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We don’t like to write about ourselves, yet here we are again.

On Nov. 20, we published a letter to you explaining why in 2003 we did not run a story after we investigated allegations of sexual molestation made by Bobby Davis against Bernie Fine, now the former Syracuse assistant basketball coach.

A week later, ESPN broadcast a tape of a phone conversation between Davis and Fine's wife in 2002, a tape Davis gave to both The Post-Standard and ESPN nine years ago.

Amid the shock of that sad and sordid tape, people began to ask questions.

Boiled down, those questions are:

• Wasn’t the tape recording the proof The Post-Standard editors said they lacked to publish a story?

• Why didn’t the newspaper turn over the tape to police?

Some of these questions have been inspired by critics in the police department and on TV news staffs, and they have their own agenda. But we’ve also heard from well-meaning and thoughtful readers, motivated by an impulse to protect children.

Here’s our attempt to answer your questions.

1. Was the tape proof that Davis had been abused by Bernie Fine?

When Bobby Davis came to us in the fall of 2002, we asked if he had gone to Syracuse police. He said he had, but they paid little attention, saying the case was too old to prosecute.

Two reporters talked to dozens of people and collected a lot of information. We needed more. Davis was eager to see a story published and was willing to help any way he could.

He had told our reporter, Mike McAndrew, that he believed Fine's wife, Laurie, had seen, through a basement window at Fine's home, one instance of Fine touching or fondling Davis sexually when Davis was young. We believed that if Laurie Fine would confirm that incident, it might be enough to support a story. We knew she was unlikely to admit it to us directly.

So, after discussions with McAndrew and with our knowledge, Davis secretly recorded a phone conversation with Laurie Fine on Oct. 8, 2002. Our understanding is that it was legal, under the laws of Utah and New York, for someone in one of those states to record a phone conversation with someone in the other state without informing the second party.

Captured on tape was a conversation that sounds sleazy and sickening -- and vague and ambiguous. Some of the language seems to support Davis' depiction of his relationship with Fine. "Seems" wasn't good enough to publish this story. If you were the target of such damaging accusations, you'd expect that degree of care from us.

On the key question of whether Laurie Fine witnessed an illegal sex act by her husband with a minor, this is the totality of the exchange:

What did Laurie Fine mean by, "Right. I don't know"? No description of what happened in the basement, no clear confirmation she saw it if it did -- no meaningful corroboration of what Davis said she had witnessed.

The tape revealed a great deal about the Fines’ life together, all of it unpleasant. But we were looking for one thing: sufficient proof to publish a story about crimes that Bobby Davis said had been forced on him many years before.

It is not enough that Laurie Fine described her husband as possibly gay, or that she ridiculed him for what she felt he might like to do, or that she had some ugly suspicions. What had she seen and what did she know about a crime? In that tape, she offers little help.

After we heard the tape, we approached Laurie Fine. She admitted to phone conversations with Davis, confirmed portions of the recording were accurate, suggested the tape had been doctored and cut off further contact with us.

After many months and much digging, we decided we did not have enough to publish a story at that time. Think back to 2003 -- before a second and third accuser, before a massive search and the firing of Fine, and ask yourself: Is there enough proof here to ruin a person's life?

Davis, 31 at the time, became frustrated with our decision. He gave a copy to ESPN. The sports network apparently reached the same conclusion we did and did not broadcast a story.

Had local law enforcement taken Davis’ claim seriously and kept in touch, he most likely would’ve given them a copy, too. He could have done so at any time. Police could have expanded their investigation at any time. Police could have arranged to record conversations, obtain a wiretap, subpoena witnesses. They did none of it.

After the Penn State scandal, Davis's stepbrother, Michael Lang, approached ESPN and said that he had been sexually abused by Fine when he was much younger. ESPN now had a second accuser, broke the story, and we followed.

Things moved quickly.

Police started an investigation. Syracuse University placed Fine on administrative leave. Federal and city police secured a warrant and searched Fine's house for hours. On Sunday, The Post-Standard revealed the story of a third accuser.

That story helped convince ESPN to air the 2002 audio tape, the network has said. We posted clips from it on Syracuse.com, and published a transcript. Sunday night, SU fired Fine. Readers began to ask another question:

2. Why didn’t either news organization give the tape to police?

This one surprised us and perhaps that is our fault. After all, you might argue, if we saw enough merit to pursue the Bernie Fine story, we must’ve felt there was some chance that he could be a risk to boys.

To us, though, our role has always been clear: to investigate with a goal to publish. To us, handing over to police materials we didn't feel confident enough to publish was unimaginable. Look at it another way. When police or the district attorney gather evidence and decide they don't have enough to charge someone with a crime, do they deliver their evidence to us and say, "Here you go, we don't have enough to prosecute but you might get a heckuva story out of this"? Of course not. We have separate and independent purposes, and are often locked in an unsteady dance around information that one has and the other wants.

For a moment, though, imagine a different world.

Imagine a news organization, failing to lock up a story, fueling police investigations by passing along leftovers from its reporting.

Imagine how quickly we would lose the trust of sources we rely on and readers who turn to us if we turned from watch dog of government agencies to lap dog at their call.

Where to get help

The Vera House hotline to report abuse is 315-468-3260.

The Onondaga County Child Abuse Hotline is 315-422-9701.

The New York State Hotline is 1-800-342-3720.

The National Child Abuse Hotline is 1-800-4-A-CHILD

It is hard to find a precedent in modern journalism for this role of newspaper as police tipster. There is a reason for that. We serve the public best by keeping an eye on local law enforcement, not by working up their cases. If a police investigation follows our work, it ought to be because of what we published, not what we didn't.

Is it possible we made a wrong call? Is it possible we could have done more? Of course. We agonized over these decisions in 2003 as we do today. We hope to learn from the experience. Randi Bregman, executive director of Vera House, says that in a case like this we might consider steering the accuser to an abuse victims' advocacy group, along with a copy of the tape.

When people ask about our "moral responsibility," however, we believe we were faithful to it. We listened to Bobby Davis, we checked out his story every way we could, we knew he had gone to police, we weighed the arguments for and against publishing, and we made a decision. The reason this tape exists is because we took our role so seriously. We exercised our moral responsibility by checking out Davis' story as thoroughly as we could. That's more than anyone else can say until the last two weeks.

Fault our decisions, quarrel with our methods. We welcome the debate and the advice. But don't mistake us for an arm of law enforcement. Police have their job to do. We'll keep trying to do ours.

Related

» SU coach Bernie Fine's wife told accuser her husband 'needs help' in taped phone call (With two audio clips from the tape)

Michael J. Connor is executive editor of The Post-Standard. He can be reached at 470-2169, or at mconnor@syracuse.com.