RON AND DON

Acknowledging ‘Atlantic’ mistake is not an apology

May 25, 2016, 2:32 PM | Updated: 2:46 pm

Sally Bagshaw...

Sally Bagshaw was one of five on the Seattle City Council to vote against vacating a section of a SoDo street for a new sports arena. (AP)

(AP)

Erica C. Barnett is sorry.

Wait. That’s not quite right because sorry is the one word she didn’t use in acknowledging her false allegation against the “Ron and Don Show” on KIRO 97.3 FM.

But while Barnett may not be sorry, that’s exactly what her explanation is: sorry. As in pathetic. But before explaining why, it’s important to explain what happened.

Barnett is a local reporter here in Seattle. She has written for The Stranger, for PubliCola, and for Crosscut. That’s not a complete listing of her resume, just a sampling to make it clear that she has been published before and should be familiar with the standards and protocol that go along with making sure that journalism is, you know, non-fiction.

This week she was the author of a piece published by The Atlantic’s website regarding the misogynistic reaction directed at the five female city council members after they voted against vacating Occidental Street just south of Safeco Field. That vote was important because vacating the two blocks of what is essentially a glorified alleyway would have been the next step toward building a basketball and hockey arena south of Safeco Field. The street vacation was voted down, blocking the development of the arena.

But in describing the chain of events that triggered a wave of anti-women insults, Barnett made a statement that was unsourced – and more significantly – untrue. She wrote that radio hosts Ron Upshaw and Don O’Neill directed scrutiny upon council member Sally Bagshaw after the vote:

“two local FM radio shock jocks, known on air as ‘Ron and Don,’ started giving out Bagshaw’s number on the air and relentlessly urging listeners to call her office. They complied, leaving messages Bagshaw summarizes as: ‘You c***. You w****. You b****.’ “

Except there were no stars in her account. The words were spelled out in The Atlantic.

Uh oh. “Ron and Don” not only didn’t stoke the discontent over the arena vote but actually spoke in support of the women who voted against the street vacation.  O’Neill stated, “I agree with the ladies.”

The Atlantic subsequently erased that passage, explaining the reason for the change in a footnote, and clarifying that O’Neill spoke in support of the vote.

Mistakes happen. They happen way more often than any journalist would ever want, and the unfortunate reality of the profession is those errors are seen by the world. There’s even a saying among journalists on the very public nature of errors: A lawyer’s mistake gets locked in jail, a doctor’s mistake gets buried, but a journalist’s mistake gets placed on the front page.

All you can do after a mistake is apologize, perhaps explain, and above all be accountable. That’s what made Barnett’s acknowledgment of the error so infuriating. She argued the significance of the story dwarfed the impact of the error.

Actually, the weight of the subject made it worse that she blamed a show for helping trigger the abuse when that show not only didn’t do that but did the exact opposite.

Here’s a line-by-line dissection of Barnett’s acknowledgment, which was published Tuesday night. The text of her acknowledgment is listed in bold with my analysis below:

The Atlantic, in collaboration and full communication with me, issued a correction today about an anecdote in a story about the misogynistic attacks on the five female city council members after they voted against a street vacation for a new arena.

Let’s make this clear: The gender-based nature of the insults – the misogyny – aimed at the council members is awful. I think we can all agree on that. It should make us examine the chauvinism that became evident from some local sports fans and think about the respect – or lack thereof – given to female leaders.

In this anecdote, which was ancillary to the main story about the attacks, I said that the radio hosts “Ron and Don” gave out council member Sally Bagshaw’s phone number on their show and encouraged listeners to call her about the arena after she voted in favor of the street vacation in committee.

Erica, a journalist who cares about accuracy doesn’t minimize the significance of the error. That’s exactly what you’re doing by stating this issue “was ancillary to the main story about the attacks.” There’s even a 25-cent word thrown in there to make it clear just how insignificant the whole thing was. Pffft. Ancillary. How insignificant.

Also, we have yet to hear an admission of a mistake, let alone an expression of regret.

I wrote this anecdote based on Bagshaw’s recollection, in which she told me the story I described in the piece.

So ol’ Sally Bagshaw told you something. You still haven’t explained what she told you, let alone whether it was wrong or not.

In retrospect, although this was an anecdote (and not, as many seem to think, the subject of the story), I should have asked Ron and Don to verify or deny Bagshaw’s account. I did not do so because I consider Bagshaw, whom I have covered for many years on other subjects, a reliable source, and still do.

We’re three paragraphs deep and you’ve now told us – twice – how insignificant … errr … ancillary this whole issue is yet you haven’t used the word “mistake.” Or “error.” Or “potentially defamatory allegation” for that matter.

You’ve admitted you needed to do a little extra legwork here. Hmmm, silly me, I thought the mistake was that the radio show you cited as steering animosity toward a female council member not only DID NOT direct listeners toward this specific council member after this specific vote, but had actually spoke in support of the vote. Then again, maybe I’m just splitting hairs.

Because this story was about the misogyny about council members, not Ron and Don, I took her at her word on this anecdote and I regret that I did not call them to verify.

That’s three times you’ve pointed out how inconsequential the error is before you even state what that error was.

(Like other reporters, I also didn’t individually contact the authors of all the tweets, Facebook posts, and emails, nor the people who called and left nasty messages at Bagshaw’s office. Instead, I took her and all the other council members at their word about their own experiences.) Bagshaw now says that they gave her phone number out on an unrelated occasion after being interviewed on another show about homelessness. I will be reviewing the tapes to verify this.

So someone goofed, but we’re still not quite sure who. Oh yeah, and still no explanation of what the goof was.

In the meantime, here is Bagshaw’s statement, in full:

For several days after the Street Vacation vote, our phones were jammed with callers starting shortly after 3:00 p.m. Many of the callers’ language was angry and targeted at me and the other women in my office. After the first day, we elected not to answer the phones after 3:00 p.m. and returned phone calls later to those who left messages. Ron and Don had on a previous show encouraged listeners to call my office and gave out my phone number and clearly many of the callers had been encouraged by what they were hearing from other callers on the radio.

Many of the voice messages were vile. On Wednesday morning when I arrived at the office, one of my legislative aides was in tears. She had just finished listening to the voice mails left, and stated they were too awful to bear. Although most of the voice mails were discarded, we sent one email to the police because of the physical threats included.

If that is, in fact, what Bagshaw stated, you’re the one who made the mistake, Erica. Actually, you made two:

1) First, you assumed that Bagshaw’s reference to “Ron and Don” giving out her number on a previous show was related to the street-vacation vote. Bagshaw was not that specific in her statement.

2) The second error is that you didn’t attribute the story – or more accurately the allegation – to Bagshaw. All you had to do, Erica, was say that the council member was the one who told you that. It’s really easy to do. You can use a nifty little clause like, “according to Bagshaw.” Instead, you stated it as a fact. In effect, you vouched for it.

I regret the error.

There it is. You acknowledge a mistake was made. Not what the mistake was, mind you. But you at least acknowledge the mistake.

I have no opinion of Ron and Don nor am I familiar with their position on the proposed arena because I do not listen to their show.

Hmmm, yet you described them as “shock jocks.” So you just throw that description around willy-nilly? Or did Bagshaw tell you that, too?

I also have no strong opinion on the arena one way or another, but that’s a topic for another post.

Ohdearlord. You’re going to write more about this? Please. No.

The stories that claim I accused these two hosts of “verbally attacking” Bagshaw are inaccurate. I reported that they gave out her phone number and encouraged people to call her. I did not characterize their comments or say anything about them other than the one brief mention.

Now you’re writing like a lawyer, Erica. And while you didn’t technically say that Ron and Don told their listeners to call in insults, you did state that the listeners “complied” with what the hosts were “urging.” The resulting messages contained insults that you enumerated.

Also inaccurate are reports that I am engaged in some kind of conspiracy with Bagshaw, reports that I only dignify by responding here because they seem quite prevalent among a conspiracy-minded subset of KIRO fans on Twitter. I find this hilarious, as I write about land use, not the Sonics, and am interested in the arena only as a city hall story, not as some epic battle of jocks-vs.-nerds.

Just so we’re clear, Erica, you lost the moral high ground. I’m not sure exactly when that moment was, but it was somewhere between the time when you blindly trusted an allegation given to you by a city council member and the moment a story was published alleging that “Ron and Don” played a role in fanning the flames of misogyny against a vote that they had actually supported.

And finally, the corrections appended at the end of the story are: A correction to an error in the headline, which I did not write; a correction changing 19th century to 1900s, which was a typo that was not caught in editing, and two substantive corrections–one misidentifying a Bring Back Our Sonics rep as being from Sonics Rising, and the correction about when Sally Bagshaw’s phone number was given out on the air.

So of the four errors that were part of this story, three of them were your fault? Got it.

As I said, I regret these two misidentification errors. But I also regret the fact that so many self-identified Sonics fans have used and grossly mischaracterized my error as 1) the subject of the story, when it was an ancillary anecdote whose subject was actually the misogynistic voice mails left on Bagshaw’s voice mail for several days after her vote, and 2) that, as when I wrote about this story in the past, arena supporters seem desperately eager to avoid discussing the misogynistic attacks that are the actual subject of the story, and the very real and troubling questions it raises about what female leaders are and aren’t allowed to have opinions about in this city.

Hmmmm, well I think it’s terrible that anyone used gender-based insults in response to the vote. It stinks that any woman would be vilified on the basis of her gender for making a vote. However, I’m also staunchly against publicly stating that a specific radio show did something that it did not do. In fact, I think that inferring that a specific show incited an anti-woman reaction is even worse when it turns out that show actually supported the vote. But hey, I’m crazy like that, Erica.

Well, there it is. That’s it. Guess what word wasn’t included in Barnett’s acknowledgment? Sorry.

And in the future, here’s my suggestion for acknowledging an error. An editor taught it to me when I was spending way too much time trying to talk myself out of responsibility for a mistake that appeared under my name: “A journalist’s job above all is to be accurate. When I fall short in that regard, I appreciate people pointing out my mistake. I will do my best to examine what led to the error with the goal of being more accurate in the future. I’m very sorry about the error.”

Ron and Don

...

KIRO Newsradio Newsdesk

Ron and Don’s last show on KIRO Radio

Last night was Ron and Don’s last show on KIRO Radio.

5 years ago

Kelly Herzberg in her natural habitat. (Photo by Rachel Belle)...

Rachel Belle

In Seattle, a personal shopper and stylist who only shops at thrift stores

If you think you can't afford a personal stylist, head to the thrift store with Sweet Kelly Anne Styling's Kelly Herzberg who will pull hundreds of pieces for you to try on.

5 years ago

Viaduct waterfront...

Ron Upshaw

What do we do with the waterfront after the viaduct is gone?

After the viaduct is taken down, we'll be left with a choice: What do we do with one of the most beautiful waterfronts in the country?

5 years ago

(MyNorthwest)...

Ron Upshaw

Shower Thoughts: Ichiro can give Mariners fans something to root for

Rumor has it that Ichiro might make a comeback next year, and I for one welcome it.

5 years ago

Border wall...

Ron Upshaw

Trying to figure out why people want Trump’s border wall

A little over 40 percent of Americans now support the idea of a border wall, but what is it about it that seems so attractive?

5 years ago

Dan McCartney, Pierce County Sheriff...

Don O'Neill

Why you could hear kids’ voices on Pierce County Sheriff radios Monday night

Sometimes, "gone but not forgotten" isn't always how slain officers are remembered. But in Pierce County, a special effort is being made to commemorate a fallen deputy.

5 years ago

Acknowledging ‘Atlantic’ mistake is not an apology