Response to heat generated by 'Reckless disregard'

I'm gratified by the flurry of discussion in response to my article about Jerry Bledsoe's reporting of the Wray/GPD story. Considering the raw emotion raised by this subject, I have been surprised to find that most of the criticisms of my story have been reasoned and cool. I certainly did not expect to win any popularity contests by choosing this subject.

I thank Ben Holder for initiating the conversation. His
statement that “I think it is fair to say that God is writing ‘Cops in Black and White’; Bledsoe is just holding the pen” strikes me as emblematic of the unquestioning faith with which many readers have treated Jerry Bledsoe's articles in particular and The Rhinoceros Times' coverage in general.

Holder, along with Brenda Bowers objects to my use of the term “retraction” to describe the post-script provided by lawyer Walt Jones and published by The Rhinoceros Times concerning Officer Stacy Morton’s disciplinary case. This is a matter of semantics. I leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions about the truth of Morton’s case by examining Bledsoe’s initial account juxtaposed with the information that was subsequently provided to him.

As to Bledsoe’s preoccupation with Nelson Johnson and the Nov. 3, 1979 shootings, I’ll let my reporting speak for itself, except to say that I believe it was healthy to explore allegations by both blacks and whites that racial tension and distrust has been passed down through the ranks of the Greensboro Police Department over the years. I invite people to read my articles, and judge them on their merits. In a relatively concise, two-part story, I’m not going to take on myself as an additional subject.

Holder correctly points out that I have reported about black leaders’ concerns about secret taping by an employee of the police department. Holder is in a position to know that I also reported the true motive for the tapings in a subsequent article when the information became available to me.

I have written a lot about truth and reconciliation, and about the police controversy. I might have recycled any number of stories, but I’m not sure how black leaders' perceptions that they were targeted for surveillance and how actually the taping was done to gather intelligence about a suspicious task force member are central to the story at hand. The taping story has already been told. My focus here is David Wray, and Jerry Bledsoe and The Rhinoceros Times, along with the three black police officers who are at the heart of the contention between the city and its former police chief.

Holder misconstrues my statement that “one [premise], unproven, is that Miles thrust herself into the middle of the Project Homestead investigation.” If this is a genuine misunderstanding, then I am happy to clarify my reporting.

As the next paragraph states, “Then-Capt. Gary Hastings came to Wray several times to complain that Miles had intruded on meetings between auditors and detectives, Bledsoe wrote in the fifth installment in his series, ‘and once told a woman being interviewed by [Detective] Ken Rickard and [city internal audit director] Len Lucas that she would make the detective leave if the woman felt uncomfortable in his presence, Wray recalled.”

This allegation, contradicted by three separate sources, entirely rests on David Wray’s say-so. I leave it to readers to determine for themselves who is most credible.

By providing a link to his own article, Holder simply recycles the canard that City Attorney Linda Miles tried to interfere in the police department’s Project Homestead investigation, citing her legal decision to release public records to the media as his support. The reasons for Miles’ decision to release the records are well documented and I do not need to repeat them here. Whether this disagreement led to a “fight” or “personal grudge” is largely irrelevant. By calling attention to Miles’ presumed personal feelings, Wray’s supporters are distracting attention from the former chief’s exercise of judgment in this incident.

Holder notes that I omit reference to a reported proposed hit against Bledsoe because of his reporting. I neither deny the truth of this account nor have I done the reporting to corroborate it, but from my understanding, the hit targeted not Bledsoe but Rhinoceros Times Editor John Hammer. As will be detailed next week, my story concerns the unsustained allegation that Officer Julius Fulmore was criminally involved with a local drug dealer, Bledsoe’s handling of this material, and other contextual information that presents this episode in a different light. I challenge Holder to show how the reported hit against Hammer supports allegations against Fulmore, absolves Wray of wrongdoing or calls into question City Manager Mitchell Johnson’s handling of the controversy.

A handful of commenters on Ed Cone's blog have attempted to poke holes in my reporting and questioned by ability to handle this story with independence and fairness.

In response to my reporting that Bledsoe misquoted Mitchell Johnson by writing that the city manager found allegations that police officers under former Chief Robert White used their police identification cards to gain free admission to a strip club to be "no big deal" when in fact Johnson told him that command staff had allegedly said that the practice was "not that big of a deal," Fred Gregory accuses Johnson of tacit approval.

Johnson told me that the allegations were brought to him after White left Greensboro for a job with the Louisville Metro Police Department, and that because of the dearth of evidence to back up the claims Johnson treated them as rumor.

Later in his conversation with Bledsoe, Johnson says, “I think a lot of what I was hearing was this cultural difference between what some officers in our department felt like were appropriate standards of behavior and maybe what Robert thought were appropriate standards of behavior from a different environment.”

One might conclude that the behavior to which Johnson was alluding is badging into strip clubs. Sources frequently make ambiguous statements. If that's the case, reporters have the opportunity and indeed the responsibility to seek clarification. We’ve made plans to post the audio of the Bledsoe/Johnson/Miles interview, so you can decide for yourself the context of Johnson’s statement.

As to Samuel Spagnola's question about why a reporter such as myself with a perceived liberal bias would report favorably on civil authority and Ian McDowell's suggestion that I might be friends with News & Record reporter Lorraine Ahearn, others have answered those questions as eloquently as I could have. Spagnola asks why I don’t apply the same scrutiny to the News & Record that I do to The Rhinoceros Times. I would respond that Bledsoe has already taken a crack at that one, and I don’t find that he’s made a compelling case.

And finally, Joe Guarino posts an interesting analysis of how my perceived journalistic slant dovetails with what might be considered the liberal pathology of Greensboro. I don’t pretend to have any particular gift for polemics, so I simply refer interested readers to his argument and redirect Guarino to the facts in my articles.