by David B. Lewis
from: massbike@cycling.org, December 9, 1997
Jack Thomas,
I was one of the members of the local bicycling community who spoke with you about the Gladstone-Spring collision. At the time, I had some confidence that that you would make amends for the Globe's handling of the case. Instead, I find that your Ombudsman column of today (Monday, December 8) has done little to clear up the Globe's role in the affair while raising more questions about how the story was reported.
There are enough problems with the piece that I will cover them essentially in the order in which they appear.
1) in the first sentence, the use of the word "slammed" is damning and implies blame. You might have been better to write that Spring ran into Gladstone's path, a fact which is not under dispute.
2) the description of the "local Web site" is inaccurate. The discussion on the massbike mailing list takes place through email; the people on the list are not conspiracy theorists or nuts. We are local bicyclists, commuters, and activists. The mailing list is archived on a Web site; however, Gladstone did not "sign into the Web" but simply mailed his message to the redistribution address.
In addition, I detect an implication that the faster nature of electronic communication in some way makes it less reliable than, say, a daily newspaper. In this case, readers on the massbike list were treated to a first-person account of the accident. You write that "Gladstone declined to be interviewed by the Globe"; in fact, he was interviewed by Daley for her original piece. Perhaps you meant that he declined to be interviewed by you or by the Globe for later stories, as is implied in the next paragraph.
3) the first report ran in the Globe on 11/5. You write that Daley was assigned to "update the story". You should have noted that she was, presumably, updating the 11/5 notice. The 11/7 story was not the first to appear in the Globe.
4) you appear to assume that the final police report, which appears to show that Spring was in the crosswalk, is equivalent to showing that he was not jaywalking. (I believe Evans' statement is incorrect.) I find it very disturbing that you place the statement immediately after a discussion of Micho Spring's ability to handle a telephone. You might have done a better job in raising the issue of whether the police report was changed.
5) you omit the handling of the case in which Gladstone is treated as a courier, rather than as a bicyclist. In particular, the 11/7 coverage had articles on the "hazards of bike couriers", which is somewhat sensationalistic. Gladstone's licensing should not have been an issue, and the Globe should be ashamed of itself for taking this angle on the story.
6) you omit the follow-up stories by Zachary Dowdy concerning the reaction by the Boston Police self-appointed task force. A newspaper which is currently running a Spotlight series about the local police may have thought to question the motives of this task force, particularly in the absence of any legitimate offense by Gladstone.
7) you omit the notable story by Zachary Dowdy (11/14/97, p. D27) and the extra correction a day later, in which the Globe again published a questionable correction.
8) your conclusion that reporters ought to resist the temptation to confide the contents of their stories is accurate; but it then leads to the question of exactly how Micho Spring was given advance information of the 11/7 story.
10) your story concludes with an unchallenged quote by Micho Spring. If there are other eyewitnesses, where are they? The information about headlights is irrelevant to whether Spring was jaywalking; in particular, Gladstone may have been within the bounds of the law on that point. Oh, and the "solidarity" cyclists feel? Read your story again and see if you can figure out why we think Gladstone got a raw deal and why the incident got bad coverage.
11) your conclusion that avoiding the distribution of erroneous information in cyberspace is the lesson of this story is misleading. The Globe itself published multiple versions of the story, and the Globe has much wider readership than our mailing list. Whether or not the Web was "crackling", the Globe had a problem in covering this story.
David B. Lewis
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