ran the story when it was ready to run," and threw a random insult back at the Guv. The Gophers, with four players declared ineligible, lost to unheralded Gonzaga.
Ventura's judgment was as hasty and unsupported as reporter George Dohrmann's story was credible, but I can't completely write off critics of the timing.
In an editorial column the day after the series broke, Lundy challenged those who found the timing exploitative to pick another option: run the story early before all facts could be checked; kill the story because it would hurt the U, or hold the story until the boys' tournament time had run its course.
Compelling rhetoric, but Lundy set up a straw man—his critics were either advocates of sloppy journalism, Pollyannas, or homers. The issue the paper should have considered and didn't is whether four accused players (and by extension, their blameless teammates) could receive due process 24 hours before a once-in-a-lifetime milestone.
The paper didn't consider it, Lundy says, because he didn't realize the players could lose their tournament eligibility. This from a guy who wrote "basketball is my sport" in a subsequent editor's column. Apparently executive sports editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, who helped edit the series, and Dohrmann, who covered college sports at the Los Angeles Times, didn't either. (Dohrmann refused comment. Isn't it arrogant when journalists refuse to talk, yet expect everyone to talk to them?)
A paper would optimally go all out to get the investigation done earlier, to give the facts more time to play out before a big event. It's not always possible to hustle and be fair, but for the Gopher series, PiPress brass didn't even try to push the envelope. Lundy says he and two co-editors received Dohrmann's rough draft on Friday, March 4, and didn't return it to the reporter until Monday. As early as that Friday, Lundy projected a Wednesday publication date.
Journalists can't always foresee consequences, and many think they shouldn't even consider them. But newspapers do, depending on the circumstances. For example, would Lundy publish a well-researched investigative piece on a politician the day before an election? "You would try hard not to run that sort of thing in the last 24 hours," he explains. (He says if the choice was between last-day bombshell or after-the-fact, he'd select the former.)
But Lundy isn't sure sports can be equated to politics: "Some people might argue an election is more important than a basketball game."
In other words, different game, different standards. But don't college kids, even if they may have cheated, deserve at least as much consideration as a potentially corrupt politician?
In context, the University or the NCAA had it in their power to allow the players to play, and chose not to. But the PiPress' timing put everybody else in a hurry-up defense.
In high-profile exposes critics routinely trot out profit as the motivation, but when it comes to newspapers, the charge rarely holds water. Lundy says the paper sold 8,000 extra copies on expose day; at a quarter a paper, this put a whopping $2,000 in the bank. The paper lost twenty times as much from the 200-some angry readers who canceled subscriptions.
A better theory is that credit and renown, not profit, motivates journalists. But though this story played bigger because it capitalized on NCAA tournament hype, does anybody think a U cheating scandal wouldn't have been big news in August?
As with everything else in Minnesota lately, the scandal once again showcased Ventura's mind in its "me" mode. During his "despicable" broadside, Ventura alluded to a pattern of PiPress sensationalism; I asked him for other examples. He identified PiPress associate editorial page editor Steve Dornfeld. "Every time, he writes half-truths about me. Today, he's accusing me of not reforming government—heck, I've only been here a couple of months."
Dornfeld will no doubt be pleased that his sober editorial-page columns on government policy are considered so incendiary. As for the governor, he should be relieved that when it comes to tough, damning accusations, the Pioneer Press has a higher standard of proof than he.
Lundy's Response
Asked for a more detailed response to Brauer's question about whether the timing pressures are different with sports stories and political stories, Lundy answered this way:
"With respect to the election example, I take the opposite view. Of course, we try not to run substantive election coverage in the few days before election day, primarily because it may be difficult to give both sides a chance to explain their positions, and you run the risk of sending the voters to the polls with a misimpression of the truth. At the same time, if you find yourself with a solid story that might influence voters—say, the mayor has stolen the city treasury dry—then you have an obligation to print it before the election, even if it's on election day. Imagine how you would feel if you held that story and the mayor was elected. When you ran the story the next day, the electorate would ride you out of town on a rail.
"In our case, it appeared at the time—and in fact was true—that the Gophers were about to field a team that was unqualified for NCAA tourney play. How would the Gopher fans have felt if we known Gonzaga State had players that shouldn't be playing and we held the story so as not to upset anyone. Whatever you do with either story—the mayor stealing or the university cheating—you impact the election and the game whether you run the story or hold it. The only question is which way you impact it.
"I argue the best side to come down on in such a situation is the truth. Let the chips fall where they may."
In the end, Lundy's feelings are:
"To me, I turn it around. Clearly it's a newspaper story. Almost no one argued otherwise. You have to have a reason to hold it. Is there a reason to hold it? I couldn't think of one that didn't have something to do with rooting for the home team."
B. Other influences on professional judgment:
Lundy says, "If we couldn't give them an opportunity to comment, we weren't going to put their names in the paper. If we couldn't find a player, we couldn't say he was a cheater."
Asked what he would do differently. Lundy replied, "Usually, you look back and say, 'I probably wouldn't have done that' or 'I'd have done this instead.' There's nothing in this story I would say that about. We haven't run a correction yet. It's a bulletproof story. I go to bed with a clear conscience."
Then there's the question of how the story turned out for the source. When Jan Gangelhoff appeared on Good Morning America after the story ran, she was asked why she had talked about the cheating. "Because the reporter asked me to," she replied. As Lundy said later, "These two [Jan and Dohrmann] had talked for two months, and Gangelhoff kept saying she didn't really have anything. A lot of reporters would have given up. Then, when the story ran, Gangelhoff had no idea her world was gonna turn upside down. There were TV vans outside the casino. She'd been through all this, and yet she and George have the same relationship they had from the start."
"That's one of the things I'm proudest of," says Lundy. Another is "having a sports department that didn't have to hand off a serious story."
After the university's report revealed the size of the cheating scandal, Elayne Donahue—the source who had agreed to confirm information for Dohrmann—told the Pioneer Press, "I commend Jan for coming forward. If she hadn't, nothing in basketball would have changed."
When Garcia-Ruiz and Dohrmann talk of the lessons they've learned, they list as No. 1: When you're pursuing an investigation, don't let anything stop you.
"The weirdest roads can pop open, that you never " could have imagined, says Dohrmann. He had started out investigating several possible threads of stories about the basketball program, never expecting that academic fraud would be the subject he'd end up with. "You can go after A and wind up with B, and B can be pretty damned good." said Dohrmann. But you have to be sure you're keeping your eyes out for the unexpected.
As Reader Advocate Conner puts it: "All of the reporting held up. That's the reputation we have, and I think we were really careful."
When given the first draft of the story, said Lundy: "It was clear it was a heckuva story. I really wasn't concerned that the Star Tribune would get it. Let me say, it is a really competitive environment, but I would never rush a story because of them. I wouldn't ever let them decide the timing.
He remained unconcerned about the Star-Trib beating them because "We had the discs."
Dohrmann and Garcia-Ruiz say the competition caused them to nail the story down harder. What does this mean for situations where competition doesn't exist? It's worthwhile, too, to consider what they say the competition didn't do—it didn't get them to rush it into print, do it in a slipshod way or cause other outcomes often thought to be associated with competition.
Competition can affects the financial impact of a story like this one. Among the 548 readers who quit their subscriptions to the Pioneer Press, some gradually returned. Still, by the end of September, the circulation department calculated, the paper had a net loss of 433 readers. Editors like to believe that most readers, expressing a specific beef by canceling, come back over time. As Lundy said, "If you're the only game in town, they just about have to. Here, they have an alternative."
As for competition's impact on the Star Tribune, here is what one Star Tribune staffer, who asked that his name not be used, said about the story:
"The Pioneer has pretty much clobbered the Strib on this story. They broke it clean and clear. Our leaders showed good form in the early going in acknowledging that the Pioneer had the break, didn't try to ignore it or knock it down, as sometimes happens in such matters.
"Then they publicly vowed, to the staff, that is, that we would do whatever was necessary to take over "ownership" of the story. I gather we failed at that as well. I believe that some of the subsequent breaks may have originated with us, but mostly not. Many were same-day ties, I think."
This staffer's view of the competition at large is this: "The Pioneer suffers from a David-Goliath complex about us. They hate us to a mentally unhealthy degree. And when they smelled blood on this one, they devoted the whole staff to making sure they stayed ahead on this story.... This story is not the meaning of life, but became so for them."
Garcia-Ruiz and Dohrmann were intent on not repeating an experience with UCLA that had led them to believe the NCAA will not pursue matters if it can find any way to avoid doing so. They took a number of different steps as a consequence—most of them raising the bar on standards the story had to meet. This of course also affected the timing of publication.
What if the two had not had this experience? Would they have been likelier to report the initial discovery? For example, when Dohrmann learned from Gangelhoff's letter that some report had been made, should they have gone to the university and done a story with what they learned at that time? One standard of journalism is openness. How do they square that with their decision to dive into a mode of secrecy—not even telling their own bosses at first about what they were pursuing?
Garcia-Ruiz notes that once the university's own report came out, it was clear that the situation was more than what had originally been reported was one incident of Gangelhoff typing a paper for a student.
"That's a minor nothing," says Garcia-Ruiz. "That's a brief somewhere—akin to some traffic offense. If we had gone to the university at that moment, we could have written a story that said Jan Gangelhoff was fired for typing a paper."
But, he continues, if they had reported that brief, "I don't think Gangelhoff would ever have come forward." The way we handled it, he says, "she had time to ponder whether to come forward privately. Whereas the other way, she certainly would have been contacted by the university in a much more aggressive fashion, and I doubt she would have come forward as she did."
What about whether the university itself might have pursued the matter if the paper had questioned them? "In a million years, that never would have happened," says Garcia-Ruiz, pointing out that the university's report "makes it clear that on numerous occasions, people came and said to various athletic department administrators: 'You ought to check on this woman.' And they did nothing. The report clearly shows that the administration did nothing other than this one minor report."
Most important, the sports editor believes, is that, if the paper had gone to the university at the beginning, "Gangelhoff would not have been the source. Our concern was that we thought there was more there with her than she was telling us initially. The key was getting her to turn around. The issue was... what was the best way to get her to tell us everything she knew?"
There is also the question of the value of the fresh eye that Garcia-Ruiz and Dohrmann brought, as relative newcomers to the Twin Cities. Is this a virtue, opening their minds to the possibility of wrongdoing and allowing them to see beyond the blinders that cronyism, local loyalties and team support placed on other sportswriters' eyes? Or did not having as much experience in, and identification with, the community affect their work badly? Might longer—time area residents have made different decisions about timing? About the need to explain the story?
Consider this sentiment, from a Star Tribune staffer (who wants to remain anonymous): "The big buzz around here (the Star Tribune newsroom) in the early going was that it was the management's fault we got beat because our guys were getting close to this story couple years ago and got called off by McGuire. That's an exaggeration/oversimplification, but there's something to it. Our investigative guys... were definitely on Clem Haskins' case over special treatment of athletes, and McGuire, a huge jock fan wanting to preserve the rosy glow of the Gophers big year in the Final Four, gave them the message that they should look elsewhere for their targets. It seems likely he was also interested in protecting the positive impression of Haskins and his players as part of the agenda of promoting positive non-white role models."
The issue of race
(Additional issue if time allows)
Some say one more element of this story lay underneath the emotional response to it, and that is race. This question, however, didn't surface until considerably later, when members of the Twin Cities' black community got together at a place called Lucille's Kitchen, for a public forum broadcast over a local radio station.
Their take on the Gophers scandal turned out to be that it was all about taking down the two most prominent black people at the university—Clem Haskins and McKinley Boston, both of whom ended up out of their jobs.
The race angle, as Lundy calls it, didn't come up in his staff's discussions of the initial story. But "by day three or day four," people in the newsroom were beginning to ask, "When are we going to write the race angle?" His answer: "If somebody can pitch me a story," he'd entertain the notion.
But what was the story?
As it turned out, the story broke over a cartoon, which the editorial pages (they don't report to Lundy) ran on May 18—a couple of months after the Gophers scandal broke. The cartoon depicts an all-black Minnesota team on the court, with two white-guy spectators smiling at one another, one saying: "Of course, we don't let them learn to read or write!" The caption reads: "The Plantation."
Editorial Page Editor Ron Clark had okayed the cartoon, as usual. "At the time I made the decision, I did not foresee the reaction it was going to get. What I didn't foresee was that large segments [of the community] would react with a sense that the metaphors were off-limits." What he learned, subsequently, he adds, is that — for many, "there is nothing humorous about slavery."
The cartoon, he said, "had more of a life than any cartoon" he's ever handled.
Why was that? "My take on this is that race was the unspoken issue all along."
Collateral Readings:
Powered by: Phase2 TechnologyLinks:
[1] http://www.concernedjournalists.org/node/424
[2] http://www.concernedjournalists.org/node/426
[3] http://www.concernedjournalists.org/thinking-clearly-cases-journalist-decision-making-book-info
[4] http://www.concernedjournalists.org/case-study-minnesotas-basketball-cheating-scandal
[5] http://www.concernedjournalists.org/appendix-minnesotas-basketball-cheating-scandal
[6] http://www.concernedjournalists.org/thinking-clearly-case-studies
[7] http://www.concernedjournalists.org/thinking-clearly-teaching-notes
[8] http://www.concernedjournalists.org/thinking-clearly-about-authors
[9] http://www.concernedjournalists.org/background-and-tips-case-study-teaching
[10] http://www.concernedjournalists.org/comment/reply/425#comment_form