Open Secrets and No Surprises

By Alec Klein
July 31, 2008

Here's an open secret about investigative reporting, and investigative business reporting in particular: Some reporters read their stories—verbatim—to their subjects before publication. Some even show sources printouts of their drafts. I know this because in my two decades in the business, mostly as an investigative business reporter, I have seen it or heard of it firsthand.  What's more, some reporters do it with the knowledge, support and encouragement of their editors. Which makes me wonder: Is it defensible for reporters to read or show their stories to their subjects before publication?

Nearly twenty years ago, Janet Malcolm ignited a media debate when she wrote in her seminal book, The Journalist and the Murderer: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."

Malcolm made the argument that the journalist is something of a "confidence man" who essentially seduces an interviewee to tell a story whose outcome he did not expect in what she says amounts to a "deception." The way Malcolm describes it, when the interviewee reads the printed piece, "he has to face the fact that the journalist—who seemed so friendly and sympathetic, so keen to understand him fully, so remarkably attuned to his vision of things—never had the slightest intention of collaborating with him on his story but always intended to write a story of his own."

To be sure, that syndrome still plays out in news stories today. But since Malcolm's memorable piece, the pendulum appears to have swung in the other direction. Increasingly, it seems that some journalists are showing or reading their stories to their interviewees—and then making modifications based on the subjects' feedback.

Reporters who do this justify the practice by saying they want to ensure the accuracy of their articles. They say accuracy can become more nuanced in investigative stories because they are often taking aim at the impropriety of an individual, institution or industry. And they maintain that accuracy in investigative business stories can be more complex because such work often involves a menagerie of numbers and arcane financial terms.

I'm all in favor of accuracy; indeed, it's vital. But one danger of showing stories to subjects before publication is that reporters could end up revealing sensitive information that could impact financial markets. Imagine, for instance, a reporter who shows a draft to a subject about an impending merger between two public companies.

Or picture this problem: A reporter shows a story to an interviewee, who doesn't like the way he is going to be depicted. Maybe the subject thinks he should be described as athletic, not stout. Or worse, he believes he should be credited as the founder of a company when the facts show otherwise. The reporter suddenly opens ups the possibility of an untenable debate with the subject of his story about, well, the subject of his story.

In the process, the reporter could unwittingly be inviting interviewees to edit a story about themselves, which would turn a work of journalism into a work of fiction.

Let me suggest an alternative for reporters. I call it the "no surprise" principle. The idea is simple: Ask interviewees whether the facts are correct, and do so carefully and thoroughly. After all, as journalists, we have a duty to be accurate and fair and—dare I say—compassionate. This is an important first step but sometimes, stories—and especially investigative business stories—are so complex that they demand another consideration.

Such was the case when I spent a year at The Washington Post investigating AOL.  The result was a series of stories based on well-placed sources and confidential company documents that showed how AOL secretly inflated its advertising revenue to pull off the largest merger in U.S. history to create the largest media company in the world, then called AOL Time Warner.

The business deals I was examining involved a great deal of legal and accounting complexity, and it was not enough for me to be 99 percent accurate. I needed to be absolutely correct. I decided to write AOL a letter explaining in detail all of my findings. This was not a rendering of the story, but it was a specific enumeration of facts, which turned out to be 21 pages single-spaced. AOL hired a high-powered legal team to kill the stories and AOL's accounting firm wrote a letter verifying the appropriateness of every deal I was examining.

In the end, The Washington Post published my stories and AOL ultimately admitted it had improperly booked at least $190 million in revenue, restated two years of financial results and paid more than half a billion dollars to settle criminal and civil allegations.

I didn't read the stories to the company before publication, but it knew what was coming.

Alec Klein is a bestselling author, award-winning investigative business reporter formerly of The Washington Post and professor of business journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism