Naming names: Just how important is it?

I may be biting the journalistic hand that feeds me, but I can’t give up just yet. The Spokesman-Review and the BBB are at odds over the issue of whether to report beyond which industries received the most complaints in 2007, and “name names” of those particular companies that forced those industries to the top 10.

My Year in Review column in January, which outlined the most active complaint industries for 2007 and named names, was seriously edited. The specific names of firms that got the bulk of complaints in an industry in 2007 were removed.

When I saw the final edit of that article in the Feb. 3 issue, I felt The Spokesman-Review had let down our audiences by not including those names.

About five years ago, when S-R Editor Steve Smith and I chatted about the possibility of this column, we agreed that as a neutral party the BBB’s information would be taken as factual and neutral. No matter what company name came up in my column, the paper would print the data. After all, it is considered an objective fact based on BBB stats. He was well aware that large advertisers potentially could come into print in an unfavorable light. And that, folks, is journalistic ethics at its best.

So, my question more than five years later is: What happened to this understanding regarding the Year in Review article? The S-R’s response to my inquiry was that leaving the names in the article would have been unfair.

“Singling out a couple of companies raises issues of fairness. We need to name all the companies or none at all,” was the reply from editors.

My original column clearly stated that the BBB only “names names” of companies that had unanswered or unresolved complaints or that were unable to be pursued as one of the top 25 companies receiving complaints.

If a questionable company is consistently bad enough to be in the top 25, it also has a huge impact on why its industry was driven to the top 10 to begin with.

Why does the BBB feel so strongly about naming names? Simple, really. It is the BBB Board of Directors that oversees the BBB. And that board has already concluded that just stating that a particular industry “is the number one complaint getter” is merely a blanket statement that indicts an industry, overall. And the BBB Board believes that is neither fair nor ethical.

I liken this generality to a headline such as, “New-car dealers get the most complaints.” However, when you read the statistics, you would see that a handful of car dealers get complaints and the bulk of them are fine businesspeople who stepped up to resolve their problems. This is where the BBB and the newspaper are at odds.

Only once in the nearly six years writing this column have I had an editor turn down an entire submission. Even if toes are stepped on, The Spokesman-Review stands by the BBB and its neutrality.

Has something changed? Am I wrong thinking the BBB needs to single out specific complaint-getters?

Is the newspaper right that the edited column achieved what editors told me, that they “believe our readers came away from your column with exactly the information you sought to convey – be careful when dealing with companies in these 10 industries.”

Unfortunately, that is not what the BBB wanted to convey.

You might be wondering why it has taken me more than two months to raise these concerns to readers. I wanted to speak face-to-face with Smith before blindsiding him with this piece. Refreshingly, he welcomes the debate and the challenge.

Perhaps BBB Naming Names, which holds businesses accountable, is so specific that it is not only excessive and unfair, it is also unnecessary. Or, is it necessary to name names?

What do you think?

I respect the great folks at the paper, and this bi-monthly guest BBB column brings more feedback, both positive and negative, than almost anything we do.

We need this column to help get the word out, cause discussion and improve employee-employer relations.

I look to my values to keep me on a firm foundation, and this debate/disagreement the BBB raised with the S-R just causes me to ask more questions. Perhaps you, the readers, can let me know if I am tilting at windmills.