Candyce Clifft of WDRB-TV in Louisville, Andrew Wolfson of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, and Mark Story of the Lexington Herald-Leader

By Al Cross
Co-adviser, UK Campus Chapter

Kentucky journalists displayed remarkable restraint in handling the allegation of rape against University of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino, the leading reporters on the story said at an SPJ meeting on UK’s campus Sept. 21.

Andrew Wolfson of The Courier-Journal and Candyce Clifft of Louisville’s WDRB-TV joined sports columnist Mark Story of the Lexington Herald-Leader for a panel discussion sponsored by SPJ’s Bluegrass Professional Chapter and UK Campus Chapter.

Wolfson and Clifft said the woman making the allegations, Karen Sypher, proved to be unreliable for several reasons. “Who gives their rapist a ride home?” Wolfson asked, noting that Sypher acknowledged taking Pitino home after they had sex in a closed restaurant several years earlier.

Clifft revealed that her station, Channel 41, had Sypher take a polygraph test, on the recommendation of the station’s attorney, who said in effect, “You’re a little more protected if you get sued.”

The test, taken after Clifft interviewed Sypher, proved to be inconclusive. “It did tell us to be very cautious,” Clifft said. “We were inclined to believe her to start with,” probably because of the tradition to believe rape victims, she said.

When the station approached Pitino for comment, he and the university issued a news release saying he had reported an extortion attempt to federal officials. Clifft said she thought the university acted because another station was about to break the story.

WDRB then identified Sypher as the person under investigation, but didn’t air the interview because “We couldn’t substantiate the claims she was making,” Clifft said.

Sypher has been indicted on charges of extortion and lying to the FBI and has pleaded not guilty. She did not report the alleged rape to police until the scandal erupted, and when the investigators concluded that her allegations were not credible, the investigative file became subject to release under the Kentucky Open Records Act.

The law doesn’t allow standing requests for records when they become available. Wolfson wrote the first story based on the police investigative file, and said he got it simply by filing a request when he returned from a vacation.

Before the file was released, Wolfson said, he pushed to do a story on why Sypher wasn’t believable, because readers told the paper’s reporters and sports columnists that they were improperly protecting Pitino.

When the videotape of Sypher’s police interview was released, Clifft’s station aired “a short, benign segment,” she said.

Wolfson said Louisville news outlets focused not so much on the allegations as on why they were probably not true, and “showed remarkable restraint.” He said it would have been interesting to see what the scandal-oriented New York Post or similar tabloids would have done if it had been a local story for them. Because Pitino once coached in New York, the Post and other New York media have taken an interest.

“Local media’s been a lot more kind than national media,” Clifft said.

Wolfson gave Clifft most of the credit for reporting the story, quoting Louisville lawyer and commentator John Dyche, who told him, “She’s the one who moved the ball 99 yards down the field. You just got it across the goal line.”

After a decade of curating his site’s daily collection of links from across the Web, Curtis has a unique perspective on the challenges facing journalism, and he’s identified the next “revolution” in online media: good editing, with real editors highlighting the most important information. Fark, which Curtis runs from his Lexington home, has grown significantly since he started it in 1999 and now receives nearly 4 million visitors each month.

The program will be Monday, Oct. 5, at noon in the Kentucky Kernel newsroom, room 035 in the basement of the Grehan Journalism Building. I know some journalism classes run until 12:15, so feel free to come in after class.

If you want to read up on Curtis before Monday, you might start by checking out these sites:

• “Why the media passes off bunk as news” by Drew Curtis in The Christian Science Monitor (March 5, 2007)
• “Frat House Meets Debate Club When It’s News and It’s Fark” — live chat with Poynter’s Kelly McBride (June 22, 2009)
• “Fark Founder Flattens Fourth Estate” by Jack Shafer in Slate (Oct. 4, 2007)
• Interview with Drew Curtis from MeetInnovators

The New York Post led with the Pitino story on Aug. 14

Our chapter and the Bluegrass Pro Chapter of SPJ are bringing three leading Kentucky journalists to UK’s campus to discuss how they broke the story of a woman who allegedly attempted to extort University of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino after the two had a sexual encounter, which she claimed was rape. The story, which broke in August and continues to draw interest, presented journalists with a variety of thorny ethical questions:

• Is Karen Sypher credible?
• Is she the criminal or the victim?
• When should her name be printed and broadcast?
• Are officials and journalists trying to protect Pitino?
• Should Sypher’s police interview be aired?

The event, which is free and open to the general public, is Monday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. in the W.T. Young Library auditorium. The speakers will be Lexington Herald-Leader sports columnist Mark Story, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal courts reporter Andrew Wolfson, and Candyce Clifft, reporter and anchor for WDRB-41 (Fox) in Louisville.

Buttry

The Gazette newspaper in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has been on the forefront of embracing new ways of storytelling and reaching out to the surrounding community. Tomorrow, Steve Buttry, the newspaper’s Complete Community Connection (C3) coach, will be at UK to talk about some of their initiatives and about what interns are expected to do at his multimedia, social-networked newsroom.

He’ll be speaking at 7 p.m. Sunday in the Kentucky Kernel newsroom in the basement of the Grehan Journalism Building. There will be free pizza at the event, so don’t worry about missing dinner.

Journalism professor Buck Ryan brought Buttry to campus, but SPJ members are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Mark Goodman, Knight Chair for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University and former director of the Student Press Law Center

University of Kentucky is starting its celebration tonight. Mark Goodman, former director of the Student Press Law Center, will deliver the annual State of the First Amendment Address at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the auditorium of W.T. Young Library. At the same event, the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center will present the James Madison Award for Service to David Hawpe, a UK graduate and former Kentucky Kernel editor who recently left The Courier-Journal after more than 40 years. The Kentucky Kernel has more on the event.

On Wednesday, Goodman will join other panelists at 10 a.m. in the library auditorium for a discussion on “How Free Should the Student Press Be?” Other members of the panel will be Josh Moore, a Western Kentucky University student who led the push for legal protections for high school journalists in Kentucky; Betsey Bell, a journalism teacher at Louisville’s duPont Manual High School; and Richard Labunski, a professor in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications.

The First Amendment events wrap up on Thursday, first with free apple pie from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in front of Patterson Office Tower and on Rose Street in front of W.T. Young Library. At 6 p.m. in the Student Center’s Worsham Theater, Nashville-based band Freedom Sings! will present a multimedia concert of music that has been banned or censored throughout the years.

We have several other programs in the work and will update the site soon with more information.