Salt Lake Tribune: Not All Spoken Is The Truth

Congratulations to KSL's John Daley for committing an act of good professional journalism

By Curmudgeon

Paul Rolly's latest column in the SL Trib has a good illustration of how journalists routinely fact-checking what public officials tell them can pay off in good stories:

• Rolly: Not all spoken is the truth

Here's how the column begins:

KSL-TV's John Daley provided a good example earlier this week of a journalism credo: Always be skeptical of what public officials tell you.

The Chairman of the UTA Board of Trustees told Daley that UTA exec salaries were "quite low" compared to the pay of public transit execs in other cities. And instead of simply printing that statement by a public official as uncontested fact [as a Top Of Utah daily which shall remain nameless here, but whose initials are TSE has been known to do], Daley decided to fact-check what he'd been told. And guess what he discovered? That, compared to transit execs' pay in other cities, UTA execs' pay is in fact "quite high":

• Outcry over UTA salaries growing louder

Both Daley's story and Rolly's column have the facts and figures so readers can compare the numbers for themselves.

Congratulations to Mr. Daley for committing journalism. Nice work.