The Public Editor: Specifics allow readers to judge for themselves

The resignation of Diana Griego Erwin over allegations that she fabricated material in her work as The Bee's metro columnist moved many readers to ask for more specific information about the columns in question.

"As a reader, I'm owed that," said Steve Papinchak, a private investigator for a federal contractor. The way the story has played out so far, "I just have to trust that The Bee did an impartial investigation."

The readers are right. More specifics are needed so they can judge for themselves the issues facing the paper's senior editors as they grapple with the problem of authenticity.

This request for more information is made more important by Griego Erwin's public statements that she did nothing wrong and that she resigned due to personal reasons.

So I will describe the columns in question at the time of Griego Erwin's resignation, as explained to me last week by the paper's executive editor, Rick Rodriguez. Here are the parameters:

The columns cited here are those that The Bee's editors asked Griego Erwin to verify. The paper is also examining other Griego Erwin columns, but that investigation is ongoing, the results of which will be published in the paper; those columns are not part of today's material.

I contacted Griego Erwin and told her about today's column, asking for comment. She said she would call back but didn't.

Before going further, here's a quick history of how we got here:

On May 12, Rodriguez announced Griego Erwin's resignation in a column that gave a general explanation of the problem without delving into details or citing specific columns. That was followed by my column last Sunday, which reported that the problem first surfaced April 23, when an assistant city editor editing Griego Erwin's column for the next day's paper raised a question. But that was the extent of the details.

So let's pick it up from there.

The April 23 column, which was about the recent death of a man following an Arco Arena parking lot dispute after a Kings game, quoted a bartender named Anthony Romero. The person editing the column asked for the bar's name.

Rodriguez said Griego Erwin told the editor she couldn't remember the name. Senior editors were contacted and the column was held out of the paper.

The column was rewritten without the name of the bartender or the bar and was published Tuesday, April 26. It was the last Griego Erwin column to run in the paper.

Senior editors, including managing editor Joyce Terhaar, met with Griego Erwin early that week and told her they needed to know the bar's name, Rodriguez said. She was given several days to find it.

The following week, she told the editors the bar was the Cedar Room on Madison Avenue in Carmichael. Assistant managing editor Scott Lebar visited the bar. He was told no bartender named Anthony Romero was employed there.

(The night before she resigned, Griego Erwin called Terhaar from the Cedar Room and placed a bartender on the phone. He told Terhaar the bar had a customer with the first name of Anthony, but that customers aren't allowed behind the bar to serve drinks. Griego Erwin told the editors the customer may have fooled her into thinking he was a bartender. The editors weren't satisfied with the explanation.)

Growing increasingly apprehensive, Rodriguez said he and the other senior editors decided to do a spot check of Griego Erwin's columns going back four months. They relied in part on several online databases that track things such as property owners, renters, registered voters and the like, and which the editors felt had a high degree of accuracy.

The editors selected 12 columns that identified ordinary people the editors thought they could find. They grew more suspicious when they weren't able to verify named sources in seven of the 12.

Of the seven, the editors picked four that were among the most recent and which included people who seemed readily identifiable. The editors believed, therefore, the columns would be the easiest for Griego Erwin to authenticate.

Here are the four:

* April 26: Although the reference to the bar and the bartender were dropped in the rewritten column, the editors were unable to verify the existence of Audrey Hellund in the published column.

Hellund is described as a woman "who moved to Sacramento a few years ago after the murder of her brother in a Texas roadside altercation." The column ends with this Hellund quote: "... I came here to get away from that memory, but you know what? You can't ... get away. That thinking is everywhere. (People) have no patience. Hotheads are everywhere. What is it about us? What is it?"

* April 7: This column begins with, "Elsie Chau lives in a dark, old Craftsman north of downtown somewhere where the Alkali Flats neighborhood bleeds into Boulevard Park."

The column tells the story of how Chau finds a homeless woman named Carolina living in a below-ground doorway at her home, how she eventually lets the woman stay in the root cellar and how the two women strike up a year-long friendship.

Chau is described as a 62-year-old widow of seven years who lives with her cats, Christine and Queen Sweetness. "The haughty black-and-white felines sweep their tails dramatically about in a way that gives their walks a swagger."

The column ends with Carolina suddenly leaving without notice, upsetting Chau. " 'I just want to know that she's safe if anyone knows her,' Chau said. She smiled sadly."

Editors can't verify Chau's existence or find her house. But there are other problems as well. Readers are led to believe that Griego Erwin was at Chau's house, what with the descriptions of the cats' sweeping tails and Chau smiling sadly.

But, said Rodriguez, Griego Erwin told the editors during their inquiry she was never at the house and that she wrote the column based on a telephone interview with Chau.

* March 31: This column talks about the country's racial divide in the wake of well-known defense attorney Johnnie Cochran's death.

The column's first paragraph reads: "Margaret Brown invites me to sit at a wobbly wood table in her Florin-area home. She peels carrots and talks to me. Later, as tears roll down her cheeks, she dices potatoes hotly."

The column describes Brown as an 89-year-old retired teacher. She is African American and a former Louisiana beauty queen. Her "dark skin is creased and wrinkled." She is called "Aunt Queenie" by her great-nephew, who lives in her concrete basement.

The editors can't verify Brown's existence or find her home.

* Feb. 20: In a column about a student teacher who fought off a would-be rapist at Hiram Johnson High School, two women are quoted, Mary Magorki and Sheila Baston.

The attack, according to the column, "was a hot topic around the lunch table at the senior center Mary Magorki, 72, frequents."

The editors can't verify Magorki's existence. Although the senior center is unnamed in the column, Griego Erwin told the editors the facility is the Hart senior center at 915 27th St. Rodriguez said the editors checked with the center and that officials there have never heard of Magorki nor is she one of the center's regular visitors.

Baston is described as a woman "who runs a pre-teen 'girls club' at her church in the Highlands area."

The paper can't authenticate Baston's existence or find her girls club.

Rodriguez said the paper gave Griego Erwin several days to verify any one of the questionable sources in the four columns, but the columnist never offered a single explanation and instead submitted her resignation on May 11.

"I don't know if she couldn't, or wouldn't, but in the end, she didn't," Rodriguez said.

"To this day, I don't know if these people exist," he said. "But I have the right and the duty as the editor to ask for verification."

That's the way newspapers are supposed to work: Reporters report and editors ask questions. Rarely does the professional back-and-forth in the editing process reach the breaking point as it did here.

For The Bee's editors to have pursued this situation less vigorously - once suspicion over the truthfulness of the columns became apparent - would have been a dereliction of duty of the highest order.

In the aftermath, the paper's publisher, Janis Besler Heaphy, sent out an e-mail Friday to The Bee's 1,600 employees describing the paper's intent to be as open as possible about the Griego Erwin matter.

"... Our goal is to be open and credible with our readers by putting ourselves under the same scrutiny we do others," she said.

She said she will join Rodriguez and Terhaar in a series of voluntary meetings with newsroom staffers that begin this week "in which we will encourage an open and candid dialogue about the Griego Erwin case, what lessons we have learned and how we can move forward."

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Correction

Last Sunday's column by Public Editor Armando Acuña misspelled Arizona's Fort Huachuca.

About the writer:

• The Public Editor deals with complaints and concerns about The Sacramento Bee's content. His opinions are his own. You can contact the Public Editor by mail at P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, 95852, by e-mail at publiceditor@sacbee.com, or call directly at (916) 321-1250.