It's been a full eight days after the break of the Manti Te'o story. Through the magic of smart phones, the Internet and the many other devices that bring the news to our fingertips, we've all had a chance to pore over the Te'o hoax, laugh at the expense of the South Bend Tribune and blame every news organization imaginable.
All but one.The Stanford Daily.
Three months prior to Deadspin's article, multiple, well-respected publications, including The New York Times and Sports Illustrated, published the story without doing their jobs. They were inattentive and all too trusting in their reporting. They were careless and negligent.
We praised Deadspin for following suspicious leads and their journalistic instinct. However, in a profession that values time sensitivity above all else, I can't help but ask, where were you, Stanford?
The Stanford Daily completely ignored red flags when the facts stood right in front of them. Who better suited to research Kekua's existence? The student paper should have been the first one to ask who Kekua was. They should have jumped at the opportunity to write about a supposed Stanford alumna who purportedly underwent unimaginable trauma while being the light of Te'os life and, as Te'o reported, the strength for him to continue Notre Dame's incredible season. If the reporters at Stanford had done their job, the story would have broken a week after it's publication. Stanford's undergraduate population is fewer than 8,000 and in that relatively small pool of students, no one on the Daily's staff of over 200 no one asked these questions? No one tried to get that story. In short, no one bothered to do their job.
As a student publication it is our job to report on the community. That community extends to alumni. When Auburn graduate, Katherine Webb, scored some air time and a few thousand new twitter followers, the story made the front page, much to my dismay. As reporters we knew it had to be covered. We were not going to let national news about our campus, our community and our university go untouched or unverified by our own publication.
I don't believe it was the responsibility of The Daily to predict that Te'o was lying, but it was their duty to look into the story. As a California university, with an abundance of California natives, how did no one on the staff stop to think that Carson City, Calif., doesn't exist?
My hope is that future college journalists won't be afraid to question the publishing's of professionals. As the Te'o hoax proves, professionals won't always be right. Professionals also won't always have access to the same people and documents that college journalists do. Stop second guessing yourself because you have a student press pass. Instead, use that press pass and do your job.
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