How do you deal with another reporter lying about you?

I cover a school beat, where there's another reporter from the area's largest newspaper. The other reporter called a former district employee (and one of my sources) "crazy" in front of myself and other reporters. The incident got back to the former employee, so she called that reporter and threatened to file a law suit for defamation. Well, what was the response of the other reporter? Not only did she deny making the comment, she said I was the one who made it.

I'm curious if anyone has any ideas how to deal with this? Remember, the other reporter is a female so the "take 'em behind the wood shed and beat the sh!+ out of 'em" response won't fly here.

 

Hopefully the other reporters will back up your version.

People threaten to sue all the time. Doesn't mean they will. And even if they do, they still have to have proof in order to win.

 

How about lying TO me?

I had a fellow reporter, we'll call him Chip, intentionally give me a wrong number for a guy one time in a number swap (totally separate beats, obviously). I got the correct number a few days later from one of Chip's co-workers. Chip then found out that I had been calling behind his back to get numbers off his beat. He called me. I told him he was a lying dickhead.

What do I do? I just hate him and wish badness upon him. Only enough badness, though, to justify lying to a (young-at-the-time) beat writer whose assistance HE sought out in the first place.

 

Maybe Chip just misremembered the number.

 

Nicely played!

 

Deal with the situation or deal with the reporter?

I think the situation with the former employee being made is not worth worrying about. People are called names all the time and should be able to take it.

But if you want to smooth it over, I would try to get someone else who was there to back you up.

With the reporter, I would try to ignore her personally, but keep a sharp eye on everything she writes. Someone who would pin that on another person probably takes other liberties as well.

My other concern would be who is the loudmouth going back to the person saying someone called them crazy? That's the person I would be most worried about.

 

Did anybody have a recorder when the comment was made?

 

Sidenote: If the source thinks he or she can sue for someone saying they're "crazy" in a private conversation, then yeah, they're crazy.

 

Upper deck them.

 

I had a prick from another paper lying about me all the time. He told a photog from the largest paper in the area I kicked his laptop around, which was complete bullshit. He would constantly make up stuff about writers at our paper just to cause problems. He got caught plagiarizing an article a year or so later and was canned.

 

Switch her birth control pills for sugar pills.
There are ways, dude, ways you don't even want to know about.

 

I feared for a moment this reply wouldn't make the first page. Thanks, space.