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Like a family struggling to move on after a tragedy, The Cincinnati Enquirer continues to put distance between it and the journalistic equivalent of suicide, the paper’s infamous settlement with Chiquita Brands International five years ago.
This week Enquirer officials were to perform their final duty as prescribed by the agreement, according to journalism industry magazine Editor & Publisher, by destroying all reporting notes and research material from the original May 1998 investigative series on Chiquita. The Enquirer agreed first to store the material — which includes notebooks, interview transcripts, story drafts and Chiquita documents collected during a year-long investigation by reporters Michael Gallagher and Cameron McWhirter — and then to destroy it on the agreement’s fifth anniversary (June 29).
Just one legal thread from the 1998 series remains loose: George Ventura’s lawsuit against The Enquirer for allegedly revealing his identity as the confidential source who provided Gallagher with access to Chiquita’s internal voice mail system. Ventura’s suit was dismissed in February, but he’s appealing the ruling.
Gannett Co., owner of The Enquirer, previously had settled another lawsuit filed by its former editor, Lawrence Beaupre.
And Gannett continued its makeover of top management in Cincinnati by naming a new editor, Thomas Callinan, last fall and a new publisher, Margaret Buchanan, in May. Buchanan replaced Harry Whipple, who retired after 11 years as Enquirer publisher.
Interestingly, on the same weekend as the Chiquita debacle’s five-year anniversary, The Enquirer won first place for investigative reporting in the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2003 Cincinnati/Dayton journalism awards. Yet the paper can’t bury its Chiquita legacy.
In the Associated Press’ “Today in History” brief for June 28 — after items about James Madison’s death in 1836, Austrian Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination in 1914 and The Citadel’s admission of women cadets in 1996 — appeared this mention: “Five years ago: The Cincinnati Enquirer apologized to the Chiquita banana company as it retracted stories questioning the company’s business practices; the paper agreed to pay more than $10 million to settle legal claims.”
Living with the stench
It’s now known that Gannett and The Enquirer paid Chiquita $14 million, one of the high-profile demands extracted in return for Chiquita agreeing not to sue the paper or its top officials.
The Enquirer also printed three front-page apologies to Chiquita (June 28, June 30 and July 1, 1998), renounced the original 18-page series and all follow-up stories, deleted the work from its Web site and fired Gallagher, who had illegally retrieved internal voice mails of Chiquita executives.
It’s also now known, thanks to Editor & Publisher, that the paper agreed to some secret arrangements that disgusted many in journalism circles. An Editor & Publisher reporter covering Beaupre’s lawsuit against Gannett found a copy of the Gannett-Chiquita settlement agreement in court documents and published some of its details, including:
· While Enquirer employees, Beaupre and McWhirter couldn’t cover Chiquita or any of then-CEO Carl Lindner’s other companies (Provident Bank, American Financial), any business owned by Lindner’s family (UDF) or Lindner himself and his family. The bans effectively meant The Enquirer, with Beaupre as editor, agreed to stop writing about Lindner, the most powerful business leader in its home town.
· Gannett would investigate its own employees, as well as non-Enquirer people, to find out who besides Gallagher knew about the illegal voice mails — and then turn over their names to Chiquita.
· Gannett would give Chiquita access to all the notes, transcripts and files compiled by Gallagher and McWhirter, then place all the material in secure storage so that no one could see it without Chiquita’s permission. On the agreement’s five-year anniversary, Gannett would destroy all the reporting material.
· Chiquita wouldn’t take legal action against anyone at The Enquirer except Gallagher, whom the company sued several days after he was fired. The civil lawsuit was settled when Gallagher pleaded guilty to two felony charges in 1999 and received five years probation.
Editor & Publisher has been among the harshest critics of the settlement agreement, saying The Enquirer “virtually turned over editorial control of its newsroom to Chiquita in a craven effort to make legal trouble go away following its botched 1998 investigation…” and calling the paper’s actions “a surrender.”
In its June 16 editorial “Shredding Credibility,” Editor & Publisher focuses on the impending destruction of the reporters’ notes and wonders which method of disposal would be chosen. After dismissing shredding and dumping in the Ohio River, the editorial suggests fire.
“The notes should burn,” Editor & Publisher says, “and The Enquirer should be forced to live with the consequent stench.”
Callinan didn’t return a phone call regarding the notes’ fate. Jack Greiner, an attorney with the paper’s law firm of Graydon, Head & Ritchey, declined comment.
Where are they now?
The final legal fallout from 1998 — Ventura’s lawsuit — likely will drag on for a while. U.S. District Judge Herman Weber dismissed the suit in February, and Ventura has asked the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the decision.
According to Ventura’s attorney, Marc Mezibov, The Enquirer still must file its own briefs with the appeals court and hearings probably won’t begin until the end of the year.
“We remain optimistic,” Mezibov says. “Weber’s opinion was pathetic. We think the appeals judges will see the merits of our case.”
Mezibov says Ventura is practicing law again in Utah, where he’s lived and worked since leaving Chiquita in 1996. Ventura’s state legal license had been suspended after he pleaded no contest to four misdemeanor charges for supplying Chiquita’s voice mail codes to The Enquirer. The suspension is over, Mezibov says, and Ventura is working out of his house on a “catch as catch can” basis.
The Enquirer‘s other legal headache — Beaupre’s lawsuit against his former employer — ended in January when Gannett agreed to pay him a settlement. Beaupre received a $200,000 severance package and $350,000 to cover his legal fees.
Beaupre had accused Gannett, its internal legal officers and its external law firm of secretly negotiating with Chiquita to remove him as Enquirer editor while at the same time urging him to go along with the settlement agreement. Beaupre was assigned to an unspecified position at Gannett corporate headquarters in November 1998, a move he alleged ruined his professional reputation.
Beaupre left the company shortly after suing Gannett in 2000 and became managing editor of The Scranton (Pa.) Times-Tribune.
Gallagher is “working and doing well and has got this thing behind him,” according to attorney Patrick Hanley, who represented him during his criminal proceedings. Hanley wouldn’t disclose any details about Gallagher’s current life, saying he’s turned down numerous requests over the years to put the media in touch with Gallagher.
Hanley confirmed that Gallagher could seek expungement of his felony plea when his five-year probation ends next year but says he’s not doing any legal work right now for Gallagher.
The high-ranking Gannett officials who oversaw the original Chiquita series — Newspaper Division President Gary Watson and Senior Vice President for News Philip Currie — remain in their positions today. According to Beaupre’s lawsuit, both executives personally reviewed every word in the series before it was published, while Currie copy-edited every article and rewrote the lead story.
Whipple remained as Enquirer publisher for almost five years after signing the settlement agreement with Chiquita. David Wells, who as Metro editor supervised Gallagher and McWhirter’s year-long investigation, is still at The Enquirer as editorial page editor.
Gallagher was the only Enquirer or Gannett staffer working on the Chiquita series who was punished in any way — although Beaupre suffered as well, if you believe the claims in his lawsuit.
Contrast that with the journalism crisis du jour, the Jayson Blair scandal at The New York Times. That paper’s top two editorial executives resigned in the wake of embarrassing revelations of Blair’s plagiarism and reporting negligence, which — unlike Gallagher’s actions — didn’t rise to the level of criminal conduct.
Blair’s smooth style and incredible output fooled the executives, and perhaps their desire to believe in him and use him to win coveted journalism awards clouded their news judgment. Sound familiar?
The Times’ brass took responsibility. Enquirer executives never did.
Then again, no one ever confused The Enquirer with The New York Times. ©
This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2003.
