The story behind the story
Investigative journalist Jeff German died recently of stab wounds. That event takes my memory back to late January 1987. German broke the news that Liberace had been diagnosed as having AIDS. There was a firestom of reaction. Including a threat from his manager, the late Seymour Heller that he was going to sue the Las Vegas Sun on behlf of his client.
I was anchoring/reporting the news that weekend. CBS news called the station (we were an affiliate of the network) and asked for reaction to the threat from the newspaper. I managed to reach the newspaper's editor, Brian Greenspun. He gave me a statement with the newspaper's position (basically, bring it on, Seymour because truth is a complete defense) and I did a story for the network news.
What Mr. Greenspun did not know was that I knew how Mr. German had gotten the story. One of my colleagues at K-News 970 had sold the story to him. How my co-worker obtained the information is something I will never know, but I saw a copy of the diagnosis of AIDS for Liberace with my own eyes. I was amazed and wondered why our station did not run the story. Turned out our ownership did not want to have to lay out the money to defend against a lawsuit.
Let me be clear that there is nothing wrong with purchasing documents to break a big story, at least not in my mind.
***
There was one other time I wound up interacting with the Las Vegas Sun during my time as a radio reporter in Las Vegas. It began with a phone call after 2 a.m. I was the reporter on call. "A plane made an emergency landing out on I-15 near Jean. Go out there and get the story. So I drove to the station, got the station's vehicle and got to the scene. The TV camera crews had come and gone. The pilot refused to talk to me, just as he had done with the TV people who got there before me. I chatted up the firemen who had responded and they told me the whole story. The plane had run out of fuel, causing the need for the emergency landing. The reason the pilot wouldn't talk about anything was that he was delivering the morning edition of the L.A. Times to be distributed to places in Vegas where it was sold.
Drove back to the station, did a couple versions of the story and then headed for home. When coming home from the station I always passed by this gigantic adult bookstore. I saw a bunch of cop cars there and pulled over to find out what was going on. There was a reporter from the Sun there and when he saw me, wearing my press pass, she went ballistic. She talked to a guy in a suit, apparently trying to keep me from getting access and the story.
The man in the suit was an FBI agent. He told me that he had promised an exclusive to the Sun. I basically said, "not my problem." I had the story on the air within an hour, pissing off the reporter to no end. Just a case of being in the right place at the right time.
Turned out this was part of a big bust involving organized crime at a number of adult emporiums.
I was anchoring/reporting the news that weekend. CBS news called the station (we were an affiliate of the network) and asked for reaction to the threat from the newspaper. I managed to reach the newspaper's editor, Brian Greenspun. He gave me a statement with the newspaper's position (basically, bring it on, Seymour because truth is a complete defense) and I did a story for the network news.
What Mr. Greenspun did not know was that I knew how Mr. German had gotten the story. One of my colleagues at K-News 970 had sold the story to him. How my co-worker obtained the information is something I will never know, but I saw a copy of the diagnosis of AIDS for Liberace with my own eyes. I was amazed and wondered why our station did not run the story. Turned out our ownership did not want to have to lay out the money to defend against a lawsuit.
Let me be clear that there is nothing wrong with purchasing documents to break a big story, at least not in my mind.
***
There was one other time I wound up interacting with the Las Vegas Sun during my time as a radio reporter in Las Vegas. It began with a phone call after 2 a.m. I was the reporter on call. "A plane made an emergency landing out on I-15 near Jean. Go out there and get the story. So I drove to the station, got the station's vehicle and got to the scene. The TV camera crews had come and gone. The pilot refused to talk to me, just as he had done with the TV people who got there before me. I chatted up the firemen who had responded and they told me the whole story. The plane had run out of fuel, causing the need for the emergency landing. The reason the pilot wouldn't talk about anything was that he was delivering the morning edition of the L.A. Times to be distributed to places in Vegas where it was sold.
Drove back to the station, did a couple versions of the story and then headed for home. When coming home from the station I always passed by this gigantic adult bookstore. I saw a bunch of cop cars there and pulled over to find out what was going on. There was a reporter from the Sun there and when he saw me, wearing my press pass, she went ballistic. She talked to a guy in a suit, apparently trying to keep me from getting access and the story.
The man in the suit was an FBI agent. He told me that he had promised an exclusive to the Sun. I basically said, "not my problem." I had the story on the air within an hour, pissing off the reporter to no end. Just a case of being in the right place at the right time.
Turned out this was part of a big bust involving organized crime at a number of adult emporiums.
posted by me at 11:14 PM
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