Today, Chronicle columnist Rick Casey compares the plight of four journalists caught committing the journalistic sin of making up facts with the three-day suspension of an HPD crime lab worker caught fabricating results.
Casey thinks HPD and the city should have been at least as hard on that lab worker as the various news organizations were to the journalists he names.
Certainly it’s hard to disagree with that assessment.
However, compared to Casey’s own treatment by his bosses when he was caught appropriating the work of a Washington Post reporter without proper attribution — Casey was allowed to “clarify” his journalistic sin in a subsequent column, with no other public consequences — one could argue that the HPD crime lab worker actually received more punishment than Rick Casey for committing professional sins.
So, perhaps Rick Casey isn’t the best Chron columnist to be lecturing HPD or the city on handling personnel matters that revolve around professional ethics. Indeed, it’s even more laughable considering his latest yellow journalism that the newspaper printed just this past Wednesday. Professional ethics, indeed.
