A Reporter Crosses The Line

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

The president of the FOP says there are credible allegations that two Pulitzer Prize-winning Daily News reporters behaved unethically by buying diapers and food and paying utility bills for a woman they wrote about who accused police of misconduct.

If the allegations are true, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey says, the reporters crossed an ethical line and may have tainted the criminal investigation of the cops accused of misconduct.

In the wake of the charges, Daily News reporters Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker aren't talking, and neither are their editors. Only new owner and interim Inquirer Publisher H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest has spoken. "We stand behind the work of our reporters," Lenfest said in a canned statement defending the Daily News and its prize-winning series, "Tainted Justice." But Lenfest also said that "if such 'sound evidence' exists, we will pursue it."

One impeccable source, however, has already stated in writing that the reporters crossed the line by giving gifts and buying food for another character in their series. The source is Wendy Ruderman, who in her book BUSTED A tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love, discloses that she bought groceries and gave gifts to former police informant Ventura "Benny" Martinez, who in Tainted Justice, also accused the police of misconduct.

"As journalists, Barbara [Laker] and I couldn't give him money, but we tried to help him in other ways," Ruderman writes on pg. 169 of BUSTED. "I bought him groceries, rushing over to his home with bags of vegetables, turkey and Dora the Explorer fruit snacks. I bought his son a Razor scooter for his birthday and told Benny to say it was from him. I wondered if Benny sold the scooter for drugs, but at the time, I was so plagued with guilt that I couldn't see through his manipulation and lies."

"Barbara and I knew the things we did for Benny crossed the line," Ruderman wrote. "But that line -- the one between reporter and human being -- got blurry."

Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker

In BUSTED, when Ruderman isn't talking about her husband's butt, or confessing what a lousy wife and mother she is, she's coming clean about her complicated relationships with her sources.

On page 218 of BUSTED, Ruderman writes how the wily Benny would tell her about how he might be murdered, or he might commit suicide. And how the FBI and internal affairs investigators were telling Benny that "Barbara and I didn't give a shit about him, we just wanted a story."

"I was tortured by this," Ruderman writes. "I spent hours talking to Benny on the phone, trying to console him while trying to console myself.

Let me get this straight. In BUSTED, Ruderman tells us in great detail what a lying, drug-addicted sleaze ball Benny is, but we're supposed to take as gospel whatever he says about those crooked cops?

"Benny did a number on my head," Ruderman writes, "and for the longest time, I couldn't disentangle myself from him. I bought Benny groceries for Thanksgiving and toys for his kids at Christmas and for Gio's birthday. At my weakest moments, Barbara [Laker] stopped me from giving him money."

"Wendy, don't do it," Ruderman quotes Laker as telling her. "She [Laker] reminded me that it would be unethical and cross the line as a journalist; she saved me from myself."

Reporters aren't supposed to pay for stories. They do, however, routinely pay for lunches and dinners in the process of coaxing a story out of a source.

It's hard to believe, however, that anybody's going to sell out for a box of diapers or a bag of groceries. Did the cops overplay their hand? Are they claiming that Ruderman parlayed diapers and toys into a Pulitzer?

At his press conference last week, John McNesby, president of FOP Lodge No. 5, went way beyond freebies. McNesby, without offering any proof, accused Laker and Ruderman of intentionally fabricating parts of their stories.

He doesn't know the half of it. Wait till McNesby reads BUSTED and finds out that Laker and Ruderman are a couple of secular Jews who, whenever they get in trouble, pray to their dead parents for help from above. Holy ancestor worship!

All of this zaniness leaves new owner Lenfest in a mess of his own making.

Big Trial reported earlier this week that several newsroom sources said that Lenfest had killed an Inky story that explored the allegations against the Daily News reporters. Does Lenfest now tell Inquirer Editor Bill Marimow to resurrect that story from the newsroom graveyard?

Or does he let the Daily News address the issue in a spirited defense in its own news columns?

Either way, Lenfest looks bad. He's already known as the new owner-publisher who killed a story that might have embarrassed the company he just paid $88 million for.

And if the Inky and Daily News do nothing, it will look and smell like a cover-up that Lenfest is presiding over.

Over at the FOP, McNesby looks like he's just getting started on a public crusade. Meanwhile, somebody with access to supposedly confidential federal documents is busy leaking them. The allegations supposedly contained in witness statements against the reporters may or may not be true. But if they're down on paper and support the cops, expect to read them somewhere soon. If not in the pages of the Inquirer or Daily News, then maybe in the next FOP bulletin from McNesby.

While Laker and Ruderman had nothing to say publicly to either the Daily News or Inquirer, on her Facebook page, Wendy Ruderman isn't keeping quiet.

"So, I admit I'm having a bad week," Ruderman wrote over a big picture of a diaper. "How to convey that I (and Barbara Laker, the best, most honest and ethical reporter I've ever worked with) did nothing wrong to ... my enemies. It's like trying to reason with a foaming rabid raccoon. I feel dismayed, perplexed, incredulous, frustrated, sad, and more."

Even her sister, Ruderman wrote, sent her an email that said, "I just want to know, did you give a source a diaper???????!!!!!!!"

"Thanks Amy for making me realize how crazy this is," Ruderman wrote.