Did The New York Times' Strike Reporter Use Unnamed Sources To Dramatize His Stories?

Last Thursday night, as Michael Cieply put the finishing touches on his gripping 1,260-word narrative for the next day's New York Times, he felt a mix of exhaustion and exhilaration. His scoop on a possible endgame in the crippling three-month writers' strike would, without a doubt, captivate everyone with its cast of characters. A little-known screenwriter who'd been brought in to jump-start the negotiations. A powerful agent who'd brokered the peace. A union representative who'd almost blown the entire deal with his obstinacy. Two Hollywood studio chiefs who went eye-to-eye with labor in search of a deal. No one, not even those whiny WGA leaders, could dispute that Cieply had put together a compelling insider's tick-tock of the strike's final days. This piece would, at last, earn him the industry respect he so clearly craved--not just for his reportage but also for his skills as a Hollywood-style storyteller.

For the previous three months, Cieply--the Los Angeles-based New York Times reporter covering the strike by the Writers Guild of America against the Hollywood studios--had been watching with increased disgust as the union failed to see the error of its ways. In Cieply's view, the chief WGA negotiators had taken an excessively hard line on its demands, showing a lack of understanding of how Hollywood was supposed to work. He was annoyed by the strong-arm tactics of the union's West Coast executive director, David Young, and the seeming intransigence of the WGA's leadership in the face of management's clear willingness to compromise.

Comments for this post are now closed