Sallie Mae Criticizes CBS Report On Student Lenders
On Monday night, Sallie Mae sent a letter to the "Evening News" objecting to its story on student lenders. The letter, which was also put out as a press release, was signed by Sallie Mae Corporate Communications Vice President Tom Joyce. You can watch the broadcast version of the "Evening News" story to which the letter refers by clicking on the video box, and read the Web version of the piece, which was written by the CBS News Investigative Unit, here.
Video: Sallie Mae complained, in part, that the Web version of the story "reported an allegation attributed to Senator Kennedy's office that Sallie Mae was asked to pay for travel to Paris by Dr. Larry Burt, financial aid director from the University of Texas-Austin, and his wife. This is patently false. Sallie Mae was never asked to pay for any such trip, nor did we, nor was anyone from Sallie Mae on such a trip."
An editor's note at the top of the Web version of the CBS story states that "Additional reporting which appears in bold text has been added to this story since it was originally published on March 16, 2007." It is not uncommon for CBSNews.com to update stories after they have been published, though it is rare for those updates to be identified in this manner.
According to Mike Sims, CBSNews.com director of news and operations, the substantive changes to the Web story were made prior to the Sallie Mae complaint. The editor's note and bolding, however, were added afterwards. In addition, some bolded sections are rewritten portions of the original story, not new information. The allegations against Burt, for example, were included in the original story, even though they now appear (in a slightly different form) in bold.
Linda Mason, CBS News senior vice president, standards and special projects, told me that she believes "the story as reported on the CBS 'Evening News' was just fine, based on Attorney General Cuomo's investigation into student loans." As for the Web story, she said it "gave some added information on the subject, and with clarifications I believe it stands on its own as well."
In an email, CBS spokeswoman Leigh Ferris had this to say:
"We've discussed in detail with Mr. Joyce the issues raised in his letter and we stand by our reporting, which was based, among several other sources, upon the public announcement by the New York Attorney General's office of an investigation into college student loan practices. In addition, the report on CBSNews.com has been updated several times since it was posted for greater clarity and to include comments and reactions from school officials and industry spokesmen."
And here's producer Phil Hirschkorn, who also commented via email:
"We felt it was important on Monday to update our text version of the story when we got reactions to the Senate probe from Sallie Mae and from the University of Texas, and when the financial aid administrators association sent us a statement in response to its alleged gift giving. We also felt it was important to be transparent about those changes by asking the website to post an Editor's note at the top of the story."
Sallie Mae makes a few separate complaints in its letter, and I am not going to address them all here. But I do think it's worthwhile to look at the Burt complaint. On Friday, the allegations against him ran on CBSNews.com. Then, on Monday, the story was changed to reflect the fact that both Sallie Mae and Burt were disputing those allegations. The story now notes that Burt "showed CBS News receipts from American Airlines frequent flier miles used to purchase tickets for himself and his wife on their Nov. 2005 trip to Paris with friends." This information was not in the story as it appeared on the Web site over the weekend. The question, then, is this: Should CBS have run the allegations against Burt without first securing a comment from him and/or Sallie Mae?
I put the issue to Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
"The fact is, the first impression is always the most important, and a news organization needs to appreciate that," he said. "The first account of something is the one that sets the agenda, and everything else is a reaction to it."
Rosenstiel acknowledged that a journalist cannot always tell a complete story the first time around – "the truth," he said, "is not something that is always gettable in the first story." At the same time, Rosenstiel said, "I think generally the basic rudiments of trying to be fair and make a story as accurate as possible means that if you have an allegation against someone you have to try to get their side into it, and you should be, as a journalist, weighing both sides."
"Whether you can rationalize going with a story, according to the rules of the road in journalism, is not really the test," he added. "The test is, 'could I have known if I had done a few more things whether the story was right or wrong?'"