A week after The Star ran its badly flawed red-light-camera story, aspects of the debacle are still coming to light.
Steve Glorioso, a public relations consultant for American Traffic Solutions (ATS), a private company that helps runs the red-light program for the city, contends that reporter Christine Vendel and her editors rushed the story into print prematurely last Tuesday because they badly wanted to scoop the other local news outlets.
STOP THAT STORY!
The Star should have sat on the story, Glorioso says, until all the facts were assembled and until his client had a chance to respond fully to police department-generated data that indicated the camera program has not been the boon to public safety that it was supposed to be.
Vendel, who has covered KCPD for more than 15 years, reported and wrote two stories based on a police department report about the red-light program.
She got the report a few days before it was to be released Tuesday at a Board of Police Commissioners meeting.
By Monday, Vendel was doing her final work on the story, and the editors were planning to make it the Tuesday, A1 “centerpiece” story. If it all came together as planned, Vendel would have a nice A1 byline, and The Star would have its scoop.
Being the main story of the day, the centerpiece usually takes a lot of planning because it usually involves photos and graphics and requires a big chunk of space. In addition, a lot of people are typically involved in the production of a centerpiece, and once the editors have committed to a centerpiece for the next day’s paper, every effort is exerted to make it happen.
It was clear from Vendel’s second-day story that the facts were in flux all day Monday and into the evening. In Wednesday’s story, she said, “Police officials fixed many of the math errors Monday night.”
That is very disturbing to me as a former story editor at The Star. When the facts are changing the night before a story is to run — and when the story doesn’t have to run the next day — it’s best to hold off until all elements are pinned down to the best extent they can be.
Also disturbing is the fact that, in developing its study, the police department didn’t bother to consult ATS, the people who set up the program and help run it. That should have raised flags with Vendel and her editors.
At any rate, the story hit the streets Tuesday morning and, indeed, made a big splash. The gist of it, which ran under the headline “Red-light cameras don’t add to safety,” was that the total number of wrecks at the 17 intersections where cameras were installed two years ago had actually increased since the cameras went up.
Unfortunately, the story contained at least one major error (picked up from the study) and had a major omission.
Neither the study nor the story contained this pivotal, all-important fact: Wrecks caused by people who ran red lights at the 17 intersections dropped from 52 wrecks before the cameras’ arrival to 24 wrecks in the second year after their arrival.
Consider this: Getting people to stop running red lights — not reducing fender benders — was the main reason for erecting the cameras in 2009. Anything else is secondary.
Then, there was this error: The initial version of the police study said that officers had written about 200,000 camera-related tickets since January 2009.
“At $100 a ticket,” The Star’s Tuesday story said, “these fines could bring in $20 million.”
But an ATS official told the Board of Police Commissioners on Tuesday that police had issued about 150,000 tickets, which, at an average fine of $100, would have generated about $15 million.
The cops, then, didn’t even know how many tickets they had issued.
In Wednesday’s follow-up story, which ran on Page A4, Vendel cleaned up the error about the number of tickets and added the statistic about the sharp reduction in wrecks resulting from red-light running.
Nevertheless, I think Glorioso is absolutely right: With some key facts up in the air as late as Monday night and the police department making last-minute changes, The Star should have pulled back, forgone its scoop and waited to publish until its report was rock solid.
I hate to hammer Vendel because she is an outstanding reporter who has written many significant and important stories, but there was another huge problem with this story: She and her editors failed to put the story in any context. When I was reading the story on Tuesday morning, my first reaction was: Why in the world would the police be putting out a report that is harshly critical of a program that they enforce and that has appeared to have reduced red-light running? It has been beneficial from a public safety standpoint, right?
The answer came to me as I thought about it and read Wednesday’s story carefully. In almost throwaway fashion, Vendel said in a subsidiary clause that ATS “has an annual $1.6 million contract with the city to run the camera program.”
Bingo. There was the answer: ATS’ contract is with the city, not the police department.
The city and the police department have been at odds for years, essentially because the city would like more control over the police department, but the department is overseen by the Board of Police Commissioners, all but one of whose members — the mayor — are appointed by the governor. State control of the department dates back to the post-Pendergast era.
It seems clear to me that the police department was seeking to undermine a City-Hall-initiated program that it considers bothersome.
Buttressing my assertion that the police consider the program a bother, a former City Hall operative sent me an e-mail last Friday saying, “You are right on the red lights. The police have always resented that they have to sort through the pictures and video for ATS,” while the proceeds benefit the city.
Of course, a majority of readers would not get the significance of the situation simply from Vendel’s reference to the ATS contract being “with the city.” The story cried out for explanation and motive. But Vendel and her editors, who must have been sound asleep, did not deliver.
To the average reader, it had to appear that the police department — for some unknown, unspoken reason — had decided to try to take down the red-light-camera program.
I said in Thursday’s post that we should summon Sherlock Holmes to try to figure out the police department’s motive…Today, I’m changing the call: We don’t need Sherlock; we need the JPD, the Journalism Police Department.
***
Post script: I want to add that while it’s great to be able to sit back and critique a story several days after it has run, it is a totally different situation when you’re in the newsroom, developing a story and working frantically to get it on the front page the next day. The adrenaline is flowing, and you and your editors badly want to “go with it.” It’s very hard to pull the plug; I realize that. I probably would have done exactly what Vendel did…But, hey, somebody’s gotta call it as he (or she) sees it, and, by the power vested in me by the Bloggers Association of America (which I just created and named myself president of), I’m that guy.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Jim – I commend you for a very thorough analysis of the story and the backdrop behind it. If The Star could have waited 24 hours to run the story and still had a scoop, it probably should have done so. What bothers me so much is the idea that in so many cases the “facts” always seem to be changing.
Perhaps this can be explained by the presence of what amounts to two sets of “facts” – those that public agencies or corporate concerns readily dispense to the media because it casts them in a favorable light (“spin”) and those that they would just as soon conveniently overlook because it makes them look bad. A hungry reporter is a good reporter and will constantly be asking questions and digging through the records, but it does help to know what you’re looking for and be able to recognize it when you see it.
Two pieces of advice quickly come to mind as I play “editor” and am about to send out a reporter to do a story – (1) follow the money, of course, and (2) remember that in the end, people will cover their rears if nothing else.
PS – Joplin still has some red-light cameras. It also has some new maps showing the tornado zone for the expressed purpose of enlightening visitors to the city, but these are causing a flap because the Convention and Visitors Bureau is now being accused of promoting disaster tourism for financial reasons. At any rate, your “map” with regard to the KC red-light story was very helpful.
Thanks, Rick. I’m glad that not all the red-light cameras in Joplin got “blowed away.” I would think those folks will be on edge about a lot of things for a long time, including their speed while driving.
Jim,
Your pithy dissections on newspaper reporting are why I look forward to seeing what pricks your curiosity, conscience, or consciousness. Keep up the good work.
Hmmm… the KC star article was so disturbing on so many levels. Aren’t the PO lice supposed to protect and serve. Isn’t the City suppose to support, create, if not impose a reasonably safe and secure living environment. Ooooh and aren’t we the people suppose recognize and obey the laws of nature (i.e. a vehicle traveling at 35+ mph T-boning a car turning left is bound to cause extreme injury or death)….. let alone recognize and obey basic traffic laws like being prepared to stop at an intersection.
This wasn’t a stupid argument, this is an argument of stupidity. (If the police, the city, and ‘those are my rights’ protesters want to piss on each other maybe we can get them to stand in those red light intersections just to see which device works best.)
When I first read the KC Star’s first, sloppy, we’ve-got-the-real-scoop article, I was dismayed to think that the article purposefully, if ham handedly, fanned the flames. Surely this wasn’t a writing exercise with a sideways glance on generating reader comments on The Star’s website………Please say it isn’t so. Thanks to you, it looks like the best I can hope for is just piss-poor reporting. I feel better already. Keep digging & I’ll keep reading. Thanks.
Jayson Seymour
Thanks, Jason, but as I’ve said many times, The Star has a lot of really good reporters, including Vendel, and more often than not they do a great job with what they’ve got left to work with, in my opinion.One of the problems is that with their ranks so think now, once a decision is made to go forward in a certain direction on a relatively big story (like the camera story), it’s difficult to pivot and come up with a suitable alternative. In this case, if they had pulled the plug, they probably would have had to scramble to piece together a front-page centerpiece on a wire story, that is, something not produced by the staff. They don’t like to do that; their emphasis, obviously, is on local news.
Believe me, though, 95 percent of the time you’re not getting “piss-poor reporting.” Those employees who are left catch a tremendous amount of flak. As always, the local paper remains an easy target for critics. I try to praise the paper when it produces very good work, and I try to hold its feet to the fire when it slips. But I will always be in The Star’s corner.
I suddenly have an insatiable urge to listen to Judy Collins sing Send In The Clowns.
That’s a heart-rending song, Smartman…Where’s your heart?
C’mon Fitz, between the Star and City Hall, School District, Police, Fire, blah, blah, blah, you can’t tell me that your heart hasn’t been shattered and tossed upon the scrap heap of life like a twice used condom.
It seems like the major problem that the city has with the story is that the PD blew the whistle on a very unsafe program. My concern now is that The Star will re-write the story to serve the establishment’s needs, not the public’s.
What the city apparently wants to do is exclude the accidents caused by the red light cameras, i.e. rear end collisions, and only report on the number of accidents reduced as a result of not running the lights, creating the (false) image of a program that is safe.
Their motivation is quite clear, $15,000,000.00 is a very good reason to distort the data and maintain an unsafe program. Bottom line is that they could care less if they killed a couple dozen people if they could get their hands on the money.
Add to that farce the fact that KCMO’s municipal “court” is essentially a collection agency that’s loaded top to bottom against defendants. Indeed, unlike Kansas, where a citizen can approach the prosecutor and request diversion, KCMO does not allow that conversation to take place unless the citizen has obtained the services of a licensed shyster, and yes the prosecutor’s office will conveniently provide you with a list.
This entire silliness reminds me of Florynce Kennedy’s infamous article entitled “The Whorehouse Theory of Law” wherein the judge is perceived as the madam of a vast whore house, creating business for all the residents of her brothel.
Congratulations to Vendel, for once, The Star accidentally told the truth.
PS, Thanks for demonstrating the importance of an institutional memory, Fitz. How many reporters would have known about the conflict between the city and the PD? I’m betting none of the TV stations would have gotten that angle.
Dad once referred to The Star’s custodians of institutional memory as “those graying men” who labored deep into the day (or well into the night) to ensure that the right stories made the paper and were appropriately positioned at that given their relative importance. Sadly, most of those graying men and women are long gone, their places taken by less experienced reporters and editors whose own ranks are fairly diminished in comparison to “the good old days.” That said, I’m confident that the “new” Star can regain a good institutional memory with sufficient effort in the proper direction.
I appreciate your optimism, Rick, and hope the same.