Saturday, September 26, 2009

Jane Stone 'Bite Me, Jew Boy' Scandal

Here is an update on the scandal involving NBC's Jane Stone and an anti-Semitic e-mail received by Americans for Limited Government:

Saturday, 26 September 2009 13:15

Statement from Carter Clews to Steve Capus of NBC News:

The increasingly hysterical responses by NBC news boss Steve Capus and NBC News itself to the escalating Stonegate Scandal are disappointing at best and chilling at worst. Here is a man who runs what used to be a highly respected major news bureau who now finds himself conjuring up gremlins in cyberspace to defend what appears to be horrendously bigoted behavior within his own news room.

Having spoken directly with Mr. Capus for nearly 15 minutes Friday afternoon, I want to once again repeat my offer to him: if you really don’t believe that Ms. Stone sent the “Bite me, Jew boy” email to ALG staffer Alex Rosenwald, we will be happy to work with you to track down who sent it from her Blackberry using her email address.

This is precisely the same offer I made to Ms Stone at 11:00AM Friday morning, when she denied having sent any such email to Alex Rosenwald. Now, Mr. Capus has changed her story to say that, yes, she sent an email on Thursday, but it did not say “Bite me, Jew boy.”

Again, we are more than willing to help NBC resolve its internal problems, but Mr. Capus needs to work with those trying to ferret out the full story, not against, us. Tom Brokaw, one of Mr. Capus’s closest friends has said of the NBC news boss, “He does have a little bit of a hair trigger. He could blow. But I could always walk in and close the door and say, ‘Take a breath.’"

My message to Mr. Capus now is, “Take a breath, and let’s try to get to the bottom of what has now become of your once-respected news organization.”

Carter Clews is the Director of Communications for Americans for Limited Government.

Mike Calderone, Politico, continues to follow the story.
When NewsBusters Matthew Sheffield asked ALG today to send him the email's “headers," which would reveal detailed information about the message being sent and received, the group responded that the information was on an office computer that's not available this weekend, but could be sent out Monday.

I think that if ALG can send out press releases about the "Stonegate Scandal," the group should also have the capabilities to send out all its evidence.

Yesterday I mentioned that I knew Stone because she taught my class on “Press Ethics” at NYU, and that I was shocked by the allegations made by ALG. She has had a distinguished career in broadcasting, and I was reluctant to publish anything that could forever associate her online with such a slur.

But after ALG sent out a press release, and the story went viral, NBC desired to present their side on the record. When I spoke with NBC News president Steve Capus, he was emphatic that Stone only responded to be taken off ALG’s list, and that she didn’t write the alleged slur: “Bite me Jew Boy."

And yet, ALG has persisted with two additional email releases, which as The Times noted today, are blasted far and wide. (I never signed up for ALG's press list, but am on it, and receive numerous releases each day. And it seems a number of colleagues at POLITICO are as well, since several passed along the NBC-related releases).

NBC legal analyst Dan Abrams, commenting on his Mediaite site, admitted his bias, given network affiliation, while writing that “there is no way she would have written that and maybe more important, no way Capus would put himself and the entire news division’s reputation on the line unless he was 100% sure.”

Indeed, it's hard to believe that Capus would go on the record so adamantly unless the network's IT team checked everything completely, as he said they did. While ALG may not have the well-deserved reputation that NBC News has built over decades, I still felt it was worth looking into their claims.

Gawker’s Foster Kramer takes issue with my writing this up as a news story while covering the back and forth between NBC and ALG on Friday afternoon. Of course, Foster’s perspective comes 24 hours after the fact, as opposed to actually dealing with both sides by phone and email in real time.

I don't take these allegations lightly because someone's reputation is at stake, and am always reluctant to publish potentially-damaging rumors.

But once ALG began airing this publicly, and the press release made its way around blogs and Twitter, and NBC wished to defend their staffer, I tried to present for readers what was going on, with all the evidence available at the time. Now it's important for both sides to just put everything out there.

This really shouldn't be that difficult to resolve.

I agree with Calderone that both sides should put out everything they have.

It certainly seems that Calderone's is in NBC's corner. He talks about Jane Stone's reputation being on the line, but he doesn't note that the individuals involved at ALG also have their reputations at stake. Calderone is almost apologizing for writing about the incident in the first place. Has he misplaced his spine?

FACT: Someone is responsible for sending a horribly derogatory message to Alex Rosenwald or for doctoring the message to disparage Jane Stone and NBC.

FACT: Someone did a bad, bad thing.

Both sides need to produce the evidence that will determine the truth.

Both sides should be jumping at the chance to clear their names.

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