WCCO acknowledges Duck Dog story on website

• Guy - How are things in the WCCO newsroom? You the joker who cooked up the admit nothing strategy that's effectively tanked Schugel's ability to work anywhere else?

• still?

• How dare you suggest its inane to cover the life of Frank and Amelia!    Bastard.  Without studying the lives of our betters how will we improve?     That is real news Mr. Hater.   I'm slowly turning my apartment into an exact replica of Frank and Amelia's place so this sort of reporting is very helpful. 

• Nice article, thanks for the information.

• The media is quick to pounce on politicians on an alleged "cover-up," but when the shoe is on the other foot, it's amazing that WCCO-TV in essence said, "The story never occurred." WCCO-TV seems to devote all their air time to the lifestyles of Frank and Amelia, along with other inane stories.

• Here's a thought experiment: Tomorrow, James Schugel decides to apply for a job at another local television network outside of Minnesota. Does he get hired? Does the HR department, after googling his name, even offer him an interview? I'm pretty sure the answer is 'no.' Which then begs the question: why is WCCO still employing a reporter who couldn't beg his way into another job somewhere else at this point? This isn't just Schugel's fault, of course. If the world were a just place, the producers who signed off on this story without insisting Schugel double-check his facts should have their names tarnished just as badly. But they won't. Hell, the WCCO statement on the matter takes extra care to protect the names of all those involved, and it'll probably take a discovery request from the market to find out just who's culpable. What's so pathetic about this matter is that it would've been an odd footnote to Schugel's career if WCCO had just come out and corrected it the next night. But by drawing this thing out, they turned the entire matter into an internet sensation that will forever be associated with Schugel's name. It's funny how people who deal with PR people all of the time can be so boneheaded when it comes to handling their own PR.

• Dropping this the day before the long Thanksgiving weekend is the closest WCCO can get to saying 'this didn't happen' without actually saying it didn't happen. The hope is that nobody will notice they're acknowledging an error in the story, all the while giving themselves an out when critics point out that they scrubbed the whole thing in the hours following broadcast. There are a number of problems here, obviously, but the most serious is that WCCO seems to be in utter denial about the credibility of its news organization. For now, they seem to be standing on the defense that the rest of the duck/dog story is true, so nobody needs to continue worrying about the substantial (and probably legally actionable) error that sits in the  middle of it. But Schugel's comically bad reporting of duck/dog, and the total lack of fact-checking and oversight of it by WCCO producers, calls into question the entire story and, arguably, WCCO's news department. After all, if James Schugel can get away without double-checking who the CURRENT tenant of a building is, then run an allegation gleaned from a phone interview (that could NOT be verified by someone visiting the site of the allegation), it seems reasonable to believe that other WCCO reports can make the same kinds of basic reporting errors. In any event, WCCO's new approach - "the reporting was wrong, but we still believe there's something fishy about that address" - is the stuff of rumor, not journalism. And the station just looks worse and worse.

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