“I’ll get back to the Pulitzer, but let’s look at the third group. It’s small, but there are a number of evangelical Christians who work here. And they were still unhappy with Janet because she was pro-choice and willing to say so. Even when they learned she’d put up her son for adoption rather than have an abortion after being raped as a teenager — exactly what they preach a woman should do. Even after her house was bombed, and she was kidnapped by Christian extremists — they still think she shouldn’t be news editor.”
Mac shook his head in disbelief. “But they were joining up with the data crowd to go after Janet. So, I took a look at the package more seriously,” Mac said, and he handed out his first exhibit — because that was exactly how he felt, like he was building a court case.
“First, you can ask to see judges’ comments on our entry,” he said. “I learned that the year before when my reporting was nominated, and we were a finalist selection for it too. I found the comments enlightening on my work, and so I wanted to see what the judges had to say about the Pregnancy Care package. Those are their comments. Steve, I know you’ve seen them, but I didn’t think anyone else had?”
Janet and the other men shook their heads and started reading. Steve just watched Mac as if he were a dangerous animal that ought to be caged. Mac grinned at him.
“The comments basically thought the series needed to put a human face to all the pieces not just regulate it to one sidebar. And one judge noticed, and commented, that the human-interest sidebar was the only piece written by a woman. The judge wondered why: why a woman for that article, and why only one woman?”
Mac looked at Whitaker. “You and I had a chat about objectivity once in regard to Janet. You asked me how I defined it, but I should have asked you the same question. Because based on the team you assembled, you thought only men could be objective about abortion. That somehow, men were untouched by the abortion issue.”
“Well, we can’t have one, can we?” Steve Whitaker interrupted.
“You mean to tell me you think men don’t have girlfriends who have dealt with a pregnancy scare or needed an abortion? That none of your team has ever had a sister, a friend, a daughter who needed one? Really?” Mac asked. “The right to easy, inexpensive, available birth control — including abortion — touches us all. And indifference to that issue isn’t objectivity, it’s appalling.”
“Now wait,” Steve said.
“No, you wait, because I’m not done,” Mac said, meeting Steve’s eyes. It was Steve who looked away. “I went to talk to Becky Truman, the reporter who supposedly fell apart under the stress of talking to the Planned Parenthood clinic workers and whom Janet replaced. It turns out she’s not a features writer at all, she writes for the business section. She was put on the team because the ME thought she’d be a good contributor: her specialty was non-profits and all of the paperwork they file.”
The ME nodded at that.
Mac continued, “Instead, you assigned her the personal piece that had nothing to do with her expertise and then abandoned her. And when she started getting death threats and came to you for support? You got her reassigned back to the business desk. Did you think that you’d be able to go without that piece altogether then? Instead, Janet was asked to finish it — by the ME again — and she did, because she thought the package needed a human face to it. At great personal cost, she wrote the piece.
“But here’s the thing: Janet got all the hate mail after the stories ran. I wondered then, and still do, how the right-wing Christian extremists made the link between Janet Andrews and Janet Brandt? But lately, I’ve wondered about something else: How did the extremists even know Becky was writing something about the anti-abortion movement, when the story wasn’t even out?”
The Trinity looked at each other and frowned.
“Go on Mac,” the ME said. “Did you find that out?”
“Yeah, I had a source from last fall who helped me with it,” Mac said. Timothy Brandt might be a prick, but he was a smart prick. He’d suggested they look at the boards of directors for the Pregnancy Care Centers and see what churches they attended. And then they’d done a social media search for the investigative team and newspaper leadership to find out who — if any — attended the same churches. Social media was a useful tool for a journalist.
When Tim found out Mac was doing this because Janet’s job was in jeopardy, he had done some follow-up work with some people he knew in the same church, and he pieced together what happened. Maybe Tim and Janet would develop a relationship after all, he thought.
“I’ll get back to that too,” Mac assured those seated at the table. “But there’s one other question that was bugging me, and that was: Why did any of this matter? Matter enough to try to get Janet fired over it? Or at least undermine her and lessen her credibility? I’m not a data-driven journalist, but I do remember a key principle: Follow the money.”
So, he’d ventured out into the other departments of the newspaper, and Lord, people liked to talk. Especially people in circulation and production who felt like their views weren’t listened to.
“Turns out it’s almost budget review time. And we’re hurting, just like all metro newspapers. It’s a miracle we still have things like a D.C. bureau and an investigative unit. And the talk is we aren’t going to be able to afford them for long.”
Mac looked at the
