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Just one day after the first shoe dropped, the other has fallen with a resounding thud. NBC 5’s Amy Jacobson was canned from her reporting job last night after video surfaced of her visiting Craig Stebic, husband of missing Plainfield woman Lisa Stebic, and wearing a bikini with her two young children in tow. Jacobson, a self-described aggressive reporter who worked for NBC for 11 years, told the Sun-Times that she’s “devastated” and that she’d hoped her station would support her during this ethical hiccup.
You read that correctly, as a hiccup is exactly what we thought it would be. If anything, we figured a suspension would be in the works, not an out-and-out firing. As much as MSM likes to swallow its own tail, we weren’t sure this was a fireable offense. Hell, not enough time has passed and not enough details have come forth for us to make up our minds with any definition. If CBS 2 hadn’t gotten video of her visiting Stebic’s pool party — whose guests, by the way, seemed to consist only of mothers and children, upping the ooky factor — we wouldn’t have heard word one about this entire thing. That the tape “fell into [CBS 2]’s lap,” according to VP Carol Fowler, is insulting to everyone involved, especially the public.
There seem to be two levels of questionable ethics on the table: one, fraternizing with a source in a high-profile disappearance case, and two, possible involvement with Stebic in a non-professional aspect. We’re still trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, as a source close to us insists Jacobson would never get involved in the Stebic mess on a “personal” level, if you catch our drift. As for the outcries of “how could she let her children near that (alleged) monster?” that our gentle readers trumpeted yesterday, Jacobson claims she’d never have her children at Stebic’s without other kids present, kids that CBS left out of their “relevant excerpts” of the video. However, what’s done is done. We suppose the new question is, does this incident increase Jacobson's value as a Chicago reporter, or is she now damaged goods?
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Does she still have her looks (that is, for those of you into the TV Barbie doll appearence)?
Yes.
Are there some Chicago TV stations that could use a ratings boost?
Yes.
I would say she will be back in some form after a medium period of time.
I mean, Walter J. made more than one comeback, didn't he? Neil Steinburg was a drunk and hit his wife--for the time being, he holds good real estate.
Granted, those boobs are men, but still.
There is zero proof that Jacobson was involved with Stebic in a non-professional way. The only people alluding to that are CBS who broke the story because they were jealous that they weren't inside the house.
I don't understand how this ethical lapse could increase her value as a reporter, but corporate media is a strange and fickle animal, so I suppose it's possible.
Today's Beachwood Reporter has an EXCELLENT analysis of this whole situation, that pretty much cuts anyone who defends her to shreds.
I've run into Jacobson many times in the past, and she was always lovely to me, but this behavior is a serious lapse in ethics and she deserved to be fired.
Is anyone disturbed that a news station was invading this guy's privacy by filming the goings on on his property?
sure, she made some ethical lapses and yes, there's something fishy about him, but it's scary to me that a supposed news organization has him under surveillance like this.
CBS is the new paparazzi.
normally, i like ur writing but ur an idiot here. just b/c the 1 source u have likes amy personally, don't let that sway your analysis.
the 4 people I KNOW at nbc who work w/her know how sleazy amy's rep really is. ur source or my source are irrelevant. she shouldn't have done.
who said cbs taped this? They were only given a tape by an anonymous source
guest 6: i'm not really interested in whether Amy is likable or not. there's no doubt what she did was wrong. my surprise comes from how quickly the decision was handed down from NBC's management and how severe it was. we don't know all the facts, but that does suggest there was even more going on to the story that came out in the papers. still, that i *don't* know all the facts led me to take the angle i did.
I love The Beachwood Reporter.
I have to say that the Beachwood Reporter is actually just promoting the gender-biased take on this whole thing by constantly bringing up the point that her children were there and how terrible that is - what really does that have to do with the ethics of journalism? That's more a commentary on her mothering skills than anything else. Falling back on criticism of a person's mothering skills when critiquing how she conducts her job as a journalist just reeks to me of gender-bias.
Not to mention the "bikinis are too intimate when around innocent (perhaps) creepy men" line of justification into his diatribe that is just downright disturbing in it's condescension and utter disregard towards a woman's ability to defend herself and make decisions on her own about how to conduct her life in even the most basic of skills dressing oneself.
If he wanted to make stronger assertions about why Amy should have been fired, I think questioning her mothering skills and decisions on what to wear should have been left out of it. Of course, I'm not really sure what Steve was wearing when he wrote the article or exactly what his kids were doing while he wrote that - so I can't really know if he was doing his job appropriately.
Definitely unethical and deserving of firing, even assuming that nothing untoward of a "personal" nature was going on. It was just too easy for her to turn the car around, dress appropriately, drop off the kids, and then go to Stebic's place for this to be excusable. What additional facts would you want before dropping the hammer? I think the right decision was made here, and I applaud NBC for making the tough decision. Ethics in media is so shot to hell these days that a local station showing some backbone is a welcome change.
Chicagoist's cavalier attitude toward this only highlights the danger of all these blog people playing reporter. The fact is that based on what is seen in the video, a reporter and her family is attending and participating in a party hosted by the subject of a news story she is covering, as clear a breach of ethics as there is. Just what is seen in the video is enough to suggest a personal relationship between Jacobson and the Stebic family. Once a reporter is shown to have such a relationship with a subject, then that reporter's work can no longer be trusted.
And no, as I've said in earlier comments on yesterday's post, this doesn't have to be a sexual relationship. A friendship or just general socializing between Jacobson and anyone in the Stebic family is enough.
The sad part is that Jacobson could have avoided this with a few simple steps. She could have made sure she never attended a pool party in unprofessional attire that made it apparant she was a party participant. She could have made sure she never took her family to such a party, further reinforcing the perception that she was there for personal rather than professional reasons. (This has nothing to do with parenting skills ... you just don't take your kids with you when you're working.) She could have contacted her producer or other NBC personell to clear what she was doing. Simple as that. NBC was right to fire her.
Chicagoist is sadly tolerant of Jacobson's lapse. There is no excuse for her behavior.
She has been rightly fired. Of course, now she is more famous. That makes her very marketable. She will do a period of penance and then come back on another station.
I lvoe that Chicagoist will defend a sleazy reporter but totally slam the (alleged) "monster". Is there ANY evidence that this guy had anything to do with his wife's disappearance? Anything as substantial as a vidoetape, no matter how it was attained.
So, basically according to this story, women are nice, meek people who deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt (but she was with her kids!)
and men are terrible, murdering monsters who women shouldn't allow their kids near.
Who vets these posts anyway?
We love the fact that Chicagoist actually claims it has a source on this story. Since when does Chicagoist do any type of reporting except to talk about some restaurant or Tankboy whine because he couldn't get listed and actually had to pay to see a band. You not fooling Chicago, Chicagoist with using the word your "source".
When we read your "reporting" our own investigation usually shows us it was reported and paraphrased from one of our city's dailies or another blog.
ears to the ground chicagoist wrote:
"a source close to us insists Jacobson would never get involved in the Stebic mess on a “personal” level, if you catch our drift."
name the source. otherwise you are as bad as [if you believe it is bad] the person videotaping the "pool party."
i've always thought it ridiculous when people, usually anonymous, criticized chicagoist's "journalism," because well, it isn't, nor has it pretended to be. but when the -ist starts talking about 'sources' and then takes an editorial opinion of something which is yeah, pretty damned important in my professional field, you'd damned well better be ready to back up what you're saying or at least provide some sort of evidence that you've done serious 'reporting' or work along those lines. it's easy to criticize the big, bad, evil "MSM," but it has, for the most part, done an OK job of vetting out the pretenders and never has beens, something that bloggerville has not the ability nor, apparently, the inclination to do.
i've stopped taking chicagoist seriously some time ago. chances are pretty soon i just may stop taking it at all.
Been hecht - I know what you mean. Chicagoist is entertainment and some good information on stuff to do and places to eat. I've gotten some great info on festivals and exhibits here. When it comes to "news," however, it's taken from the dailies and amounts to opinion. That can make for lively debate, but I've gotten less and less interested in engaging (which, no doubt, will make many people ecstatic). In fact, my Internet time is declining rapidly. I think I'm ready to face the real world again, bad as it often is. Many, many bad experiences online convince me this is really an inferior way to engage people.
She'll be on Fox next to Mark Suppelsa within one year.
I'll put a dollar on it.
I wish I could agree with you, Guest #18, (I actually like her), but I think she's done, at least in Chicago. She might manage to pop up on some small or mid-market station, but I don't think we'll see her around here again.
Spav1, as of today Strebic has been officially named as a person of interest by the police, so I'm guessing there probably is some evidence. That and he has thus far refused to answer any of the police's questions about his wife's disappearance.
And to others looking for us to name our own sources, um, aren't sources' privacy insured through journalistic ethics?