Friday, July 14, 2006
Tempest In A Specimen Cup
By Jesse Leavenworth
Hartford CourantPublished: 7/12/2006
Excerpt:
Bridgeport Mayor John Fabrizi recently issued a challenge. It was reminiscent of a baseball slugger's faded promise and the foolhardy dare that ultimately sank another politician on a boat called "Monkey Business."
After tearfully confessing on June 19 to using cocaine in office, Fabrizi proclaimed himself drug-free and willing to be tested "any time, any place, anywhere." The big questions then became: Was he telling the truth, and who would take him up on the testing offer?
Those questions lingered until July 5, when Connecticut Post Managing Editor Michael Daly asked Fabrizi for a private meeting. Post leaders had decided earlier to press the mayor on his unqualified offer.
"He came down to the paper and I made the offer and he said, 'Let's go right now,' " Daly said. "It took me back a little bit, but I wasn't going to interrupt the flow of things."
The urine Fabrizi submitted that day to a laboratory chosen by the Post showed no sign of drugs. Fabrizi was vindicated, but the Post's direct and ongoing role in monitoring the mayor's sobriety (Daly said Fabrizi has agreed to have his hair tested for drugs and release results to the newspaper) is unusual but defensible in this specific instance. ...
...At least one veteran journalist, thought it might have been inappropriate.
"Not being able to think of any precedent for this, it sort of worries me as someone who thinks a lot about news standards," said Roy Peter Clark, vice president of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in Florida. "There's a difference between covering a process by which maybe the city council might hold somebody accountable as opposed to essentially handing him the cup. ...
"Would a newspaper ever ask a public official to take a lie-detector test?" Clark asked.
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