How a Florida newspaper handled a cop sex sting tape
The story alone is plenty powerful: a high-ranking Fort Myers, Florida, police officer was accused of engaging in a sex act with a woman at a massage parlor during an undercover prostitution sting.
But the Fort Myers News-Press had more. It had the video.
What to do with that video became an intense newsroom discussion and, ultimately, the most powerful part of the News-Press’ presentation.
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Capt. Jay Rodriguez. (Photo: Fort Myers Police Department)
First, the background. This alleged incident took place in March of 2013. A complaint against Capt. Jay Rodriguez claimed that Rodriguez was working undercover at the massage parlor. It goes on to say that Rodriguez didn’t know how to work a hidden camera and when he thought he had turned it off, he had not. The video later was meant to be deleted, but instead was uploaded. It’s appears from the audio that Rodriguez receives a sex act from a worker in the massage parlor.
Somehow, the video was obtained by O’Neil Kerr, a former police officer who once worked for Rodriguez. Kerr had a contentious relationship with Rodriguez, according to the paper. After filing a complaint late last year against Rodriguez for the massage parlor incident and giving the city a copy of the video on Feb. 8, Kerr was frustrated by the lack of action. So he gave a copy of the video to the News-Press earlier this week.
“We had a lot of discussion about what we should do with the video,’’ said Melanie Payne, one of the reporters on the story. “There was no question about what the video revealed, but we had to figure out how to handle it.”
H. Leo Kim, director of visuals for the News-Press and Naples Daily News, said that once it was established that it was Rodriguez in the video, two questions had to be answered before putting the video on the paper’s website.
One: Was the video real? Kim said he went through the video frame by frame at various points to look for any irregularities such as changes in the time stamp or odd edits or anything that made it look like the video had been doctored or staged.
Two: How much could they show to accurately portray what had occurred, but not so much as to offend its audience?
There was one more thing. The News-Press considered that the woman in the video might have been part of a human-trafficking situation.
“The last thing we wanted was to victimize her one more more time,’’ Kim said.
So Kim went through several edits, making sure you could never see her face or anything that felt gratuitous. He took a 17-minute video and edited it down to 1 minute, 17 seconds. It was enough to show Rodriguez going to the massage parlor, negotiating a price and then, later, putting his pants back on.
“We needed to establish that, yes, this was the guy,’’ said Payne, who did see the whole video and described to me what she saw and heard. “But we wanted to do it the right way.’’
Read the story to get more details, including possible corruption inside the Fort Myers police department. The News-Press should be commended for how it handled the video — from vetting it to editing it and, ultimately, publishing it. As I read the story, I understood all the details of the case. But seeing the video put me inside the massage parlor and, quite frankly, gave me a nauseous feeling. It showed just how wrong it all was in a way mere words could not.
The News-Press deserves credit for a job done well, respectfully and responsibly.
Papers dropping cartoon
Newspapers across the country are dropping the cartoon Non Sequitur after its cartoonist Wiley Miller apparently hid a profane message directed at President Donald Trump. In the corner of a middle panel last Sunday’s strip, Miller drew the words, “Go f*** yourself Trump.’’
In a statement, Miller apologized, saying it was a mistake:
“I now remember that I was particularly aggravated that day about something the president had done or said, and so I lashed out in a rather sophomoric manner as instant therapy. It was NOT intended for public consumption, and I meant to white it out before submitting it, but forgot to.”
That wasn’t good enough for many papers. At least two dozens papers have dropped the strip.
Beryl Love, executive editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, told the Enquirer, “We support the cartoonist’s right to free speech, but this was a subversive and unprofessional act that violated The Enquirer’s standards.”
At the Tampa Bay Times, executive editor Mark Katches wrote, “… this transgression can’t be forgiven. It was a juvenile act that showed horrifyingly bad judgment. We’re sorry it made it into print.”
Other papers that have dropped the strip include the Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune and Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Mike Wilson, editor of the Dallas Morning News, was quoted in his paper as saying, “We don’t mind political commentary in comics, as long as we have a chance to vet it and it meets our standards for publication. Unfortunately, this time the artist decided to go around his editors and even his own syndicate to publish something he must have known we wouldn’t accept. We can’t trust him, so we are done with Non Sequitur.”
Wilson hits on the main problem here. There’s simply no way a newspaper can vet every single cartoon it runs. It has to trust the cartoonist and that cartoonist’s editors to not do anything offensive.
In his column, Katches wrote, “We haven’t had the bandwidth to edit the strips ourselves.” Katches also wrote that his paper will now be forced to review its process for vetting cartoons.
It’s difficult to imagine there’s a whole lot papers can do. Many newspapers barely have enough reporters and editors to cover essential beats. Having someone dedicate hours to going through every single panel of every single cartoon trying to find hidden messages is a luxury few, if any, papers have.
Meantime, Wilson likely speaks for many editors when he said dropping the cartoon was one of the “easier editing decisions we will make all year.” A syndicated cartoon simply isn’t worth angering readers.
Miller might have done some serious damage here. Not just to himself, but to the media. Many Americans already believe the media has in it for Trump, and what Miller did only feeds that belief. Through no fault of their own, newspapers might pay for Miller’s childish and irresponsible attempt at humor.
Time to debate
Is is time to start planning presidential candidate debates? Apparently. The Democratic National Committee already has sanctioned 12 debates for the 2020 presidential primaries. Six will take place in 2019 and six more in 2020.
Now we know who will broadcast the first one in June. NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo will host it, likely over two nights because there could be as many as 20 candidates come summer. Speaking of which, The Atlantic’s David A. Graham has a nice summary of what the field could look like.
Check it out
I love reading the New York Post because of stories like this.
He stopped selling Nike in his sporting goods store because of Colin Kaepernick. Now his store is closing. The Washington Post tells the story.
I’ve always been a huge fan of singer-songwriter Ryan Adams. But this New York Times report makes Adams look pretty creepy. … And, according to The Guardian’s Laura Snapes, Adams just might be the tip of the indie-music iceberg.
Jake Malooley is one of the writers whose work was lifted by former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson in her book “Merchants of Truth.” So Malooley interviewed her for Rolling Stone.
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