Truth Still Matters: A Letter to Dave Robb and Deadline
In the early days of the Trump Administration two years ago, The Washington Post adopted a new slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” While it sounds like something out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this chilling catchphrase is deeply true in our own dystopic universe, and not just of civic democracies. It’s true of union democracy as well, and that is the reason I felt strongly about researching, reporting and publishing an article several days ago in the Los Angeles Times entitled Film School’s Ties with Matthew Modine Face Scrutiny in Heated SAG-AFTRA Election, concerning apparent violation of Federal labor election law by Modine’s campaign for union president.
I expected the inevitable partisan reaction to the piece, but did not anticipate that a weaponized journalist, Dave Robb, would publish two articles in Deadline filled with outright lies about the article and defamatory comments about me, and do so without even contacting me for comment as basic journalistic ethics require.
My usual practice is not to respond to nonsense, but the scope and audacity of Robb’s gaslighting warrant an exception. For that reason I sent him, and his editors and lawyers, a request Saturday morning for correction, retraction and apology. Having received no response from any of them some eight hours later, I am posting that letter below so that readers can make up their own minds.
Even in the age of Trump and no matter how insistent the lie, the truth still matters and always will.
UPDATE: On Tuesday, 8/27/2019, Deadline published a “clarification” admitting that their story was false. “A Deadline report inaccurately summarized the LAT article,” it reads in part. But they did not acknowledge that there were two such stories in Deadline. Nor did they link back from the stories to the correction, or acknowledge that they failed to contact their target, me, before publishing. And, the correction is buried, whereas the original story was featured in an email blast and bannered across all pages on the Deadline site. I have still not heard anything directly from Deadline.
- Jonathan
August 24, 2018
Via email
David Robb
Penske Media Corporation
11175 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90025
Re: Factual misstatements — Modine articles — request for correction
Dear Dave:
I am writing in response to multiple factual misstatements in your Deadline story SAG-AFTRA Prexy Candidate Matthew Modine Feels He Was Unfairly Sandbagged By LA Times (8/22/2019), some of which you reiterated the next day in SAG-AFTRA Presidential Candidates Matthew Modine & Gabrielle Carteris Exchange Allegations Of Federal Labor Law Violations On Eve Of Election. I am writing also about the first article’s personal attacks on me, which you published without affording me the opportunity to comment.
I am cc-ing a number of your editors and your publication’s counsel because I hope to prompt a discussion within your group about accuracy and professional ethics. I write on my own behalf. And although I believe you have defamed me by wrongfully impugning my integrity, reliability and competence, I’m not seeking to assert or debate issues of legal liability. Rather, I simply request that you retract, correct and apologize for your falsehoods and your unfounded attacks on me.
In addition, I request that you actually behave like a journalist should you ever have occasion again to report on me or my work — specifically, that you contact me for comment, that you refrain from falsehoods and unfounded attacks, and that you report in a balanced and fair fashion.
In order of appearance in your piece, the issues are as follows:
1. Missing Link. Your articles reference and extensively attack the LA Times article (print facsimile attached) that I wrote about Modine and the New York Film Academy that published Wednesday (8/21/2019), but don’t link to it. Your deliberate omission is contrary to customary Internet practice and journalistic courtesy, and deprives the reader of the opportunity to see the falsity of your reporting by easily clicking to the source. Accordingly, I request that you include a link so that readers can see the truth for themselves.
2. Impugning Reporter re Timing of LAT Article. You describe the LAT article as “curiously timed with one week of voting left in the guild’s election.” This is an invitation to the reader to draw a negative inference about those responsible for the timing, including the reporter, me. Professional ethics and customary journalistic practice would have required contacting me for comment, but you did not do so. Instead, you willfully impugned me by implying ulterior motives without giving me a chance to respond.
If you had actually done your job as a journalist and contacted me, I would have told you this: I started working on the story around Aug. 7, when I became aware of the New York Film Academy videos on the MembershipFirst website and realized the potential legal implications. For reasons that include my other professional commitments and the intensity of research, writing and editing required for a story about alleged violations of law, the article did not publish until Aug. 21. Contrary to your implication, I wish it had published sooner, especially given that the videos had been up since early July and that the election would be ending Aug. 28, making the piece less timely. There was no attempt or intent to delay publication for any reason related to the timing of the election or any other “curious” or improper reason. Accordingly, I request that you delete, retract and apologize for the above-referenced phrase.
3. False Statements re Premise of LAT Article. Your 8/22 article falsely claims that:
· “the [LAT] article alleged that Modine had accepted in-kind campaign contributions from his ‘employer.’”
· “the paper asserts, as a member of the school’s board of directors, [Modine] is therefore an employee.”
· “the LAT … just assumes that the school is his ‘employer.’”
Your article then goes off on a romp, discussing this purported issue at length and mis-framing the legal issue as being whether Modine is an employee of the school. You make similar claims about the LAT article in your 8/23 article.
But actually, the LAT article says none of the things you claim it says. Did you even read the article you are attacking? Perhaps not. You certainly didn’t bother to contact the journalist you are impugning.
To reiterate, your assertions are flat out false and recklessly disregard the truth. To the contrary, the LAT article does not assert or even imply that Modine accepted contributions from his employer. Nor does it say or imply that Modine’s membership on the school’s board or anything else makes him an employee of the school. Your statements about my article are false.
In point of fact, you have created a straw man and falsely attributed it to my article. The reason the above question is a straw man is quite simple: the federal prohibition on employer contributions applies to any employer, as the LAT article, Department of Labor manual (quoted and linked in the LAT story) and SAG-AFTRA documents (also quoted in the LAT story) repeatedly explain.
Indeed, you and presumably your editor(s) are aware of this, as you yourself quoted one of those SAG-AFTRA documents two weeks ago in your story about alleged employer contributions in Atlanta: “federal law prohibits any employer … from contributing anything of value to candidates.” Reread that sentence from your own article. It says nothing about the invented issue of your new articles, i.e., employer/employee relationship (or lack thereof) between contributor and candidate.
And in fact, the Atlanta talent agency you wrote about two weeks ago was not the employer of the candidates, so far as I know and so far as your story indicated, yet its contribution (Facebook posts) was still an apparent violation. In addition, you also quote SAG-AFTRA documents again in yesterday’s piece and even quote the LAT story’s quotation of a Dept. of Labor manual. That manual says nothing about the candidate needing to be an employee of the employer in order to trigger the prohibition. You’ve printed nonsense.
In addition, my LAT article quoted and linked to the law and regs, including the regs’ statement that “employer … is not restricted to employers who employ members of the labor organization in which the election is being conducted.”
As that quote makes clear, it doesn’t matter whether the school is or is not Modine’s employer, which is why the LAT article didn’t analyze the question of whether board members are employees. It simply matters that the school is an employer of somebody. And if you had contacted me for comment, I would have explained that to you. You could also have sought out legal experts of your choosing or talked to the ones I quoted by name in my article, but you apparently saw no reason to bother with that either. Responsible, professional journalists contact subjects and experts before publishing: you can learn things and avoid making false or even defamatory statements.
Instead, by making false assertions about the LAT article I wrote (and doubling down by calling me out by name, see below), you have wrongfully impugned my competence, reliability and integrity. Accordingly, I request that you delete, retract and apologize for all claims or implications that the LAT article said Modine was the school’s employee or that the school was his employer.
4. Impugning Journalist for “Hit Job” and Supposed Lack of Due Diligence. You quote Modine suggesting my LAT article is a “journalistic hit job” and disparaging the LAT for publishing “without doing journalistic due diligence,” then a sentence later you identify me as the article’s author, clearly denigrating my journalistic integrity, reliability and competence, and intentionally targeting me to damage my reputation. The irony is that it is you who are operating without doing journalistic due diligence, as you never contacted me or offered me an opportunity to respond to Modine’s attack on what you highlight as my work product.
In addition, for the record, I stand by the article; and I and the LAT operated with enormous diligence, which included the following: (a) My article is filled with links to the items and cases cited, including archived copies where possible in instances where the original was deleted; (b) I contacted numerous experts and obtained on the record comment from several; (c ) I took numerous screenshots in research; (d) I researched three additional matters that appeared to be employer contribution violations by the Modine campaign, but excluded them from the story because I could not prove all elements to my satisfaction; (e) I repeatedly sought and obtained comment by or on behalf of Modine and the New York Film Academy and included comment on behalf of them in the story; (f) I read all of the reported cases and settlement descriptions related to the law at issue; (g) editors and I subjected the article to close editing and multiple revisions; and (h) the article was subjected to LAT Legal review.
I spent an estimated 40 hours or more on this one article. Good journalism sometimes takes significant effort, but I and my editors exerted a high level of journalistic due diligence because the truth matters even in the age of Trump and because reporting alleged legal violations further heightens the requirement to get it right. As a journalist, I felt I owed that to Modine, NYFA and my readers.
Accordingly, I request that you apologize for including Modine’s comments without giving me an opportunity to respond; and that you either delete and retract his unfounded disparagement of me or publish the above three paragraphs as a response in the body of your 8/22 piece.
5. Impugning Journalist re Opportunity to Comment. You ended your 8/22 story with these words, “It does seem that Modine deserved to tell his side of the story, at such a critical moment in the election process.” This sentence — which implies that I did not give Modine an opportunity to tell his side of the story — is false and wrongfully impugns me.
In fact, the LAT story explicitly states “Modine was not available for an interview” and then repeatedly quotes his publicist Adam Nelson, with whom I had extensive emails back and forth. Modine’s side of the story was thus told. And even though I had explained the law to Nelson, he never raised the non-issue of whether Modine was the school’s employee.
Despite the communication with Nelson, we wanted to speak to Modine personally. I had asked to speak directly with him several weeks ago and Nelson never fulfilled my request. And on Tuesday, Aug. 20 at 9:47 a.m., I sent Nelson a request to interview Modine that day specifically in connection with this story. I never received a response. After about 19 hours passed, the story published on Aug. 21 at 5:00 a.m.
Later, Nelson sent the LAT a complaint that raised a variety of non-issues, but it too made no mention of the non-issue that your story focuses on. Someone apparently invented that nonsense later.
Accordingly, I request that you delete, retract and apologize for the above-referenced sentence.
Sincerely,
Jonathan L. Handel
cc (via email and w/encl.):
Mike Fleming
Nellie Andreeva
Michael Cieply
Peter Bart
Todd Greene, Esq.
Judy Margolin, Esq.
