FOX 2 Detroit reporter says ‘STFU’ to paramedic complaining about smiling & posing story

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Previous coverage of this story here & here

DAVE APOLOGIZES

Right at the top, let me apologize for a misleading headline I wrote for this story. It’s accurate, but I knew when I hit the publish button there was a good chance you would get the wrong impression.

On Wednesday, a WJBK-TV/FOX 2 reporter did, in fact, tweet STFU to a medic complaining about the story we’ve been following where the Detroit TV station falsely accused a suburban EMS crew of smiling and posing for a picture while tending to a crash victim. The headline could be considered misleading because this tweet wasn’t from THE FOX 2 Detroit reporter who reported the original story or even one of the EMS crew featured in that report.

I have apologized for misleading you and have corrected the record immediately just to give an example to this major market TV station on how responsible journalists and news organizations handle mistakes (stay with me and I will give you more details about the STFU incident).

A RECAP

It’s ten days after WJBK-TV’s original report maligned two public servants and almost a week after that report suddenly vanished from the station’s website. In that time there’s not been any acknowledgement from station management or the reporter involved that they made a mistake or a response to the many critics.

FOX 2 Detroit ran an outrageous story on Wednesday May 21 with the headline “Paramedics pose for photo at crash scene”. Outrageous, in that the story never occurred.

The story came from the imagination of the TV station and car crash victim Jake Glover. Glover based his claim solely on what he thought he saw in one still image showing Glover trapped in his pick-up truck after it hit a tree.

On Saturday (May 24), after receiving hundreds of complaints via Twitter, Facebook and email, the TV station quietly took down the story. There was no explanation. It just vanished. That evening, reporter Andrea Isom did a re-do of the story she originally misreported. This time it included tweets from the woman who took the picture. That woman made it clear no posing or smiling had occurred.

Instead of acknowledging they blew this story by not getting confirmation of the facts before it aired and public apologizing for damaging the reputation of the Wayne-Westland Fire Authority EMS crew, Isom tried to paint Glover and herself as the real victims. They had “been hurt by some of the very cruel and hurtful statements made on social media” about their handling of this story. This, as you can imagine, just brought in more criticism.

Despite these hundreds of critical comments on the station website, Facebook and Twitter, no one in charge at the TV station believes the public and the nation’s fire and EMS community are worthy of a response. How sad.

It’s not just the public criticism via the Internet and social media going unanswered. I’ve sent two emails to news director Kevin Roseborough with no acknowledgement they were even received. Many STATter911.com readers tell a similar story (if you have received a reply from management please share it with me).

WHAT WOULD CHARLIE DO?

Here’s the irony in all of this that should be of great embarrassment to this news organization. Over the past four or five years a series of Detroit Fire Department commissioners proved they were unable to lead the department out of its dismal state. Each public failure was highlighted by a reporter doing what freedom of the press is really all about, holding the government accountable.

That reporter never took no for an answer. He insisted someone in charge provide answers explaining what went wrong and what was being done to fix it. Charlie LeDuff constantly chased after and chased down those commissioners with a camera rolling. Charlie LeDuff works for WJBK-TV/FOX 2 in Detroit.

In the smiling medic case, the public, some in the fire and EMS community and even me have taken on the role of Charlie LeDuff. WJBK-TV management is playing one of the commissioners. We don’t have a camera crew at our disposal or a plane ticket to Detroit to do it LeDuff style, but we have the Internet and social media.

As you may recall, Charlie LeDuff once got a “Fuck you!” from Deputy Commissioner Fred Wheeler when Wheeler knocked the microphone from LeDuff’s hands after one well publicized encounter. In fact, Wheeler was fired the next day because of it.

A BIG FU & STFU FROM WJBK-TV

That “Fuck you!”, of course, is a good transition back to where we started and the only on the record comments about the smiling medic incident from anyone at the station. Those are the tweets Wednesday and Thursday from WJBK-TV reporter Maurielle Lue. Some of them were directed at Scott Kier, a paramedic who publishes the website “EMS in the New Decade“. Scott, like me, has been seeking answers from reporter Isom and management.

In a tweet defending her friend, Andrea Isom, Lue wrote to Kier: “how about U apologize for cyber bullying! You are a misinformed bandwagoner & you should listen to her words then #STFU #follower”.

On Thursday afternoon, Lue suddenly pulled down this message and a long series of tweets to both Kier and me. Like Andrea Isom’s original report on May 21, they vanished without an explanation.

So, all we are left with as the official record from FOX 2 in Detroit is an arrogant “shut the fuck up” to its critics. It’s no better than what Fred Wheeler told Charlie LeDuff. And by failing to respond in any other way, it’s exactly the message station management has for everyone in fire and EMS and any of us who have complained about their handling of the smiling medic story.

To the detriment of journalists everywhere, those in charge at WJBK-TV/FOX 2 Detroit believe accountability isn’t a two-way street.

Read account of incident at “EMS in the New Decade”

SOME END NOTES

• In her tweets to me on Thursday, reporter Lue indicated that some of the comments Andrea Isom received were racial in nature. I made it clear in my response and will here that it is outrageous that anyone would bring up race or anything of a personal nature in this story. While that should never happen, it’s unfortunately the ugly reality of social media and something we all have to deal with.
• Other than when she made it personal in her follow-up report, I have avoided specifically blaming this on Andrea Isom. That story didn’t get on the air solely because of Isom. There are assignment editors, producers and executive producers involved in the process. The biggest failure is not the error of the initial reporting. Mistakes happen. It’s been the inept handling since.
• Ms. Lue accused me of leading the charge, encouraging people to leave comments. I don’t believe I specifically did that until about six days after the original story with my follow-up posting. I did so because of the station’s failure to respond. There were already hundreds of comments without my encouragement.
• My tweets responding to Ms. Lue are still available here.
• Earlier in the week, Poynter.org, the website for the journalism school The Poynter Institute, wrote about this story. You can find the coverage here.
• You will find more coverage of this story at RogueMedic.com.