Letter: Armao Challenges 'E&P' Handling of Story

By: E&P Staff E&P received the following letter Tuesday night. It is published in its entirely here.

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I was stunned to read a one-sided, inaccurate account of my departure four years ago from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in the middle of an Editor & Publisher online report dated Sept. 25, purportedly about a paragon of ethical behavior.

The No. 1 rule for any journalist is to seek out and listen to
all sides. You don't have to believe someone. You don't even have to print his or her view. But you must hear it. Your reporter did not.

I was never contacted. For that matter, the Poynter ethicists never
heard my side before -- as I now learn from your article -- they
were formulating means to deal with my "violation of an ethical statute."

Had they or you asked me, I would have disputed the notion that
trying to have an honest conversation with a reader unhappy about our political coverage violated "an ethical statute." I did not "shoot back defensively" as you write, when a Democratic reader emailed us that it must have been a Republican editor who ordered up what he saw as a puff piece about Katharine Harris. Rather, in an exchange of five e-mails I attempted to provide him with insights into our coverage and how the story came about. In the emails, I wrote that, far from being a Republican, I wasn't even planning to vote for Ms. Harris. In Florida, my Democratic registration is a matter of public record. I also wrote about some of the factors shaping our coverage.

Eminent journalists, including some at Poynter, who increasingly
advocate better communication between newspapers and their readers as a way to win them back should contemplate carefully what happened to me.

There was no public demand to fire me when I learned that our reader was sending our email exchange to others over the Internet. I immediately went to my supervisor, realizing that the emails could be manipulated to try to embarass the newspaper. I operate by the no-surprise rule.

I wrote nothing unethical, improper or untrue. I made the error of thinking I was candidly addressing the concerns of a reader -- not an activist with a political agenda. And I resigned because I wanted to act in the best interests of a newspaper I loved. In return, I would have hoped that Janet Weaver would have the simple decency to accurately report the events of four years ago.

While she has disappointed me again, surely I might have hoped for better from Editor & Publisher. The airing of my professional behavior in such a one-sided way was unprofessional and smacks of questionable ethics.

Rosemary Armao

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Joe Strupp responds: I regret not being able to contact Armao. Attempts were made to track her down via Internet searches and editors at the Herald-Tribune, but were not successful. My story mistakenly reported that the Herald-Tribune received demands to fire Armao after her e-mail was made public, and that is being corrected in the article online.