This article was updated at 08:12am on June 18, 2024 to add new information about a notice added to the El Paso Matters article. See update below.
El Paso Matters published an article on September 8, 2022 titled “DA’s conspiracy accusations could have ‘chilling effect’ on journalism, experts say.” The article has been changed at least four times since it was published with the latest change occurring yesterday. El Paso News had demanded the latest change to the article after finding out about a material falsehood contained in the article.
There is an important sentence in the article that was factually correct when it was originally published on September 8, 2022. Although another change occurred shortly after the article was originally published, the change did not affect the facts behind the issue discussed by the report. That change, from “El Paso blogger” to “Florida-based blogger” does not affect the facts about the case.
However, sometime between October 16, 2022 and January 29, 2023 the following sentence in the report was changed. Originally, the sentence read, “He did not say where he obtained the document.”
He, in the report refers to me, Martín Paredes.
Sometime before January 29, 2023, the article was updated to read, “He told Channel 9-KTSM he received the complaint from Rosales’ lawyers.”
That never happened.
The change in the article was discovered last week as we were preparing our report on the cease-and-desist demand served on El Paso Matters by the family of Richard Halliday. The demand letter demands that El Paso Matters correct “false statements” in their reporting.
In the case of the September 8, 2022 article, the sentence about the origin of the IRS complaint against El Paso Matters implied wrongly that Yvonne Rosales’ attorneys had provided the complaint to us. This is not true.
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Our Demand To El Paso Matters
As soon as we became aware of the falsehood in El Paso Matters’ story, on Friday we sent an email to Cindy Ramirez whose byline appears in the report and who was recently promoted to the editor of the non-profit publication. We copied Bob Moore, the CEO of El Paso Matters and Eric Pearson, the President/CEO of the El Paso Community Foundation. We included Pearson in our communication because the Foundation owns El Paso Matters.
Our email to Ramirez explained our concerns about the falsehood in the article and we asked that the report be updated by 4:00pm yesterday.
We also advised Ramirez that we would be publishing this report today explaining our findings and our communications with Ramirez and El Paso Matters.
Reviewing El Paso Matter’s report this morning we noted that the article had been updated a fourth time.
The sentence we noted that is factually incorrect remains, however, a note was added to the report. The note reads, “On June 14, 2024, Paredes denied making a statement about the source to KTSM and said he didn’t know the source of the document because it came to him through an anonymous email.”
This is true.
Nonetheless, the changes to El Paso Matter’s report are troublesome when it comes to transparency and trust in a publication.
As we have noted, the report has been changed at least four times now. Each time, readers of the article have not been notified that El Paso Matters has changed it. Each change, including the material change in a fact in the report, keeps the same byline and date without noting that the report has been updated.
Without noting that a significant fact in a report was changed, how are readers to trust that what they are reading is factually correct? In a time of “fake news” it is important that publications be transparent with their readers so that readers can trust the news outlet. Trust, and the Code of Ethics of Professional Journalists (PDF) require news publishers to “respond quickly to questions about accuracy.”
El Paso Matters Refuses To Comment
One of the complaints made by the family of Richard Halliday, and others is that El Paso Matters has refused multiple times to discuss with the family issues about their reporting. Other times, El Paso Matters has refused to add additional information to reports about the individuals they are reporting on, even after the individuals are interviewed by El Paso Matters reporters.
In our case, Bob Moore and his reporters have refused to respond to our requests for comments numerous times, preferring instead to ignore the fact that such a request was made.
It is our firm belief that a news story’s narrative should be led by the people who are involved in the story regardless of whether that person’s story fits a specific narrative. We believe that it is the reader who should make the decision as to who to believe based on the information provided.
Leaving out context or other information relevant to the facts of a report leaves readers with incomplete information about an issue.
We believe that it is not the job of the news media to report what it believes, but rather to collect the information and let the readers decide for themselves what it means.
El Paso Matters never acknowledged our two emails asking for the correction to their article. Although they added the note to their report, they did not explain how they came to add the factually incorrect sentence to the article and why.
Because of their refusal to offer an explanation and because a falsehood was added a significant time after the original report was published without notifying readers about the change, readers are left to wonder how many other material changes to El Paso Matters’ reports have been made over the years. These material changes may impact the facts behind an issue that changes a significant public policy narrative. In short, can El Paso Matters be trusted to deliver facts without bias to its readers?
Journalist Gabe Schneider had this to say about non-profit journalism in 2022, “the most important thing for a newsroom isn’t being ‘nonprofit’ – it’s about the values it lives up to.” Schneider may want to consider how transparent El Paso Matters is with its readers when it comes to values that news outlets should strive for.
Because we cannot trust El Paso Matters to be transparent, we are including a screen shot of the latest update to the article in case another change is made to it without notifying its readers.
Update: It was brought to our attention that El Paso Matters added two notices that the article had been updated. The first adds that the article was updated to reflect that we deny the statement about where the complaint came from. The second note notifies the reader that a correction was added to show where the author lives. What readers should note is that no note has been added to the article to explain when and why the change in the sentence we refer to in this report was made. It is important to remember that the sentence that fundamentally changes a fact was added months after the article was published without any notification. This can be verified independently using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine that courts have upheld are valid evidence for litigation.