Progress won't clarify 'undigested' letter

On June 8, newspaper reader Chuck Mathewes opened his Daily Progress to a liberals-bashing letter attributed to Debra Weidman of northern Albemarle County. Chock full of cheeky one-liners, the letter announced, "I think owning a gun doesn't make you a killer, it makes you a smart American," and "I believe that if you're selling me a Big Mac, do it in English."

Something about it just didn't sit right with Mathewes. "It sounded," he says, "very stale and prefabricated."

He Googled the letter and found it all over the Internet. It turned out to have been widely circulated and often forwarded by email. He notified the Progress by email that such a reprint was "probably against their letters policy" and sought some sort of retraction or acknowledgement of what he calls "undigested opinion."

"I let them know that they should point out on the page and write on the website," he says, "that this was not the person's own writing."

Instead, the Progress not only kept the letter on the paper's website, it even published an "amen" letter a week later. Editorial page editor Anita Shelburne referred the Hook's questions to editor McGregor McCance and publisher Lawrence McConnell. The former didn't return calls; the latter wouldn't comment.

Debra Weidman readily admits that she did not write the letter and was just "passing it along." She says she often enjoys email "forwards" and wanted to share this one. "There are quite a few floating around out there," she says, "that are absolutely wonderful."

She says a Progress editor told her to paraphrase the letter and shorten it to the paper's word limit, and then send it under her own name. The paper also made her change the title from "I'm a Bad American" to "Liberals Afraid of US Values."

"It sounded like something you needed a patriotic soundtrack behind for selling used cars," Mathewes says. "I was deeply disappointed."

So was Media Ethicist Bob Steele.

"If the newspaper says of material that isn't yours, 'Just put your name on it,' that is highly problematic ethically and practically," says Steele. "If we claim someone else's work as our own, that is dishonesty and plagiarism."

According to Steele, if a paper decides to run an anonymous email forward, editors should clearly attribute it, saying "So-and-so sent this to us. It was an anonymous post she saw on the Internet. These are not her words, but she believes it is important for others to read."

Weidman says she has previously contributed both original and "passed-along" letters to the Progress. (She says the paper once refused to run one on immigration. "I firmly believe that immigrants are coming to this country because there is something about this country they like," she says, "not to take over the country.")

Mathewes also sent the Progress an American values letter of his own entitled "Democrats Promoting US Values" that appeared on June 13. This letter suggested counterexamples to the one Weidman sent, such as "I don't think owning a gun makes you a killer, but I don't like the fact that killers and troubled youngsters can buy submachine guns or assault rifles through the mail without background checks."