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November 17, 2007

How Should We Evaluate Second Chances?

In the media in the last week there was lots of back and forth about giving people a second chance and whether or not these new chances were a good idea or not. The first second-chance debate was about Henry Blodget writing in the NY Times and another was about Don Imus returning to the airwaves on WABC-AM.

In the case of Henry Blodget, Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor of the NY Times, was not too thrilled with Blodgett writing Op-Ed pieces and in the DealBook blog on the Times’ website. He wrote in his November 11, column, “Blodget is…a man with a past. In 2003, he was permanently barred from the securities industry and fined $4 million for issuing fraudulent and misleading research reports on Internet stocks, violating federal laws.”

Hoyt wrote that he thought there were two questions that should be asked about Blodget appearing in The Times: “One is whether The Times properly identifies Blodget when he writes for the paper. I don’t think so. His name was big in financial news at one time, but many readers do not know him.” And “The bigger question is whether The Times should be publishing him at all…I believe in second chances, and Blodget seems to be doing fine establishing a new career. But why would The Times give a former analyst who lied to investors a platform to write about financial markets? …each time the newspaper uses Blodget as it has, it is conferring greater expert status on him. These deals work two ways. The Times’s luster may help Blodget. But some of his taint rubs off on The Times.”

I think Hoyt is using the wrong criteria for evaluating whether or not to publish Blodget. The first criterion should be whether or not he’s a writer who offers new ideas, new information, and excellent, penetrating analysis to The Times’s readers. The Times’ editors seem to think so, as I do, because I read many of his blog posts on Internet Outsider and Silicon Alley Insider. The second criterion should not be whether or not he did something wrong, which he clearly did, but whether or not he takes responsibility, admits it, apologizes, and attempts to correct the problem. Hoyt quoted his predecessor as Public Editor, Byron Calame, who said, according to Hoyt, “It wasn’t enough for Blodget to make a parenthetical aside in [an] article to “an unfortunate theory of mine — one that, along with some e-mails that caught the notice of the Securities and Exchange Commission, helped my Wall Street career go the way of eToys.” Calame and, I assume, Hoyt didn’t think The Times should publish Blodget.

Blodget’s quote sounds like he’s in a state of denial about what he did; he doesn’t sound contrite or apologetic. It sounds more like what he’s sorry about is that he got caught. Therefore, no matter how excellent his analysis is, I’m not sure that I trust what he writes. How do I really know he’s not corruptible like he was at Merrill Lynch if he really doesn’t think he did anything wrong?

On the other hand, Don Imus did a bad thing when he called the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy headed hos,” for which he was fired by CBS and NBC—and correctly so, as I wrote in this blog—and for which he apologized. His apologies were sincere, I believe, and he went to a lot of trouble to make them. A lot of Imus’s fans were livid at his being fired—unfairly they thought. But he did what Americans loved for a sinner to do; he apologized. Therefore, most reasonable people forgave him—the Rutgers team forgave him. WABC-AM forgave him and hired him to do morning drive time staring December 3, which means that station management must believe he will stay within the boundaries of acceptable taste. After all, WABC airs Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, so its taste boundaries are pretty wide. Nevertheless, the station has decided to put Imus on a 21-second delay, just in case he crosses even WABC's wide boundaries. Trust in rehabilitation goes just so far, it seems.

So, I guess it’s OK to give people a second chance if they apologize and mean it, but put them on a short leash just in case they’re insincere. But if management decides to give people a second chance in the media, don’t criticize management for doing so, Mr. Hoyt, because if you do, you can easily be accused of setting yourself up to look good by being able to say, “I told you so,” which critics, pundits, and columnists just love to do.

Posted by Charles Warner at November 17, 2007 10:06 PM

Comments

Media Curmudgeon [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 19, 2007 05:12 PM writes:

Michael Weiscopf writes:

"Provocative subject. Here is my take for what it is worth: I agree that people should be given a second chance, but if the criteria is "sincere
contrition" then I am concerned that it is impossible to really know the motives behind an apology. Imus has a history of offending racist comments with several "sincere apologies" in the past. Last semester when I presented the Imus controversy as a case study to my class, the students (who are mostly minorities) felt
by a large majority that firing him was too extreme, and they were not particularly offended by his comments. That said, I think it is naïve
to believe anything other than his firing was for financial reasons, not moral reasons.

So Imus's return is conditioned on his changing behavior and protecting his new bosses' business interests, not on his rehabilitation, which I don't think too many people actually care about.

In my view the Blodget situation is different; he has a history of criminal behavior. And while he may deserve a second chance to rebuild and go on
with his life, that second chance does not necessarily need to be in his former field of finance. Perhaps he should be permitted to write for the Times as a movie critic or someone who comments on the trials of other people who have similar troubles with the law.

John Dean [Nixon's White House council] has made a respectable career out of doing just that and has demonstrated sincere contrition by the example of his life after Watergate.

There are plenty of people in prison today and in the inner city schools that are the feeder into that system that are still looking for a first
chance."


Media Curmudgeon [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 18, 2007 02:39 PM writes:

I agree, Chuck, that one criterion should be: is what Blodget writes interesting and accurate? But as a media judge and critic, I wish he showed some remorse for misleading investors when he was at Merrill Lynch.

I read the pieces in the links you provided--Blodget's own explanation and a reporter's description of his transgressions, which almost seemed like an apology for him. It still seems to me like Blodget doesn't think he did anything wrong, and that bothers me--but not enough to stop reading and enjoying what he writes. I'm more forgiving than the Public Editor of the NY Times is.


Media Curmudgeon [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 18, 2007 02:26 PM writes:

Chuck Wooldridge writes:

"I've been enjoying Media Curmudgeon a lot lately. I had a quick comment about your Blodget article, even though I haven't followed either Blodget's writing or the Public Editor statements in the Times. Blodget has been writing for Slate for some time. Here's Slate’s article about what he did: http://www.slate.com/id/2065873/ and here is his own account of potential conflict of interest in covering the Martha Stuart trial http://www.slate.com/id/2093568/sidebar/2091485/.

I think it's important to remember that Blodget is barred from working in financial services again—his exposure in the Times can only help his career in journalism, not in reviving his old career. Furthermore, he was not convicted, he settled. Blodget probably feels at this point that rehashing his days as a broker is old news.

To me, the main criterion for reading him is whether or not he is interesting and accurate. I have not read his work in the Times, but at Slate he was great. Surely it is to everybody's benefit that he is now in a position where he can not do the kind of harm he did on Wall Street—my sense is that his various platforms have allowed him to inform the public of potential investment risks.


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