An Open Letter
By Uli Schmetzer

On July 1, 2004, the Public Editor of he Chicago Tribune wrote a column admitting a four months long investigation into my 25 years of work for the Tribune had found “so far” no evidence that I had fabricated another source, similar to the one that lead to what he called: “The end of Uli Schmetzer’s career with the newspaper.”

On March 3, 2004 this same Public Editor had written a column that left the impression he had discovered the Tribune’s own Jayson Blair. The subsequent witch hunt was based on the assumption similar sins must have been committed.

(For the record: My original “sin” was to attribute a racist quote to a fictitious Australian psychiatrist. I did this in despair, exasperated by the racism towards Aborigines by many Australians who privately voice the most outrageous prejudices, though in public they protest such prejudices do not exist. The quote came from an acquaintance who did not want to be named for fear of repercussions. I did not tell the editor I had changed the man’s name and profession. I resigned immediately after a blogger alerted the Tribune’s Public Editor. In his July 1 column the Public Editor wrote, correctly: “Schmetzer felt the fabrication was justified to get before Tribune readers evidence of what he and others say is widespread racism towards Aborigines by white Australians.”)

My question is: Wouldn’t it have been wiser and fairer to wait with the announcement of a subsequent investigation of all my work until evidence had been found and verified the initial sin had not been an isolated case?

The rush into action, my public identification and vilification as an apparent “serial liar” bore an uncanny similarity with Washington’s unholy rush into the Iraqi War, without allowing the U.N. inspectors to first verify if the suspected presence in Iraq of WMDs and Al Qaeda links really existed. Apparently it did not.

Was this ethical?

Ethics, codes of conduct and plagiarism have become the center of media attention since the discovery of rogue journalists, a species that has always and will always exist, no matter how many new rules are invented by armchair moralists ensconced in glass cages.

Any ethical rule is already tar-brushed by hypocrisy.

Was it ethical or was it hypocritical for the Tribune to launch an apparently open-ended inquiry into one journalist’s one-time “so far” peccadillo (which did no harm to anyone) while the paper published, without verification, part of the New York Times series on the presence of WMDs in Iraq, based on evidence from Iraqi exiles with dubious backgrounds plus unnamed U.S. intelligence sources? Was it ethical the series helped push America into a disastrous war, ravaged Iraq, resulted in the deaths of thousands, an increase in terrorism and an uncertain future for the Middle East?

Was there any inquiry? Was anyone fired?

No. Instead the media moralists embarked on a witch hunt to demonstrate to their audiences: “We are purifying ourselves. Look we’ve identified a rascal in our own ranks.” Instead of starting at the very top of society from where the rot had percolated into the system, the corporation moralists started at the bottom, a far easier target.

It was like an attempt to cure flea bites while ignoring the cancer.

Instead of telling journalists the first rule is not to trust chronic liars in the country’s most sacrosanct jobs, the corporate moralists invented a Sword of Damocles called plagiarism and waved it over the media’s heads, fully conscious the sword can descend on virtually any reporter, desk editor, author and anchorperson if applied ad extremis.

In the “new school of journalism” plagiarism is no longer sticking your name on someone’s work or publishing your students’ research under your own name (as is prevalent in Academia). No, the new version is all about “borrowing” printed thoughts, phrases, sentences - God knows what else - from someone. For millenniums we have lived borrowing thoughts and ideas from one another. We would still be living in caves if we had not. Now, in the wake of a major tragedy of misinformation in Iraq, our corporate moralists are turning their interpretation of plagiarism into a criminal code. Doesn’t that smack of the Inquisition centuries ago, when Inquisitors invented sins for which they could convict and torch rebels of the faith, allowing the faith itself to survive with all the defects that had caused the rebellion in the first place?

Let’s ask these moralists: What ethics does a journalist follow when he or she is peddled obvious lies by the Administration but knows everyone else will report the lies verbatim as facts because they came from the highest “source”? What ethics does a journalist call upon when embedded with “friendly forces” and aware his or her reporting remains a cock-eyed view of the conflict? What book of codes should a journalist consult to prepare him for the moment when he or she has to decide whether to quote by name an outraged citizen, bitterly criticizing their government, aware if the name is published the person faces years of jail, even death? Where are the armchair moralists with their lofty ideals when out in the field you have to decide whether the information given is propaganda, disinformation or bona fide, when you, and only you, have to decide which way to run on Tiananmen Square or in Baghdad today?

Do me a favor: Stick your fake morality where it belongs – and flush it down.

Public Editors like the Tribune’s, pontificate about old fashioned codes of attribution and transparency that have “faded out over recent years.” Finally the Tribune’s Chief Inquisitor annexes his wishy-washy verdict on the four months long investigation of my case:

“It was Uli Schmetzer’s misfortune,” he writes “to be an old school journalist caught in the toils of this change.”

What change? Embedded journalism? Criminal credulity? The regurgitating of Administration lies? Respecting codes allegedly designed to purify rogue journalism, in reality acting as straitjackets on information?

Just how ludicrous this ethical nit-picking, this search for sins, can be was illustrated in my case.

In the one additional violation of ethics the Tribune inquisitors finally discovered by “checking and re-checking copy” during my career, they said I had once used quotes from Philippine sociologist Randy David, quotes extracted from his newspaper column. According to the Public Editor I had erred by failing to point out David did not talk to me directly. (as he had done on previous occasions)

Still, in fairness, the same Public Editor did point out this was a common practice - in the days of old-school journalism.

If that violation is the sum total of four months of investigation it must be a truly disappointing result for the moralists and ethic-watchers who have dumped on me so gratuitously during those months. “So far” - so the Tribune’s interim verdict announced - the investigators had “uncovered nothing made up.”

But hope remains: The inquest is still open!

The Public Editor wrote that a few dozen stories still required examination. Someone may yet detect another peccadillo. But why couldn’t the Tribune wait to complete the probe before announcing what is now an interim verdict? Perhaps it’s like the thriller writer who wants to keep his audience in suspense. Will we catch him, will we not?

Personally I couldn’t care less. The whole affair smacks of a self-serving, hypocritical sham. My conscience was and remains clear. But I know it would delight those diligent people “from inside and outside the Tribune” who, so the Public Editor wrote, brought him suspect stories, apparently in the hope these would turn out to be the Smoking Gun.

(One can visualize anonymous Tribune employees sneaking up the backstairs of Tribune Tower clutching another suspect Schmetzer story for the Public Editor’s probe.)

Alas, all of their Smoking Guns turned out to have no bullets – well, at least “so far.”

Isn’t it bizarre how witch hunts always produce that special class of informers, usually people who lived close to us, worked with us, mediocre perhaps, always too eager for a pad on the back and spurred on - by what: Envy, revenge, a promotion, a sense of moral rectitude?

Can you hear echoes of the McCarthy era?

Only this time the target is the media, in need of being further muzzled by more codes, more ethics, to avoid revelations embarrassing to the nefarious affairs of our leaders and their mega-multi-national sponsors.
This time the sight is on journalists, like me.

Instead of grappling with the real issues, the Tribune, a major U.S. daily, spent money, energy and time to investigate whether its veteran correspondent, someone who had written some 3,000 stories for them over 25 years - many from conflict zones where he was not “embedded” but perilously exposed to risks from both sides in Tripoli, Iraq, the first Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Tiananmen Square, Jakarta, etc - had fabricated another name or included un-attributed information in his copy during these globe-trotting assignments.

In fact one ingenious Internet reader claimed Uli Schmetzer did not exist. He was invented by the Tribune to use his byline from around the world. “No one could have been in all these places,” the reader argued, urging the Tribune to produce me “alive.”

In the end there is the issue of media fairness, known as “objectivity” in the trade. This was considered the holy grail of journalism, at least in the days of “old school journalism.” But these are the days of transparency and proper attribution.

The Tribune printed just one public letter in my case, from an Australian who seemed to suggest the electric chair or the gas chamber were more appropriate then mere dismissal. The Tribune did not print, as far as I know, a single letter of support from Chicago readers and elsewhere, readers who wrote to me, with a copy to the Public Editor, expressing their belief in my integrity, assuring me they had loved “and trusted” my reports from around the world over the years.

To those compassionate souls I am eternally grateful and much indebted. To the Tribune I must say: What happened to your ethics and your much- vaunted objectivity? Don’t they apply in your own kitchen?

And to the Tribune too I must add: Having seen the results of what your Public Editor calls “toils of change” I am truly proud to be classified “an old-school journalist!” Thanks -----for the label.
Uli Schmetzer.