Soreness on Sourcing

We thought we'd be able to enjoy our rare three-day weekend in sunny California (DC), but, alas, the news cycle has compelled us to do our best to wrap our head around the Josie Hearn / Patricia Guadalupe back and forth. You can read the email exchange at Wonkette--which they've updated--and this looks to be the situation as best we see it: Jan. 31, 2007: Hearn scores an interview with Rep. Loretta Sanchez for a piece in the Politico and breaks the news that Sanchez is resigning because she was called "a whore" by Rep. Joe Baca. The resignation is news and Hearn broke that. Of course, Baca calling lawmakers "whores" isn't news (although, it is the first time, as far as we can tell, that a publication actually used that word instead of saying things like "world's oldest profession"). Patricia Guadalupe responds to an email from Hearn requesting credit to the Politico for breaking the news of Sanchez's resignation and maintains that Baca's negative comments are nothing new. This is true. Guadalupe has written about Baca's comments for the Capitol Standard and Hispanic Business Magazine. That said, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that, in her email, Hearn claimed that the "whore" part of her story was news...rather, it was the "resignation" part that was. Guadalupe wrote about the "whore" element (gosh, hookers are so hot right now) in the November 20 issue of "The Capitol Standard": Sources familiar with the closed-door meeting said the female legislators consider Baca 'disrespectful" of women's issues, adding that he once said one of the Latina legislators was also a member of the world's oldest profession. Hearn also explored Baca's condescending remarks to females, and even two days before Guadalupe, on Nov. 18, for The Hill newspaper: After Baca was elected, the discussion became heated as one female lawmaker accused him of having made disparaging personal comments about her to a gathering of state officials. Baca denied having made the comments, but the atmosphere had soured to such an extent that members on both sides left discouraged. So, perhaps it just comes down to (a phrase we never thought we'd utter) who knew Baca called women whores and when did they know it. After all, both Hearn and Guadalupe both referred to Baca's comments obliquely in November and did not name Sanchez. So perhaps here's the compromise: Hearn could have alluded in her piece that Baca's condescending remarks were well known and previously reported (including by Hearn herself) and Guadalupe should probably credit the Politico for breaking the story in her own story for Hispanic Business Magazine about Sanchez's resignation. There. Now can we all get along? All that being said, Guadalupe makes a very good side point: The mainstream media regularly ignores Hispanic publications and her larger point in taking exception to Hearn's piece is to point out how often they get overlooked. Guadalupe has a point there: Washingtonians tend to read their standard papers and publications and not bother to branch out beyond them. This is something that we can improve and Guadalupe should cast a wider net than simply Hearn when she makes that valid point. The other point this debate brings up is this: Given the proliferation of news outlets and websites -- and the Internet's way of granting us access to more and more of them around the world -- it's become harder and harder to stay on top of everything out there, which inevitably leads to these "crediting" issues. Back to surfing...if I could surf. As always, weigh in with your thoughts and perspectives by shooting us an email or dropping a line in the anonymous tips box. >UPDATE: Guadalupe tells FishbowlDC: My original point of all this is that there are people working on the same story at the same time, which I think you make in your last paragraph, and that these issues have been covered quite extensively already. I mean, there hasn't been any mention at all of the times this has appeared in the Spanish-language media. My understanding of an exclusive is that no one has it and no one had it before or said anything about it before the "exclusive" came out. You should know that SÃ¡nchez issued a statement to everyone saying she resigned, right when all this was going on, and the issue had been simmering for some time now. And: I also want to add that while the controversy came out in a December story I wrote for Hispanic Business, I'm sure you know that the lead time for magazines is quite long, and I had to turn in that story much earlier than its publication date. Hearn writes in, in response: Guadalupe continues to assert that the resignation story was broken in the Hispanic media but has provided no stories to back up that claim. Sanchez's statement saying she had resigned from the caucus was issued in response to reporters' inquiries after my story was posted online.

Fishbowl

Soreness on Sourcing

Patrick

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