Reporters notebook: how a story goes from rumor to reported

This week, KUOW published a big story involving a city official and allegations of corruption.

Reporting on something like this isn’t easy. Following up on whispers, fact checking, getting people to talk to you — and providing the proper context. These stories are high-risk, and take a lot of time, effort, and editorial reflection.

So today we wanted to dive into how — and why — KUOW reported this story. And what’s happened in the days since it was published.

Investigative reporter Ashley Hiruko and online managing editor Isolde Raftery reported on an unverified rumor that’s been floating around within the Seattle Police Department for over half a year.

The rumor: That Police Chief Adrian Diaz was involved in a romantic relationship with a woman he hired as an advisor with a six-figure city salary.

You can find their original story at this link.

Diaz has denied these allegations. And he has gone to extraordinary lengths to squash talk about them. According to Diaz’s lawyer, he even went so far as to involve the FBI and Homeland Security to try and ferret out the rumor.

Anonymous complaints about the alleged affair have prompted an Office of Police Accountability investigation.

How do you find out about a story like this?

"I was making source calls, and just really shooting the breeze with a source who mentioned this offhand," explains Raftery. "I then involved Ashley, and we were just making calls, like just kind of poking around, like - is this something we could prove? Is this really - is this a big story?"

How do you decide when to publish the story?

"We had sources telling us, 'this is true' — but we don't go on sources word," notes Raftery. "We asked them for documentation, text messages, emails, photographs, like — what do you have to backup what you're telling us? This isn't something that we consider lightly."

"We really debated for quite a long time — when does the story become something that the public should know?" says Hiruko. "The fact that this rumor was having such a tremendous impact within the state's largest police department at a time where murders are at a record high here, that was something that the public should know."

What's happened since the story was published?

Raftery and Hiruko have confirmed that in the day following the story's publication, one SPD employee was terminated. That employee was being investigated for allegedly spreading this rumor.

You can find the most recent reporting on this story by Ashley Hiruko at this link.