In Pursuit of John's Exceptions - Newsroom Confidential

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In Pursuit of John's Exceptions

By Dean Rotbart

Remember That 'News' Is Comprised Primarily Of Aberrations; It's Not How Far You've Traveled As Much As, Have You Stumbled?

The society in which we live is one where the exception defines the rule.

An honest man is no longer honest if he is once caught lying. Good service is morphed into bad service if any part of it is imperfect. Companies and nations are judged frequently by their missteps, not their orderly daily march.

As much as anyone, journalists help feed this "one strike and you're out" sensibility.

The media create perfect heroes and then promptly unmask them when they turn out to be just as human as everyone else.

How many public servants, religious leaders, corporate executives, sports figures, entertainers and the like have lost their powers to do good after they've shown themselves to be mere mortals?

It doesn't make much difference how well earned a good reputation was, it quickly evaporates when a politically incorrect remark or a marital infidelity or the mere suspicion of illegality is introduced into the equation.

From my perch, it seems that my colleagues in the media judge these fallible public figures most harshly not for their exceptional (mis) behavior - since at one time or another we all screw up -- but for getting caught making their mistakes publicly.

The hardest story I ever reported during my tenure at The Wall Street Journal, the one that drove me from a career as a fulltime investigative reporter, was a profile of a Wall Street money manager who everyone in the securities industry "knew" was crooked.

In concept, the story had all the makings of another one of my prize-winning investigations. Here was John, his real name, a mysterious and influential securities trader who was rumored to be into numerous shady activities. John's waters, in fact, appeared so murky, I felt certain that I would uncover all kinds of scandals lurking beneath the surface.

Moreover, I had that journalistic ace of spades in my investigative reporter's pocket. I knew that to fully justify the time spent investigating John, all I needed to find was one example to prove his criminality. Just one.

When I began interviewing my usual Wall Street sources about John, they all assured me that he was crooked. So I went down the paths my sources pointed me to in pursuit of John's exceptions.

Unlike some philosophers, the last thing in the world I wanted to find was an honest man. They don't give journalism awards and promotions for proving that someone is honest.

(Sample Headline: "Four-Month Investigation Proves John Isn't The Crook Everyone Thinks He Is")

Well my editors weren't any happier than I. It is one thing to run a story about an honest person who has fallen, once, from grace. Remember, the exception proves the rule. But what DO we do with an allegedly dishonest person on whom we are unable to make any allegations stick?

Let me be clear about this. It was never my intent to convict an innocent man. I was supposed to investigate a guilty man and prove to the world that he is exactly what we all believed him to be, i.e. dishonest.

But who expected that I couldn't prove the obvious?

It wasn't for want of investigative skills or insider sources. I am proud to say I had ample of both. But each time I chased one of John's crooked schemes, I found I had actually traveled a straight and narrow path.

John, I found, could be accused of many things, not the least of which was bad, bad public relations instincts. Because he operated so frequently in the shadows, he left it to others to fill in the blanks for him. And they always assumed the worst.

I went to my editors with the evidence that weeks and weeks of my hard work had uncovered about John and my superiors were as mortified as I. "That's it?" they asked. "That's it." I shrugged.

To their credit, and I guess my own, we ultimately ran the story on the front page, right hand column, exactly as we found it. John, we told our readers, might walk real close to the line of dishonesty sometimes, but we were never able to find any example of when he crossed over that line.

The story, incidentally, was the most closely vetted of any I ever wrote. You see, to prove a man a crook is simple. All you need is one demonstrable example of misbehavior and you pass muster with editors, lawyers and readers.

Oh, but to prove a man innocent. To say in a national daily business newspaper that this man, who everyone thinks is a crook, isn't. Well that is a much harder stone to pass.

Why? Because if later some other spunky journalist at some other news organization finds the irrefutable evidence of wrong doing, how stupid do WE look?

When I finished researching John's story, I went to my editors and told them that I had had enough. I had won several journalism prizes and was nominated for a Pulitzer. But they were all recognitions for finding the exceptions of Wall Street. Proving the rule was just too darn draining.

May 13, 2002