Two Salt Lake Tribune reporters who sold information to the National Enquirer on the Elizabeth Smart case were fired Tuesday, the day after the tabloid demanded a retraction for statements in the Tribune editor's column about the controversy.
Michael Vigh and Kevin Cantera, the paper's lead reporters on the Elizabeth Smart case, cleaned out their desks following a meeting at the newspaper offices early Tuesday, said their attorney, Lee Curtis, who said his clients had been "fired."
Salt Lake Tribune Editor James "Jay" Shelledy did not return phone calls Tuesday morning to clarify the Tribune's action.
In a statement to the Associated Press, Shelledy said, "I feel saddened and angry that these two reporters damaged themselves, their colleagues and the reputation of the Tribune with their conduct." He said his trust in the reporters "was betrayed."
On Monday, the two reporters hired their own attorney. Previously, Michael O'Brien, attorney for the Tribune, spoke on their behalf.
Shelledy said in his column Sunday he originally turned down the reporters' offer to resign, but circumstances apparently changed after the Deseret News reported the National Enquirer had a tape of conversations between Cantera, Vigh and National Enquirer reporter Alan Butterfield that conflicted with what they apparently originally told Shelledy.
Curtis said Tuesday his clients did not want to comment further on their involvement with the Enquirer or the Smart case.
The firing came a day after the nation's top-selling tabloid accused Shelledy of printing "false and defamatory statements" in a printed rendition of the events.
"If a prominent and accurate correction and retraction is not immediately published, we will be left with no alternative but to file legal proceedings without further notice," wrote Enquirer attorney Michael B. Kahane in a letter, faxed early Monday and addressed to Shelledy. "I am hopeful that we will be able to resolve this matter short of litigation."
Shelledy said in a Tribune article Tuesday he would not retract his comments.
The threat Monday was the latest in a firestorm of activity initiated by information over the weekend that Vigh and Cantera, sold information for $20,000 to tabloid for a July 2 article on the Elizabeth Smart family.
Also Monday, National Enquirer correspondent Alan Butterfield told the Deseret News he taped crucial parts of his conversations with Vigh and Cantera.
"They not only supplied information, but they vouched for the veracity," Butterfield said. "We did not make this up in a back room.
"I have the smoking gun," Butterfield said, referring to the tape. "There's a lot more to it." Butterfield played part of the tape for a reporter late Monday.
The Enquirer article in question was titled "Utah Cops: Secret Diary Exposes Family Sex Ring." It contained lurid details about the family, all of which were recanted by the National Enquirer in a statement released together with the Smart family and obtained Sunday by the Deseret News.
In the settlement, the Enquirer retracted salacious details of its story and issued a rare apology to the Smart family.
The Tribune reporters' involvement in the case came to light after the Smart family hired First Amendment law expert Randy Dryer of Parsons Behle & Latimer in Salt Lake City to protect the family's privacy and get to the root of leaks to the National Enquirer.
"The actions I took on behalf of the Smart family against the Enquirer is the first of several potential actions I am considering in an effort to protect the Smarts' privacy and reputation," Dryer said Monday. "We will continue to work to address the serious issue of leaks from law enforcement."
The issue about the Tribune reporters' involvement has overshadowed the highly emotional circumstances around Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping. The tabloid article was published about a month after Elizabeth, then 14, was abducted at knifepoint from her bedroom.
Elizabeth was found with her alleged captors, Brian Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, March 12 in a Salt Lake suburb.
But the latest developments between the Tribune reporters and the tabloid raise important issues about journalistic ethics and the way law enforcement leaks information to the press.
Numerous interviews and a review of documents illustrate the following details about the controversy.
After Elizabeth was kidnapped June 5, Vigh and Cantera agreed to conversations with the National Enquirer.
They were eventually paid $10,000 each for information supplied to the tabloid.
The article appeared July 2 in the tabloid. Citing "law enforcement officials" and investigators close to the case, the story told of alleged homosexuality and preferences for sadomasochism and spoke of a "horrifying" journal that detailed gay activities by Smart family members. All of these statements were later retracted by the Enquirer.
After Elizabeth was found with her alleged captors, the family hired Dryer to look into the information leaks. As part of his investigation, Dryer called the Enquirer to look into its sources for the July 2 story.
The Smart family and the National Enquirer reached a confidential agreement that was to be released sometime this week, but Sunday Shelledy revealed his reporters' involvement in a column.
Shelledy did not fire the reporters but put them on a year of probation, during which time they will be monitored to make sure they do not violate newsroom ethics or policies and are not allowed to free-lance. They were also taken off the Smart case, Shelledy said Monday.
The Deseret News learned of the settlement and printed a copyrighted story Monday that detailed the amount Cantera and Vigh were paid and other information.
Also Monday, the Tribune was notified of the Enquirer's demand for a retraction of Shelledy's comments.
The letter, addressed to Shelledy, states: "This letter shall constitute demand for an immediate and prominent retraction of your Letter From the Editor that was contained on page two of the April 27th issue of the Salt Lake Tribune. The published letter contains false and defamatory statements regarding National Enquirer and its policies and procedures for verifying information prior to publication."
The tabloid took issue with Shelledy's published comments that Tribune reporters merely provided unsubstantiated rumors to the National Enquirer and that they "assumed the Enquirer played by mainstream rules and would consider as hearsay that which could not be confirmed, on or off the record, through police sources."
Shelledy also wrote Enquirer comments that its sources were Cantera and Vigh were "baloney."
"As you should be aware, the information provided by Enquirer was provided pursuant to a subpoena. Your statements imply that the Enquirer committed perjury and provided false statements under court order," the retraction demand from the Enquirer reads.
"These statements constitute trade libel and have caused and will continue to cause National Enquirer to suffer damage to its reputation and business.
"Suffice it to say that the National Enquirer provided truthful and accurate information in response to the subpoena issued by the Smart family and suffice it to say that the National Enquirer has in its possession irrefutable documentary evidence to support its position," the letter states.
Late Monday Shelledy was still defending his position and his actions based on what his reporters told him.
"To this date that's their version and, lacking any evidence to the contrary, I have to stand by that," he said.
If he had things to do over again, he says he would have run a story on Saturday or Sunday and not just relied on the column.
Although the Enquirer told Shelledy it had "irrefutable documentary evidence" demonstrating his reporters' specific involvement with the tabloid, Shelledy said Monday he had no "proof" that what Vigh and Cantera said isn't true. Vigh and Cantera told Shelledy they provided background for the tabloid and gave a handful of sources but did not in any way confirm the rumors about the Smarts' illicit personal lives.
But the Enquirer's counsel, Kahane, strongly disputed that Monday.
"The tape is irrefutable in that Cantera and Vigh were the principal sources for certain parts of the article that was published July 2, and documents why the Enquirer was under the impression it was operating on reliable information," Kahane said late Monday.
"It also totally refutes any suggestion by the Tribune that the reporters were only providing background information that would be corroborated by other National Enquirer sources."
"It's obvious from the tape that these individuals were representing that they had significant and well-placed law enforcement sources that were relaying the information that they were relaying to us."
The Enquirer's reporter, Butterfield, also took particular issue with a comment in Shelledy's column that compared talking to a National Enquirer reporter as neither illegal or unethical. "Rather it is akin to drinking water out of a toilet bowl — dumb, distasteful and when observed, embarrassing."
If the Enquirer is a toilet bowl, Butterfield said, "his two reporters were like camels in the desert searching for an oasis . . . searching for water, toilet water I guess."
The Deseret News listened to parts of the tape, which included a conversation between Butterfield and Cantera agreeing the Tribune would not publish anything until after the July 2 issue of the Enquirer hit the newsstands. On the tape, Cantera agrees to wait until after the tabloid publishes its article.
"I'm going to push for it, but my editors are real lightweights," Cantera says.
Tribune reporters voiced strong concerns in a staff meeting with editors Monday — concerns about their colleagues' behavior, Shelledy's column and the effect Vigh's and Cantera's actions have on their ability to do good journalistic work.
"The staff is rightfully upset, at least a number of the staff are rightfully upset with the erosion of . . . this clearly wrong act that got the paper, you know, that gave the paper a black eye," Shelledy said when asked about the mood at the paper.
In an effort to correct that, Shelledy has hired a local expert in media law and ethics to conduct an independent investigation into the Tribune reporters' behavior and to ferret out ethical concerns.
"You know this is something . . . serious and we really must try to get back some of the credibility that we may have temporarily lost," Shelledy told the Deseret News.
"And that doesn't mean that our stories are loaded or anything, it just means that a good overall look at this thing, probably in two weeks, less than two weeks, might be very, very good."
Joel Campbell, an associate communications professor at Brigham Young University, said he will be paid $1,000 to conduct the investigation.
An expert on the Freedom of Information Act and vice president of the Utah Headliners Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, Campbell will address the source of information printed in the Enquirer article, circumstances around the meetings between Tribune reporters and the Enquirer, related ethical issues and readers' concerns.
"What they've asked me to do is conduct an in-depth investigation and find out what happened when and who told who what," Campbell said.
He said the investigation will be modeled after an investigation of reporter Janet Cooke, a 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter, who was found to have made up "Jimmy," an 8-year-old heroin addict, to enhance one of her reports. She later admitted he was a "composite." Cooke was fired and the Post returned the prize.
Kahane, the Enquirer's attorney, said late Monday the company fully anticipates and expects a retraction. "If a retraction is not published, we will proceed with all the appropriate legal remedies," he said.
Meanwhile, the Smart family will continue to closely monitor the controversy and is prepared to take action on any information leaks in the future.
"The Smart family is not a litigious family, but they will take action," said the family's spokesman, Chris Thomas. "They are not going to sit idly by while their privacy is invaded and their good name is compromised.
"The leaks have continued over a long period of time, but they now involve Elizabeth, and she doesn't need to be revictimized with leaks involving what she has told investigators," he said.
"The family is deeply disappointed and finds it reprehensible that members of our community entrusted with information and great responsibility would act in such a reckless manner."
E-MAIL: lucy@desnews.com