Rumors as News : When ‘Did You Hear?’ Gets in Print

The space shuttle Challenger explodes, killing everyone aboard. Technical experts say they had warned the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to postpone the shuttle launch for fear the unusually cold weather might jeopardize safe operation of the booster rockets. But the rumor is widespread that the White House had pressured NASA to launch the shuttle on schedule so President Reagan could make a triumphant reference to it--perhaps even telephone the astronauts in space--during his State of the Union address the evening of the launch.

Artist Andrew Wyeth reveals that he has 240 previously unknown paintings and drawings, all but one of which feature a model named Helga; speculation immediately begins about whether Wyeth and Helga were lovers. The Most Rev. Edmund Szoka is archbishop of Detroit; reports say he will be elevated to the College of Cardinals. Philip Caldwell is president of Ford Motor Co, and Ford is losing about $4 million a day; the rumor is Caldwell is on his way out.

None of these rumors turned out to be true, but rumors are “a reporter’s life’s blood,” said Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post. “Every news event starts out as a rumor: ‘Did you hear that . . . ?’

“Rumors swept through Brentano’s (bookstore) . . . when I was there . . . on Nov. 22, 1963, that John F. Kennedy was dead. It was a rumor until it elevated itself to a report, and then it elevated itself to a fact.”

‘A Difficult Line’

Newspapers are supposed to publish facts, not rumors. There is often “a difficult line, though, between simply being a . . . transmission belt for irresponsible statements . . . and having to nail down the absolute, iron-clad authenticity of everything everybody says before you can put it in the paper,” said David Jones, national editor of the New York Times. “One of the roles the press has, I think, is to open public debate on issues. . . . “

But not all rumors are checkable--or provable. What should reporters and editors do when they have a story they believe to be true but cannot prove? Should a newspaper--or newsmagazine or wire service--ignore such rumors? Or should they investigate them and print them only if they turn out to be true? Or should they publish them even if they are not true--and label them as rumors?

The right answer--the responsible answer--might seem obvious: Do not publish them if they are not true. But as with so many decisions that editors make every day, there is a wide range of not-so-obvious issues to be evaluated, and each case must be judged on its own merits.

Most editors agree that rumors should not be published unless they become “so rampant . . . so commonly known among the Establishment or the insiders in a particular area--business, the government, sports--that everyone knows them except . . . the public,” in the words of James D. Squires, editor of the Chicago Tribune.

“When everybody and his brother is talking about something, there’s no sense in the news media trying to . . . keep it from readers,” Squires said.

The Tribune has a gossip column called “INC.” in which “AIDS, drunkenness and all kinds of unmentionable items get mentioned. . . . .” Squires said. “They deal with rumors all the time. That’s all their column is . . . rumors.”

Squires conceded that such a column is “a constant danger to . . . the credibility of the newspaper,” but he insisted: “You have to deal with that kind of news. What this does is give you a way to deal with it that gives it a proper perspective.”

Many editors think Squires is wrong.

No Different Standards

“You’re responsible for what you print, no matter where you print it,” said A. M. Rosenthal, executive editor of the New York Times. “I don’t believe in editors saying they have different standards for one part of a paper than another.”

But newspapers do publish rumors at times--on the front page, as well as in gossip columns--simply because, as Squires said, “everyone” is talking about it.

Who is “everyone,” though?

Just because “everyone” in a given business or area has heard a rumor does not mean the rumor has found its way into general circulation.

Recently, “everyone” in Hollywood was supposedly talking about rumors of a fistfight between two top executives at MCA-Universal; the Los Angeles Times published a story about the rumor at the top of the front page of its Calendar section, saying “every alert waiter between Burbank and Beverly Hills had heard 10 different versions” of it. Seventeen paragraphs into the story, midway through its continuation on Page 13 of Calendar, the story quoted one of the participants as denying the rumor and, five paragraphs later, the story said the other alleged participant “could not be reached. . . . “

Was everyone in Chicago or Detroit--or Long Beach or Garden Grove, for that matter--talking about this rumor? Not likely.

Prodigious Rumor Mill

Washington is an even more prodigious rumor mill than Hollywood. As Leslie H. Gelb wrote in the New York Times five years ago:

“In the right hands at the right time, the strategically placed political rumor is perhaps the most subtle and lethal weapon in the arsenal of the Washington bureaucrat . . . part of the serious maneuvering and jockeying for power in Washington.”

Reporters based in Washington for newspapers from all over the country often hear such a rumor and tell their editors back home that since “everyone” is talking about it, their papers should publish it; editors often tell these reporters that few, if any of their readers is likely to have heard the rumor and that it would be irresponsible of the paper to publish it.

Publishing a rumor often legitimizes the rumor and contributes to its spread, even if the newspaper clearly says the rumor is untrue. Indeed, some would argue that the very story you are now reading should not have been published, for precisely that reason, even though every rumor mentioned here has previously been published by other reputable publications and even though certain aspects of several rumors have been deliberately omitted from this account in the interest of fairness.

“You can write about rumors and say they’re unfounded and it’s like a judge . . . telling a jury to disregard some testimony and pretend they didn’t hear it; of course they heard it and they’ll remember it,” said Albert Hunt, Washington bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.

Thus, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled a year ago, “Publication of a rumor further fuels the continued repetition and does so in an especially egregious way by enshrining it in print.”

Bud McFarlane found that out the hard way.

Item About Sex Scandal

In August, 1985, Parade magazine printed an item about a “sex scandal involving a married top White House official and a White House reporter.” Parade did not name the official or the reporter and said there was “no conclusive evidence that it is true,” but added, “If it is (true), perhaps the parties involved will realize the mounting danger to their . . . promising careers and call a halt.”

Washington Dossier magazine printed a similar item two months later, without saying if there was evidence proving or disproving the rumor. Three months after that, Washingtonian magazine published a 500-word story on McFarlane, the first paragraph of which mentioned “rumors about alleged extramarital affairs” and the second paragraph of which said the rumors “were never substantiated and seemed deliberately orchestrated.”

The next month, Washington Dossier published another item, this time mentioning McFarlane by name and linking him to “rumors of alleged amorous indiscretions.”

In April of this year, Washington Dossier printed a brief story conceding that the rumors “are false” and apologizing for printing them.

About the same time, the Washington Post published a long story, “McFarlane & the Web of Rumor,” which analyzed the origins, development and effect of the rumor--a treatment similar to that the Post had given in 1981 to unsubstantiated rumors that Vice President Bush had been “nicked by a bullet in a pre-dawn shooting outside a town house somewhere on Capitol Hill.”

Newspapers periodically publish such stories--an anatomy of a rumor, the story behind an untrue story that has become widely accepted as true.

Last year, when rumors persisted that Peter Ueberroth would run for the United States Senate, the Los Angeles Times published a front-page story headlined, “Ueberroth for Senator? The Rumor Refuses to Die.” In 1984, when rumors spread that the Michigan state lottery was rigged so that blacks would win few of the biggest prizes, the Detroit Free Press published a story statistically refuting the rumors.

‘Double-Edged Role’

The inherent danger in such stories, of course, is that the reporters doing them take on what the authors of the Post’s story on the Bush shooting rumor called a “double-edged role--that of trying to track down the rumor while at the same time unintentionally but unavoidably helping to spread it.”

That is why responsible editors often differ on how to handle a given rumor.

The question of whether to publish a rumor is neither academic nor uncommon. Rumors--not just implausible or malicious rumors but reasonable, seemingly authoritative rumors--often involve important people and (seemingly) newsworthy events.

At least seven times in the last six years, for example, rumors have swept Wall Street that President Reagan had had a heart attack. Should such rumors be published?

On this question, most editors agree: Check the story out and, true or not, print it--with a confirmation or a denial, whichever is appropriate.

Why?

Readers may hear the rumor from other sources, and the health of the President is of such significance that they are entitled to know both rumor and truth. Moreover, with the President, it is relatively easy to obtain interviews or photographs that will incontrovertibly demonstrate the falsity of the rumor.

Rumors Influence Events

There is another reason to publish this particular rumor (and certain other rumors): Even when untrue, some rumors take on a life of their own and actually influence events; reaction to the rumor becomes a story in itself. When a Reagan heart attack rumor hits Wall Street, the stock market usually reacts strongly. Stock prices fall. Gold soars. The dollar drops.

“When rumors move the market . . . you have to be very careful how you handle the story,” said Norman Pearlstine, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. “You don’t want to make (the rumor) a self-fulfilling prophecy . . . by printing it and making the market react. But if the market has already reacted . . . you have to tell your readers why . . . even if the why is a rumor.”

Two years ago, Pearlstine had a much more difficult decision to make on a different kind of rumor: John Fedders, director of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission, was said to have beaten his wife--frequently and severely.

Journal reporters investigating the rumor had what they thought were reliable sources--and a copy of a letter that Fedders’ wife wrote to the White House--to advance the story from rumor to fact, but the Journal withheld the story for a year, until Fedders himself admitted the wife-beating in open court, during divorce proceedings.

“The most important thing we have is our credibility . . . the trust of our readers,” Pearlstine said, “and I don’t think trust and credibility are served by printing rumors. . . . I just didn’t think we could run it until we had it in a way I was absolutely certain about.”

By the time the Journal published its front-page story on Fedders in February, 1985, the story was no longer a rumor. Several other newspapers had also withheld the story, but not all papers would have proceeded so cautiously. With the evidence the Journal had amassed, some would have printed the story long before it reached the courtroom--for fear of being scooped by another publication, if for no other reason.

“When you’re in a competitive situation, you’re . . . absolutely more likely to print a rumor,” said Lionel Linder, editor of the Detroit News. “You’re almost afraid not to sometimes. You worry about what the . . . (newspaper) down the street is going to do. It clouds your judgment. When you’re not quite there (in confirming a story) and you want to be there, the temptation arises . . . to publish it anyway.”

Rumor About Cardinal

The News’ rival in Detroit, the Free Press, ran into just such a problem a couple of years ago when it published the story saying the archbishop of Detroit would be elevated to the College of Cardinals the next day, according to “sources in the U.S. Catholic Conference.”

The elevation never came.

“We like to think (competitive concerns) don’t . . . make us move too fast,” said Jim Crutchfield, metropolitan editor of the Free Press, “but this was one of those awful occasions . . . where we probably did just that, before anyone really had a handle on the story.”

Sometimes, a newspaper will publish a rumor not because it is afraid the competition will use it first but because the competition--another newspaper or, more often, television--already has used it. Television audiences are so large that if a television news program broadcasts a rumor, newspapers often feel obligated to report it, too, just so their readers won’t think they are either ignorant of it or are trying to cover it up.

Ideally, under those circumstances, the paper will say the rumor is unconfirmed--or untrue--if that is the case. This approach is particularly important if the rumors are causing widespread public anxiety, even mass hysteria, as was the case a few years ago with rumors of the widespread abduction of young children from suburban shopping malls in Miami, rumors of little boys being sexually mutilated in public rest rooms in Oakland, rumors of young women being raped at gunpoint on the University of Delaware campus.

Local newspapers published stories debunking these rumors, but Lee Brown, a journalism professor at San Diego State University, who is studying the press treatment of such rumors, says some editors think newspapers should ignore the rumors, rather than risk spreading them further by mentioning them, even in the context of saying they are untrue.

Sometimes, under the pressures of competition and deadlines, newspapers print rumors without saying they are untrue; that can be especially dangerous in times of disaster and tragedy, when rumors “invariably flourish,” as Tamotsu Shibutani writes in his book “Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor.”

At such times--during wars, earthquakes, hurricanes, tragedies--people turn immediately and desperately to the news media for information. If the media do not provide sufficient news, then “news”--in the form of rumors--will develop spontaneously to fill the vacuum and feed the public appetite. If the news media contribute to the process by printing the rumors, they “extend considerably the range” of the rumors, Shibutani says.

Challenger Aftermath

It should have come as no surprise, therefore, that in the aftermath of the Challenger explosion Jan. 28, various rumors began to circulate in Washington and in the aerospace community. The most virulent of the rumors was that the White House had pressured NASA to launch the shuttle on schedule, even if technical experts were doubtful and weather was problematic, so President Reagan could invoke America’s latest space triumph during his State of the Union address that evening.

“My first instinct (when I heard the rumor) was, ‘That’s a hell of a charge. That’s not something that you’d want to be in the paper and be wrong about,’ ” said Peter H. King, one of several Los Angeles Times reporters who investigated the rumor.

But as the rumor spread, King said, the attitude of the press corps was changing from “shock (over) . . . the awful, unfathomable tragedy . . . to ‘Who knew what, when?’ ”

The media, King said, began “gearing up” for a major investigation--”the Watergate of the 1980s,” in the words of one news organization.

King and his Los Angeles Times colleagues interviewed White House speech writers and sources at NASA. Reporters for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal examined drafts of the State of the Union address.

“The rumor sounded right, but we knew that if it was true, there had to be some technical planning, enough communications groundwork lain that there would be a track,” said Bill Kovach, Washington editor of the New York Times. “We worked our way back to what we thought was the first draft (of the speech) and we checked the (White House) phone logs. . . . We even allowed our reporters to invite people to go off the record--something we don’t like to do--so we could . . . try to find out what really happened and get something in the paper.”

No one came up with any evidence to substantiate the rumor.

Should Readers Know?

Should such a rumor be reported anyway? Should readers know what’s being talked about in Washington on so important a story?

Most editors decided to continue investigating the story but not to print anything unless they either found confirmation or someone in a responsible position was willing to raise the issue on the record.

Then, on Feb. 23, in a story in the Week in Review section of the New York Times, reporter Steven V. Roberts asked:

“Did the agency (NASA) feel pressure to launch the vehicle . . . before President Reagan gave his State of the Union address that evening?”

Roberts’ story contained no response from the White House or from NASA to the question he posed--an inappropriate and unfair omission under the circumstances, it would seem--but the brief passage dealing with this subject was otherwise very carefully crafted. It did not ask if pressure was exerted by the White House, merely if it was felt by NASA. Nor did Roberts use the word “rumor,” just question”--and the “question” was not specifically attributed to any one individual; Roberts simply said it was “hovering in the background” of congressional inquiries.

Later, in an interview, Roberts said he simply “wrote what people were saying. . . . I wasn’t floating a rumor,” and the day after his story appeared, two Los Angeles Times reporters--King and Maura Dolan--decided that it was time for them to write about what people were saying too.

Although the White House had appointed a commission to investigate the shuttle explosion, several senators told the two reporters that they thought a second investigation might be required to look into the rumor of White House pressure on NASA.

“The rumor was behind a lot of the fervor (for the second investigation),” Dolan said.

Influencing Events

That meant the rumor--true or not--was now influencing events. King and Dolan thought that made it publishable.

They wrote their story.

But their editors in Los Angeles took all reference to the rumor out of the story.

Why?

Because none of the senators asking about possible White House pressure was willing to be named.

“A small number of Democrats were making charges, . . .” said Norman C. Miller, national editor of the L.A. Times, “but they were unwilling to make a specific charge on the record and they had no evidence. . . . We felt that it was unsubstantiated, anonymous . . . a partisan charge. . . . There was a basis for looking into it, but there wasn’t a basis for publishing it that particular day.”

Two days later, White House spokesman Larry Speakes accused the press of starting the rumor and called it “the most vicious and distorted rumor I’ve ever heard.”

For most news media, that public tongue-lashing provided the proper context and justification to use the story. It was now on the record. The unsubstantiated rumor may not have been a story. Anonymous charges based on the rumor may not have been a story. But an angry, on-the-record denial of the rumor by a White House spokesman clearly was a story.

“How could you not . . . (use it) with Speakes speaking to it?” asked Maxwell McCrohon, president of United Press International.

The story was in newspapers all across the United States the next day--although, oddly, not in the Los Angeles Times. The Times published a brief, wire-service account of Speakes’ comments the afternoon of the day he made them--in its limited-circulation Late Final edition--but published nothing the next day in the editions seen by the vast majority of its readers, despite publishing three other Challenger stories that day.

Times editors were surprised when told of that oversight; they said it was inadvertent.

“If we didn’t print what Speakes said in our main edition, we made a mistake . . . an error in judgment. . . .” Miller said. “At that stage, it’s not a rumor, it’s a public issue. . . . The White House spokesman attacking the press for circulating a story like that about the President is news by anybody’s definition. We should have found room for it some place.”

Next: Rumors, AIDS and Homosexuality.)

Susanna Shuster of The Times’ editorial library assisted with the research for this story.