On Monday, I wrote Washington Post Reporter Bamboozled by Drug Czar, about a Washington Post article by staff reporter Ashley III Halsey: Feds: Watch out for drivers high on drugs.
It was a truly bad piece by Halsey that blatantly misrepresented the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration report. And it was about an event where Transportation Safety Director Ray LaHood was talking about drunk driving, joined by the Drug Czar.
Readers have asked if I would pass on any response I got from Halsey, so here goes. It’s not very much, but it sure is instructive.
I wrote:
This article is factually wrong, based on the Government’s own reports. It might be helpful if you actually read the study that the Drug Czar fed you and tricked you into reporting on falsely.
The NHTSA specifically cautioned against the exact kind of blatant fear mongering that you fell for.
The report said: “Caution should be exercised in assuming that drug presence implies driver impairment. Drug tests do not necessarily indicate current impairment. Drug presence can be measured for a period of days or weeks after ingestion in many cases. This latency of drug presence may partially explain the consistency between daytime and nighttime drug findings.”
Thus the “11 percent of motorists are high” section of your article is completely false.
Remember that the drug czar is required by law to lie, and should not be assumed to be a reliable source.
Please correct your article.
Halsey’s response:
Your arrogance and ignorance are impressive.
Ah.
Before I could digest that, another response arrived.
Pete,
Another reader sent me an email that says you’re a blogger, so I apologize for suggesting you’re arrogant. Arrogance is a necessary part of the blogger shtick. In light of your suggestion that I’d been “spoon fed” information you might be amused by the email I just received from a woman who says she’s Ray LaHood’s press secretary:
Now this gets interesting. Halsey actually included the email from Jill Zuckman, the Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Transportation, who wrote to Halsey:
So, we put out actual news yesterday, and you decide to a) not show up, b) not call, and c) focus on the non-news. Very odd.
and Zuckman then attached several articles (USA today, AP, Denver Post, etc.) about the LaHood press conference that all focused on LaHood’s campaign against drunk drivers, and never mentioned Kerlikowske’s nonsense distraction.
Now, Zuckman’s approach to a reporter may leave something to be desired in the way of tact, but it’s understandable when the Washington Post completely botches something like this.
What’s amazing is that it appears that Halsey was sending this to me as a way of showing that he wasn’t being spoon-fed — that he was his own man (after all, LaHood’s office didn’t like what he wrote). But that wasn’t the point at all.
Both Zuckman and I were chastising him for essentially the same thing. I was chastising him for reporting false information, and Zuckman was chastising him for reporting that instead of the real information in the press conference.
Just for fun, let’s attempt to recreate what Washington Post staff reporter Ashley Halsey III did for his paycheck (based on what Zuckman said and what Halsey wrote):
- Received news releases from LaHood and Kerlikowske about a press conference regarding drunk driving and the holidays.
- Didn’t go to the press conference.
- Didn’t call LaHood’s office to interview, get facts, verify information.
- Decided to focus the article about a report the Drug Czar mentioned.
- Didn’t bother to read it.
- Fell for Kerlikowske’s trick of implying that the report actually said something concrete about drugged driving (which it doesn’t) and went ahead and gave statistics that were completely false.
- Got pissed off when called on it.
This is exactly how the Drug Czar is able to work (Walters did this beautifully during his term). He finds lazy reporters and sets them up.
He’ll send out a release that says something like… “Drugged driving is becoming a significant problem in this country. According to a recent NHSTA study, 11% of all drivers tested positive for illegal drugs.” Now we know what he’s doing there, and that testing positive means little about impairment or present use (among other factors) but the lazy reporter makes the unsupported connection in his head — “Wow, 11% of all drivers are stoned!” — and puts it in print, doing the actual work of creating the lie for the Drug Czar, while the Drug Czar just sits back and smiles.
I did end up writing Ashley back, and tried to keep it nice in the hopes that he’d respond about the actual issue…
Ashley,
Thanks for responding. I apologize for assuming you had been spoon-fed the information, but then I still don’t understand how you managed to state that 11% of motorists are high on the weekend. Nothing in the NHTSA study indicated that. This was a new study to start to attempt to define benchmarks — it had absolutely no validity in terms of noting impairment (or being “high”), which is why the researchers were so careful to say that assumptions (like the ones in your article) should not be drawn from the research. It correctly noted that the way the study was conducted, the drivers who tested positive could very easily have merely used marijuana weeks earlier, which would say nothing about dangers on the road.
The drug czar has a nasty habit of throwing out irrelevant statistics and inferring that they mean something sinister, allowing the reporter to do the dirty work of actually making the incorrect statement. That’s really what I meant by the spoon-fed comment.
Again, thanks for the response. I think it’s extremely important that we not let people like the Drug Czar contaminate important discussions about drug policy with non-existent (or at least unproven) fears.
But nothing so far.
I’m still hoping there may be a correction at some point, but it doesn’t really appear that it’ll come from Halsey. I’d love to be proven wrong.
It would be great if he got pissed off about being used, instead of being pissed off about being caught.
Hey pete thanks for the update. Seems like Ashley is just trying to save face. I hope maybe he learns something from this and does a better job investigating his leads.
Again, losers resort to name calling. How does he consider it to be “our” fault that he only learned “copy and paste” in college? Let’s face it, he’ll never be an Ed. R. Murrow or Uncle Walter. A Pulitzer is probably NOT in his future.
Then he walked out into a mine field and never gave it another thought. When something “popped” underfoot, he reverted to name calling. And he didn’t just discredit himself. He decided to discredit his employer, too.
Ashley is making it hard for me, a reader, to differientiate between “Washington Post and fence post.” Both seem to have the same intelligence level.
More ‘Pomeranian journalism’ (with apologies to the actual dog breed, as I’ve known a few nice ones) exposed for the panting lap-dog behavior it is. He might as well work for the ONDCP.
One more reason why I don’t read the WaPo except for the Classified section, and that only when I want to buy something. Toilet paper has more utility and is much cheaper…
On further reflection, I guess this is an example of ‘postmodernism’ in journalistic circles.
Uncle Walter must be really pissed in the Afterlife…
of course, people reporting these things should have the sense to look at the drug use data and compare it to the traffic data so they could see for themselves that despite the fact that there are more drug users, more different drugs, more drivers, more miles driven, etc that the rates of accidents and traffic fatalities have been in constant decline.
then the scary “drugged driving” problem isn’t all that scary after all.
And this is why I stopped reading the WaPo in the first place: The Janet Cooke Incident
Looks like they still have reporters pulling stuff out from someplace dark and smelly and holding it up as news.
Just as I refuse to watch cable TV, have my intelligence insulted and have to pay for the privilege, I regularly decline offers from dead-tree media to have a similar opportunity. All hail the ‘Net!
Perhaps an email about this needs to be sent to The Washington Post’s Ombudsman Andrew Alexander.
I’m a firm believer in not name calling, it’s just too easy.
It sounds to me like this person is an elitist. A member of a profession that tends to think of itself as smarter than average. You just called him on his intelligence, and he was mortally offeneded.
Good job calling him a stupid idiot without actually having to resort to doing it.
Some observations and thoughts:
1. The reporter’s name is actually Ashley III Halsey. I’m sure it’s a common mistake, but it may be a pet peeve for the writer, bringing out additional hostility.
2. Ashley III Halsey appears to cover the D.C. Metro transportation beat for the WP (Google Ashley III Halsey and the first result contains a WP link to many of the reporter’s recent stories), in addition to some other reporting (including one recent feature, ironically, on ethical dilemmas).
3. The local transportation beat is probably not a bad beat, but I imagine most reporters would see it as a stepping stone to something else.
4. It can be beneficial for an ambitious local reporter to make a positive, non-confrontational contact with a top federal official. That federal official may be more open to being a source on a more important future story if he learns from experience he can trust the reporter.
5. Newspaper editors sometimes want the story that wasn’t at the press conference or in the press release – and WP editors probably ate Halsey’s story up as a sort of scoop that USA Today, WSJ, NYT etc. didn’t get. Indeed, this story may have been assigned to the reporter by editors.
6. At the same time, the real facts not only undercut, but negate the story as written. If the facts were added in, then the only story would be “drug czar is confused/ignorant/lying about facts,” which is more or less a persistent state, and therefore not news.
7. While Halsey and Kerlikowske should be embarrassed by this piece, I imagine they will both continue to look at it as a success. Halsey cultivated a source and got a “scoop” that likely pleased editors. Kerlikowske validated one WP writer that he can probably trust, and found a parasitic means to get his own memes latched to drunken driving news.
8. I imagine neither feels any moral qualms about dramatizing what they perceive as a serious problem.
9. These observations are not meant to excuse the story, but to suggest that becoming a shill is not always a single individual’s conscious decision. It may happen as an attempt to successfully navigate through an institution.
10. Unfortunately for long-standing journalistic empires like the WP, one risk of encouraging a cozy relationship with sources is a loss of trust from readers. There are other reasons for declines in circulation among big papers like the WP, but I think this is one that publishers still don’t get.
I love it! Stay on top of them Pete! The rest of you here too.
Jsut seems to me people(and reporters) would learn not to take things at face value.
I too have a hard time watching lame-stream and cable, I always end up pick their stories apart and screaming at the TV. Its not good for the blood pressure.
Thanks for the clarification on the name, Stephen. On this one, if he has any hostility, it should be reserved for the Post, since Ashley Halsey III was the byline on the article (I see that under the list of his articles at the Post, they have him listed as Ashley III Halsey, but it was the article byline from which I drew).
I’m going ahead and changing it to the hopefully correct version in this post.
To paraphrase a statement by Morrow, “If the reporter doesn’t do his job, then a paper is nothing more than wood pulp and ink.” Just as he refered to TV as being a “box with wires and lights.”
Journalists used to be the common man’s friend. They did what the common man couldn’t do. They enlightened the common man. However, today, we know that as no longer being the case. A simple paycheck trumps truth and insight, leaving the common man with NO investigative reporting.
Here, the reporter didn’t convey news. He made it with himself as the subject. Probably not what he expected yet what he got. Stand on facts and you can’t be asaulted. They still taught that when I was in school.
I used to carry a newspaper clipping with me that was written by the late John Chancellor, newsman. He talked about what a reporter’s true job was and how hard it was to achieve. Yet, he said that lack of desire to achieve credibility was the downfall of the service. That “truth” shows itself day after day after day after…
Journalists used to be our friends? William Randolph Hearst would have been no friend of mine had I been around in the 1920s.
I see now, Pete. I didn’t realize the WP messed up the byline on the story. That quirky middle name must be an ongoing nightmare for copy editors wherever the stories appear.
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Ugh. At least you got a response? I got no response to what I wrote (http://katharinec.tumblr.com/post/274300370/action-alert-contact-wapo-staff-reporter-ashley-iii) How frustrating. I’m going to send you an e-mail Pete… I’m wondering if there is someone else at WaPo that we can get a response from? If we remain civil, I would hope we can get this issue addressed by someone over there directly.
I would imagine that after a certain number of emails, everything on this subject may have gone directly into Halsey’s trash bin unread.
I have written the Post’s Obmudsman. We’ll see what comes of that.
I am looking forward to the WaPo’s coverage of medical cannabis in the District. Good, bad or indifferent, I want to see it. Congress moved one step closer to allowing it last night. Click on Pete’s link to the MPP blog for details.
His middle name is Roman numeral three? Is he like George Foremans kids, all named George? The third Ashley in the same family? Maybe the Post Toasties thought he was rich? Like Thurston Howle III Sure can’t write, or read, maybe he can print… Yellow Journalism has always had a market, stack the Post next to the National inquirer. Next week Ashley the Third can report on UFO’s inside the beltway. Science is so over rated, gossip is much more available when it comes to the reefer phobic. Again.
Cannabis and Driving
“Recent allegations by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that cannabis is a significant causal factor in on-road accidents and may adversely impact psychomotor skills up to 24 hours after past use are not supported by scientific evidence.”
~ Allen St. Pierre.
NORML Executive Director
updated: Sep 20, 2005
The use of anything that is from the ONDCP or any of it’s organizations is suspect and the press,which is supposed to verify information,is only too glad to throw the propaganda out there. With the web,the propaganda is being attacked before the ink dries on the press and it has time to be absorbed and held up as gospel by straight America.
Thank you Bill Gates.
I wrote to Halsey, and received a less than gracious reply. He gave some absurd example about motorcyclists never believing that helmet statistics are valid. I emailed our exchange and the NHTSA report to the Ombudsman. I directed him to the relevant section of the report, and outlined my factual objection. Hopefully, Halsey will get chewed out over this.
Well done Pete. I hope she corrects the article for the sake of accuracy.
Man I love driving stoned. I mean, I hate driving.
Everyone older than 60 years old should be forced do to amphetamines, and everyone younger than 25 should be sedated with opium to stop speeders.
It’s in the Constitution.
Just give the drunks one day a year by themselves to crash into each other. As it is they always seem to aim for innocents, then the rest of the year we can all drive safely. No one deserves crank. Driving on good expensive pot is a waste reducing traffic stress. Unless you’re prone to road rage or need it medicinally, better to enjoy it in a relaxed environment. mho
Can someone point me in the direction of the e-mail address or online form for the ombudsman so I can pass along the form e-mail I sent to Halsey to which I never got a reply? I’m probably just missing it, but I couldn’t find the contact info on the WaPo site.
Katharine — it’s ombudsman@washpost.com
However, I think we’re good for right now, unless you have additional points to add. Andy Alexander (the Ombudsman) wrote me back with a thanks and said he’d take a look at it.
You’re arrogant? Talk about psychological projection!
Most journos are thin skinned — even the ones I like annoy me with their attitude at times.
You guys may or may not have seen this…
Drug war solved
lol
h ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9QisdRPwEM&feature=popular
Thanks Pete. All I was going to do was forward what I wrote and to Halsey and say I hadn’t heard back yet and was concerned. I’ll wait to hear about any further responses before sending (if I even choose to at this point – besides, if he or she is taking a look at these blog posts, he or she will probably see my link in the comments anyway.) Glad to hear you got a polite response. Hopefully a correction/something tangible will come of it.
And I am sure it’s occurred to many of the readers that this may be the first step in ending the decades-long condescension that so-called ‘reporters’ have been prone to with regards to drug law reform measures. Although that condescension hasn’t been showing up in their article leads much of late.
Condescension such as “Pot enthusiast’s hopes to change the law go up in smoke” and other similar demeaning phrases. The ‘titter factor’ has long infected their writing, enabling them to make light of a deadly serious subject, as Pete’s Drug War Victims page makes painfully clear this most certainly is.
Put a few sloppy ‘journos’ balls in a vise-grip and the rest will sit up and take notice we aren’t standing for this crap anymore. It worked for minorities and the gays; it’s long past time we employed the same methods.
I’d add an
8. Suddenly got cold feet when he realized his little stunt might get some press of its own because Pete’s a blogger.
Guess calling people arrogant and ignorant is a bit funnier when they appear to be ordinary or weak opponents 🙂
Please, when writing a post about the Washington Post, please, stop implying that it has any credibility at all.
It is owned and controlled by the rich. It is a little to the left of Fox news, but it is not a dependable source for any information. On a scale of 0 to 10, Fox would score a 9, the Post, a 7 for conservative lying.
This paper was purchased by the Meyer family specifically to be a propaganda organ. It is not and never has been liberal or accurate. Watergate was reported because Katherine Graham hated Pat Nixon’s guts.
I believe that in her self serving autobiography, Graham referred to Pat three times when they spent 27 years in the same town. Hell, Graham mentioned her “friend” Henry Kissinger, the war criminal, 5 or 6 times on one page.
Good thinking Kaptinemo!
“Put a few sloppy ‘journos’ balls in a vise-grip and the rest will sit up and take notice we aren’t standing for this crap anymore. It worked for minorities and the gays; it’s long past time we employed the same methods.”
Here’s a site where you can give credit or discredit to Ashley as a professional-or-not working journalist:
http://www.newscred.com/author/show/name/ashley-halsey-iii
My vote alone dropped his CredRank from 98% to 97%
As a Washington Post reader for 37 years I can vouch that it is a superb newspaper, but even the best make mistakes occasionally and no one should rely on a single source for news. FWIW, in the last six weeks or so the Post has run five substantial stories on drugs that were critical of the drug war or very sympathetic to marijuana.
In this case the Post reporter clearly screwed up but Pete might have gotten a better reaction if he had sent a less confrontational initial response–ie, give the reporter the benefit of the doubt that it might have been an honest (albeit careless) mistake and point out the error in a non-judgmental way. (Might not have worked, given the reporter’s condescending reply, but worth trying).
As for the Ombudsman, I spoke with him at a Post event last week and was very favorably impressed. A key point is that HE DOES NOT WORK FOR THE POST and no one there can review or alter what he writes. It also seemed clear that he is influenced by the number of reader comments he gets on an issue so additional emails to him would help.
Malcolm said; “Here’s a site where you can give credit or discredit to Ashley as a professional-or-not working journalist:”
http://www.newscred.com/author/show/name/ashley-halsey-iii
“My vote alone dropped his CredRank from 98% to 97%”
I just voted. That sucker is now down to 88%
83% and falling fast! whose next:
http://www.newscred.com/author/show/name/ashley-halsey-iii
I just voted. Down to 81.45%
Oh cripes that is downright hilarious. So typical.
I just voted! He’s now at 75.37%
Come on guys; let’s drop this lying asslicker below 50% and teach him to treat Pete with more respect in future.
http://www.newscred.com/author/show/name/ashley-halsey-iii
how much do people (especialy hasley himself) actually check and use newscred? I mean I voted and everything, but do you guys think that it’s not obvious we’re the ones responsible for dropping his rating? they can read these comments too!
“how much do people (especialy hasley himself) actually check and use newscred?”
We’ll just send him a link when we get him down to 50%
“do you guys think that it’s not obvious we’re the ones responsible for dropping his rating?”
Isn’t that the whole idea?
And don’t we have as much right to do this as anybody else?
http://www.newscred.com/author/show/name/ashley-halsey-iii
by the, dont forget to discredit the specific article and not just the reporter himself! you can vote for both. i just made the artictle go from 7negtive-8positive to 8 each. 50% woohoo
Good one Jesse!
I missed that option. Thanks!
The article is now at 47.06%
http://www.newscred.com/author/show/name/ashley-halsey-iii
Ashley’s CredRank now stands at 70.14% and his crap article is at 38.1%
http://www.newscred.com/author/show/name/ashley-halsey-iii
I too am thoroughly disgusted with this whole article and the lazy reporting, however, we are making ourselves just as bad as him, rushing off to vote him down, not having read his other articles, based only on one piece of work. I have not read them either, and do not plan to. I will vote down the single article.
I will also refrain from calling this person names, in a public forum, which can be cut and pasted from, to make us look like idiots too.
Each of us must face our own shortcomings and misdeeds. We have no insight into the particulars of this person’s life leading up to the article, or the particulars of the month, week, day or hour of the article. He may have had serious issues preventing him from functioning to his fullest capacity, arguing with his boy/girl/friend or spouse, car wreck, financial woes, who knows.
I believe that each of you who have spoken out of hand or rudely about the author should publicly retract for the benefit of the forum and it’s representing organization.
I believe one hand written letter to the paper, by one person in the district, calmly illustrating the error, and politely asking for a front page correction, would have more impact than all the emails sent by irate, rude activists we can muster.
His prohibitionist piece of shit is now at 30.77%
And his personal credit rating has plunged to 53.72
Who wants the pleasure of mailing him when he gets to under 50%?
OK, now I’ve applied my own suggestion. I’ve read not only the article in question, but several others.
You guys pasted this man for no good reason. His article is not directed at MARIJUANA, it’s directed at all illegal and legal drugs. They are counting into this mix i bet, drunk people, underage drinking, prescription meds being used by someone other than the prescribed, if they’re impared, prescription meds being used BY the prescribed!
We have gotten so thin skinned over our issue we’re becoming like our opponents. I cannot bring myself to vote negatively about this article even. It appears to me to be a good piece.
As a marijuana smoker, and mild activist, I find nothing wrong with the article. I KNOW one in ten drivers it probably impaired by the drugs they are on on a saturday night, legal, illegal, cannabis, alcohol, pain pills, anxiety meds…. I do not question this statistic.
Those of us with cannabis on our agenda, tend to read it into things where other’s may not intend. I believe this has happened here, unless the article I read has been altered from the original.
I would like to add, that the things that we have been telling the author are true. And to be comprehensive and accurate, a line or two about cannabis not being active in the system 24hrs after use would uncloud our reputation, that was not the goal of this man’s work.
I personally contend that unless overdosed on marijuana, one is safe to drive within hours of the peak. Provided this person has safe driving skills. If you’re a speeder, or one of those delightfully self-involved people who drive like they are fifteen and on stupid pills, no, you are not safe to drive. It is these people who are causing the bad reputation for pot smoking. They get high and then, in the course of driving like an idiot, even WEEKS later, when not high, get busted and test for cannabis use…
The testing method is flawed.
We must pick and chose the targets of our rants, or we will appear no more intelligent than our opponents in this matter.
if anything, we should feel sorry for this man, having to report in such an uninteresting field of work.
Pete, i’m new to the bog, I love it. Great work. Did you hear this bit from Florida? Cops killed a young man down there. He tried to swallow his dope bag, and they tased him, and he choked on it! Unfortuantely, the deceased was involved in drunken assault!!! so it’s usefulness is limited because it lumps smokers in with abusive alcoholics.
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/articles/deputies-23655-bag-marijuana.html
If only he had smoked the weed, and left the alcohol out!
Samual Taylor; Please go back to the OP and read Halsley’s response to Pete. The guy has an attitude problem and it therefore won’t hurt him if he’s cut down to his original size. I personally just voted down every single one of his articles, and I sure wouldn’t mind confronting this mindless jerk in person over his arrogance. This war has made millions of victims out of innocent civilians. I don’t feel any of us should feel guilty or pull our punches when confronting any of the cheerleaders or freeloaders of this fascist regime.