Conflicting Information…

February 16th, 2006 | Posted in » Baptist Issues

Okay, I’ve taken a bit of time to review both the updated article in the Texan and Wade’s response to events of yesterday (the article and his conversation with Tom Hatley). One thing stands out… conflicting information.

The big difference I see is over “inaccuracies” in the Texan article about internal discipline by the board of trustees.

Wade’s post today (“And Now You Know, The Rest of the Story”) states:

I needed to ask Tom three questions. I did, and I appreciate the clarification I received from him.

(Question 1). Is the statement in Tammi’s article as follows, “IMB trustee chairman Thomas Hatley of Rogers, Ark., told the Southern Baptist TEXAN the committee determined the matter of disciplining a trustee could be handled internally,” a misquote of what you actually said? (Update: 4:30 Central Time February 16th, 2006. The above sentence has been changed by the Texan).

I discovered that Tom did not mean to imply that the Board would discipline me, and that if I read the article carefully, I would notice the sentence was not in quotations. In other words, this was the reporter’s words, not his. In no way was he referrring to me specifically. I thanked Tom for this explanation, and I told him that people reading the article, including Baptist editors nationwide were adding a subtitle that said, “Trustees to seek discipline internally” and made it sound like the Board would seek discipline behind closed doors. I would never agree to that because this public matter now needed to be addressed publicly.

The Texan article (“Executive committee of IMB trustees propose withdrawing motion for SBC to remove Burleson; preferring internal discipline approach”) states:

Burleson claimed that based on a Feb. 15 conversation with Hatley, the TEXAN account first released Feb. 13 was inaccurate in regard to how the board might handle his case internally. Hatley, however, confirmed to the TEXAN that he was quoted accurately, clarifying only that a decision to handle the matter internally was not driven simply by a desire to discipline Burleson.

Interesting, huh? Appears to me that Tom is either being misunderstood by Wade or the Texan (or both), or worse… that he’s telling two different stories. Perhaps just as sinister a thought is that the Texan could be lacking in journalistic integrity (based on the change in the wording of the article by the Texan).

I’ll have to look over the Baptist Press Stories in a bit to find out if any further information clarifying this issue can be found there (I just noticed their current top two stories are in regard to this matter).