. Thou shalt not reveal thy sources

October, 2005
Ask journalists, media lawyers and critics, and they will agree: the principle of keeping your promise of confidentiality to a source is sacred. A promise is a promise.
Yet, the case of four reporters currently in contempt of court in Wen Ho Lee’s pending civil suit to government agencies raises some new, challenging questions: Does it matter to whom did you promise? Does it matter if the information you received in confidence was false? Does it matter if it was not of public interest but misinformation that somebody in power passed through you, and ended up ruining an individual’s reputation?
Bob Giles, Curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, Prof. Richard Lehr, former investigative journalist for The Boston Globe, Mark Jurkowitz, first media critic for The Boston Globe and columnist at the Boston Phoenix, and Prof. Michael Berlin, who teaches and writes on American foreign policy and media ethics, addressed all these questions.

Public v. Private
In 1999, Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times, H. Josef Hebert of the Associated Press, James Risen of the New York Times, and former CNN staffer Pierre Thomas printed that Dr. Wen Ho Lee, a 59-year-old scientist of Taiwanese origin working at Los Alamos was suspected of espionage, according to unnamed “administration officials.”
Lee was arrested at his home in full view of all his neighbors and held in solitary confinement for nine months. He was never charged with spying, and pleaded guilty of “the unauthorized removal of documents” from his computer. The presiding federal judge “apologized to Lee from the bench and said officials had embarrassed the entire nation.”
In 2003, Lee sued the DOE, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation under the Privacy Act. He alleges that they had improperly disclosed personal information about him to the news media, such as his and his wife’s names, their employment history, their financial transactions and details of their trips to Hong Kong and China. The court ruled Lee exhausted every reasonable alternative source of information, and that therefore the reporters couldn’t keep their sources confidential .
Two things make this case different. One is the fact that it is a civil suit, and it therefore “pits an individual’s right to privacy and to protect his or her reputation against the free flow of information and the public’s right to know,” Jurkowitz said in the Phoenix . However, the second singularity of this case is that the information leaked was not –in any sense- in the public interest.
While other attempts to breach confidentiality via the courts were linked to criminal cases, Jurkowitz reported that there is an additional concern among journalism advocates in that the interest of a private litigant can be held to be more important than the journalist’s right to offer confidentiality. When asked about this, the critic explained that “over time, the government and the media come into conflict over this guarantee of anonymity.” On the one hand, he said, there is precedent that suggests that a court would view a verbal agreement through which a journalist grants anonymity to a source to be a contract under law. But on the other hand, “that does not necessarily mean that the journalist some day is not going to be compelled or law enforced to reveal the name of that source.”
After 30 years in journalism and two in law school, Lehr finds that “right now in the US, reporters do not have strong ‘legal rights’ to refuse a court order to testify,” he said this doesn’t mean reporters should “fold and break their promises.”
Drogin’s testimony in the Wen Ho Lee case summarized the core argument for this principle: “I have thought long and hard about this, and unlike you attorneys here in the room, I do not have subpoena power or anything else to gather information. I have what credibility I have as a journalist, I have the word that I give to people to protect their confidentiality. If I violate that trust, then I believe I can no longer work as a journalist.”
But journalists, as any other citizen, have an obligation to disclose evidence of illegal acts committed on their presence, including violations of the Privacy Act.
Jurkowitz and other media critics underlined the increasing number of subpoenas issued to journalists. “There have been too many cases in which they have been asked to reveal their sources but not for compelling legal reasons. Which is why people now are talking about federal shield laws,” he said.
Instead, Giles thinks shield laws are not the answer. “Each case of confidentiality should be determined on its own merits,” he said. “There should be no blanket protection or shield for reporters. The decision to grant confidentiality should be solely the responsibility of the journalist and his/her news organization.”
“Confidentiality should be given with great care,” Giles said. “An editor should know the identity of the source. The editor and reporter should be convinced that the information is essential to the story, that the source is in a position to know and that there is no other source for the particular information.”
None of this happened on March 24, 1999 when Risen reported for NYT that “Wen Ho Lee asked that he be allowed to hire a research assistant ... And the research assistant has disappeared,” according to “several senior Government officials.” Because when reporter Vernon Loeb –for The Washington Post- asked Los Alamos’ spokesman if he knew anything about the missing assistant, he got his home address and phone number. He had gone back to his school, and Risen had not checked what “several senior Gov. officials” had told him.
Prof. Berlin would agree with Giles in this point. “A court order is not the issue at all,” he said. “If confidentiality remains an ethical decision, the reporter should ignore court orders and do jail time to preserve confidentiality, since whether the Supreme Court recognizes it as such or not, it is essential to preserve the public’s right to know, and is therefore ethically appropriate.”
Berlin shares the belief that court orders are not what could make a journalist violate their promise of confidentiality to a source, but –unlike Lehr and Jurkowitz- he did say that journalists could choose to break it.
“I think it is time for reporters to ask themselves whether there are situations in which a promise of confidentiality should be broken on an ethical basis, not a legal basis; in other words, even when no government pressure is applied to the reporter to do so,” Berlin said.

Prosecutor’s tools
“From the Editors: The Times and Wen Ho Lee,” 1663 words, appeared on a Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2000, with an account of the reporting done by the Times on Lee’s case, and what they thought was done wrongly. They stated there how: “an otherwise far-seeing article on June 14, 1999, that (…) said Dr. Lee ‘may be responsible for the most damaging espionage of the post-cold war era.’ Though it accurately attributed this characterization to ‘officials and lawmakers, primarily Republicans,’ such remarks should have been, at a minimum, balanced with the more skeptical views of those who had doubts about the charges against Dr. Lee.”
Lehr, co-author of Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the F.B.I., and a Devil's Deal, said “the lesson is that no matter where you get your information –test it.” Were you intentionally misled by a source? The source was not a whistle-blower alerting the media to abuses of power, but somebody in power trying to protect his/her back? He and Jurkowitz said that this is not a reason to reveal your source.
“There is a broader principle stated here, whether or not this is the best case to have this principle stand-up for,” Jurkowitz said. “[The Wen Ho Lee case] probably represents some abuses of the confidential source situation, and it looks like an attempt by the government to discredit somebody: all that is true. But still, given so, even in a case like this, sometimes people say ‘Hey, for us the important principle is that we do not reveal our sources.’” If they voluntarily did, ultimately, then “those kind of sources are going to dry out.” And, he said, there is an effort from federal prosecutors to push Journalists to give up their sources, and ultimately “to deter investigative journalism.”
On the contrary, Berlin said that one potential reason for breaking a promise of confidentiality is “if the information provided on background is false, inaccurate, misleading, or exaggerated and it is clear that the source has lied/misled/distorted intentionally.”
“It is the intentional lie or distortion, not the unintended inaccuracy, that would be a cause for a reporter to consider breaking a promise of confidentiality,” he said.
Giles goes further. In his opinion, the reporter is not breaking any contract, but the source is. “The contract should assume that the information being given is truthful and is not being given illegally or for a purely partisan political purpose.” If the information was inaccurate or given illegally, the contract is broken and “reporter and editor have the obligation to consider publishing a story identifying the source and explaining that the information was given illegally or untruthfully.”
As Times’ Editors said, far from what “officials and lawmakers, primarily Republicans,” leaked, Lee was not “responsible for the most damaging espionage of the post-cold war era.” Now, if in this case a journalist owns no duty of confidentiality to its source, but his duty is to the person who was wronged, or if there are not such cases, is a discussion far to be closed.

By Ana Rivas for BU

NPR Attitude - WBUR’s Arts Blog :: Item




The Floundering State of Film Criticism
Posted by Bill Marx, Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005

Ana Rivas send in this piece on a recent confab at Boston University featuring two film critics – Renata Adler, who for a short time in the ’60s was a film critic for The New York Times and A.O. Scott, who is the current chief film critic for the paper. The conversation contained some interesting points on the current condition of film criticism.

Journalists becoming celebrities, the tension between news and entertainment business, an expanding digital medium next to a shrinking print industry and the increasing conglomeration of media ownership present major dilemmas to newspapers in general and to film critics in particular.

Dilemmas for which “I have no answers,” said Orville Schell, Dean of the Berkeley School of Journalism, at a seminar in Boston University. But, he added, ethics is not enough. “Berkeley has this course on Media Law and Ethics, everybody does. But, you know what folks? Ethics is not enough.” On the contrary, “it’s the bottom line” which is why according to Schell “we’re in deep trouble.”

Regarding film critics, we are in “blurbing” trouble, the Editor & Publisher Magazine said in Jan. 2004, when it devoted its “Ethics Corner” to movie reviews. The magazine called it “The Blurbing of America,” referring to words the studios’ ad agencies cut from reviews to paste in promos. “Film critics are packaged by the film studios, aided by newspaper advertising departments hungry for the full-page ads that are part of huge movie budgets.”

But although the advertising blurbs do provide some fame to critics and money to newspapers, they are not the only ethical crossroads a newspaper’s staff critic faces.

Today’s chief film critic for the New York Times, A.O. “Tony” Scott, and his equal in 1968, Renata Adler, took a different approach to the topic in a confab at Boston University three weeks ago. They agreed that the critic’s essential service was to serve as a consumer guide, but also discussed what form reviewing was allowed to take beyond that rock bottom duty.

The conversation approached the dilemmas for film criticism today from the perspectives of Scott and Adler, and, in doing so, suggested some of the ways film criticism and arts journalism has changed over the last 37 years, from Vietnam to Iraq, from that May to the French riots this November, from “Yellow Submarine” to “Chicken Little.”

Are film critics journalists? “Film reviewing has always had an ingredient of reportage,” Adler said in her now famous piece “House Critic” (1980), where she pulverized Pauline Kael, her colleague at the time at The New Yorker magazine.

The staff movie critic’s job, according to Adler’s “A Year in the Dark,” (1969) is closer to the work of the political columnist, who writes about daily events in the public domain, than to the art, book, or theatre critic, who write for relatively specialized audiences. This is because, “alone among the arts, [movies] count as their audience, their art consumer, everyone. (Television, in this respect is clearly not an art but an appliance, through which reviewable material is sometimes played).”

“Movies, people care enough,” Scott said. “Reviewing movies is like reviewing candy bars: people already know what they like,” Scott said quoting her, and added that this may be why everyone feels entitled to question the reviewer judgments, for being elitists, to some, and shallow, to others.

For Adler, the critic’s goal should be to “provide some sort of indication” to the readers, about if they might like to see it or not: “To be able to convey the quality of a performance.”

“That is, perhaps, the greatest challenge,” Scott agreed. But, he said, it is also “a very utopian thing.” Because of the work’s limitations: the editors asking for top-ten lists, space, time, and that you cannot quote a scene in an article –every time he tried, he said he ended up writing a too long description that had nothing to do with the actual scene. “You don’t get to work on a piece for months, they are not going to run the movie for you seven times,” so your job is “not to get it absolutely right, but as right as you can,” Scott said.

“Still, there have to be limits on the form a review is allowed to take,” Adler interrupted him. “It cannot be an attack to the audience that might like the thing.” Pauline Kael, Adler said, did that as a tactic, and humiliated the readers who liked the movies she loathed. “It just doesn’t seem fair.”

“And is not an uncommon practice today,” Scott said. They both also objected critics who instead of giving the reader an accurate account use “strange physical connections.” For example, if they say that a movie is “a ride,” –something it simply isn’t- or that it is “hart-stopping,” –that seems rather painful, but is used as a compliment. Or when critics use phony images like “fiercely hypnotic.” What is that? They asked.

“Any kind of writing has its constraints,” Scott generalized. “What you write is disposable. What you write about is disposable. What you try is to take things as seriously as you can, to be as serious as you can, within the context of speed,” he said. “I see myself trying. And I don’t see myself as unique.”

But for Ray Carney, BU Prof. of Film and American Studies, it doesn’t seem to be enough. “When I asked Tony Scott to ‘blue sky,’ imagine how the reviewing process could be improved, he said he liked it just like it was,” Carney said on an email interview. “That’s what I call being trapped in the system, a system of thought and expression that everyone knows is shallow but that no reviewer apparently has the courage (or intelligence) to confront his editor about and demand a change to.”

Carney said definitions are arbitrary, however. He reserves “the term ‘critic’ for someone with historical perspective and intellectual insight.” In his opinion, most reviewers function less as critics than as consumer product reporters. A definition both Adler and Scott used, but for Carney, “that’s not criticism, that’s glove salesmanship,” and often not even well achieved. “Unfortunately, reviewers aren’t even very good at the consumer reporting side of things. Most function as extensions of the Hollywood publicity machine. They aren’t really critical enough, hard enough, careful enough to tell you what is actually good and bad.”

Is a film critic a defender of the reader from the marketing machine? Scott and Adler were asked.

“That’s a fascinating question for the news themselves,” Adler answered. Newspapers shield people from the pressures of the powerful, and this was so misunderstood that now we see reporters asking for a shield to convey those pressures, where media becomes a tool for the government to convey their PR pressures, she said.

When she was chief film critic at the Times, “there began to be constant rumors that I was fired or had quit, that the industry had applied pressure,” Adler wrote in 1969. “The Times might be besieged, unhappy at moments, conciliating, but certainly it was unpressurable.” Then, she said, “The Times did not give a damn about the industry.”

Scott said he never felt any pressure to say he liked something he didn’t. But he said “the environment of marketing” has other mechanisms to which he “needs to oppose some resistance, as in a status of anticipation.” Mechanisms like placement. “Who says what goes in the front page of the weekend art section? Who says what is important? What happens if you disagree with it? Should you, therefore, ignore it?” he asks. “It’s not even a question of corruption. What kind of newspaper would not cover the Oscars?”

We see that mechanism quite tuned in: every Sunday arts criticism covers display a photograph of the week’s most hyped movie. Let’s guess: “Harry Potter IV” is next Sunday?

“Nobody in film criticism will say that we really want to promote some films, that we are a part of the publicity machine, a superstructure of media covering the entertainment business,” Scott said.

Actually, some of his colleagues might not be that cautious. The National Arts Journalism Program informed in 2002 that 50% of 169 visual arts critics (with approximately 60 million readers) believe that it is generally acceptable to participate in judging artists for prizes and competitions. 45% would generally accept payment for writing in catalogs published in museums or galleries. If film critics are, like the visual arts critics, a diverse group, ranging from full time employers at mayor dailies to part-timers at small community newspapers, they may have an equally diverse conception of journalistic ethics as well.

But according to another NAJP report, “the depth, breadth and sheer quantity of the Times’s arts coverage was unparalleled five years ago and remains so today” The Times reviews every movie that opens in Manhattan. “As it will not consider reviewing … every account field from the UN or the City Hall,” Adler compares.

“Why did you leave early?” Scott asked Adler. The work she left, movie reviewing, is the same he has now, and has had for years. Adler stayed there for 14 months. During that period she got to cover Cannes in May ’68, when the first strikes were taking place on Paris’ Cinématèque, she could enter Cuba while all other reporters from the Times were banned, and received about six letters from readers a day.

Adler answered: “I stayed longer than I expected.”

She watched at least one movie a day and wrote a piece on each, plus a long piece for Sundays. And she realized that “it is no necessary to have an opinion on any single film … Sometimes it is not necessary to have an opinion at all!” She said that a year in the movies “was fine for me, but that it was about enough”

Gerald Peary, director of BU’s Cinématèque, asked the same question of Scott. Peary inquired if Scott had ever thought if that was a silly dilettante way to spend his life. To what Scott answered with another question: “And is that a bad thing?”

He said that there is something on the job of a film critic on a daily newspaper has to do with “manufacturing an opinion.” And that there was something on the work of a film critic on a daily newspaper that happens to be the New York Times that “is a question of power.”

Both critics agreed on the political discontent that movie reviews seem to awake among readers. Adler said she found out that the job had sides she did not quite anticipated, “it turned out to be extremely public.” She even once had to testify in a Congress investigation. When Scott asked her to recall that experience, she did not remember which movie was it all about, but that “one of the minor things that was wrong was that it had the sun rising in the west.”

“Now we are living in an extremely politicized society,” Scott said. He said he would expect readers’ dissent when reviewing “Fahrenheit 9/11” or “The Passion of the Christ,” but that is anywhere. “I get it anyway for reviewing ‘Star Wars.’”

Scott was hired at the Times because of a piece he wrote at Slate.com. Internet has provided young writers the opportunity to reach a readership, and he knows that. But film criticism, somehow remains as a rather selective club. For example, the Online Film Critics Society (http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com) receives hundreds of applications but only a few meets the organization’s standards for membership. Writers who wish to apply must maintain an annual online publication quota of at least 50 professional-level reviews, no less than 400 words per review, of a professional level quality, and comprehensive. The prospective member should offer meaningful contributions to film criticism and the OFCS, and their written work or web site should have outstanding features.

“I see a proliferation of voices,” Scott said, “I see Internet has democratized film criticism a lot.” But he said he still doubts that more reviews may not mean better reviewing. “It is changing, is in the middle of a change … If you ask me what is going to be, I don’t know the answer.”

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BOSTON - A.O. Scott, jefe de críticos de cine del New York Times, dijo que el cine argentino está entre lo mejor del cine actual.

“En la Argentina han aparecido producciones extraordinarias, pequeñas y subjetivas, realizadas en su mayoría por directores jóvenes”, dijo ayer en la Universidad de Boston, en un diálogo con la escritora y periodista Renata Adler, que ocupó su mismo puesto por 14 meses en 1968, y de quien confesó ser un gran admirador.

“Criticar películas es como criticar barritas de chocolate: la gente ya sabe cual es la que más le gusta”, dijo Scott citando a Adler, para responder a la común objeción de quienes se niegan a leer la crítica antes de ver la película. Pero luego reconoció que él mismo espera cinco días para leer The New Yorker, desde que recibe la revista, hasta que entrega su propia nota.

Por su parte, Adler condenó los ataques a la audiencia como recurso del crítico. “Uno no puede decir ‘Si a usted le gustan las estatuas de cupidos haciendo pis, esta película le va a encantar’”, ejemplificó. “Simplemente no es justo humillar al lector que no piense como uno."

Scott, quien dijo que esta táctica hoy no es poco común, rescató la opción de escribir no sobre la película en sí, sino sobre la experiencia de ir al cine. “Algo que ha cambiado totalmente en los últimos años”.

Conocido como “el primer critico-padre del Times”, a menudo incorpora las visiones de sus hijos que lo acompañan a ver películas para la familia como las de la productora Pixair o las del director Hayao Miyazaki.

“Es una manera de recuperar la inocencia”. Para sus hijos, “un cliché puede ser algo totalmente nuevo,” y la imagen desmesurada de El Viaje de Chihiro algo a lo que ya se acostumbraron, explicó.

Scott, que desde el año 2000 es crítico en jefe del Times, dijo que encontraba lo más interesante del cine actual en determinadas regiones de mundo. En el cine asiático, “que me llega casi siempre unos años después”, en el cine mexicano, que a pesar de sus entrecruzamientos con Hollywood "aún encuentra una voz propia”, y en el nuevo cine argentino.

En particular, dijo, “me gusta mucho lo que esta haciendo Lucrecia Martel, La Niña Santa, y me encantó el trabajo de Norma Aleandro en Cama Adentro."

En su opinión, los estudios medianos, como Warner Independent, hoy, y Miramax, en los 90s, con presupuestos también medianos y no necesariamente actores de la primera línea, están presentando una buena alternativa. “Películas como Capote o Good Night and Good Luck no podrían haber existido sin esos estudios.”

Por esta tendencia y lo que llega desde la Argentina, Asia y Mexico, Scott dijo: "Soy muy optimista, creo que estamos viviendo un momento mejor".

Por Ana Rivas
Boston, 3-11-2005

Extraña Inconsciencia

“He escuchado una terrible noticia. Yo, que tantas veces atravesé la Patagonia con vientos cruzados, me imagino el terror que habrán sentido los obreros que han caído al Riachuelo en el vagón del tranvía en que viajaban. En medio de la bruma, el conductor no advirtió que el puente había sido abierto para dejar paso a un barco.” Así narró el escritor Antoine de Saint-Exupéry en su diario personal una de las tragedias más impresionantes del transporte urbano en el país.

En la madrugada del 12 de julio de 1930, un tranvía que llevaba a más de 70 trabajadores de Lanús a la Ciudad de Buenos Aires cayó en el Riachuelo porque el puente que cruzaba de Avellaneda a Barracas estaba levantado, como lo advertían las señales que el conductor ignoró. El diario Crítica afirmó que el culpable era el gobierno, por no mantener suficientes controles. Sin embargo, la investigación posterior corroboró la hipótesis que había esbozado La Nación el día siguiente a la tragedia: que se trató de un error del conductor, que “se comportó como dominado por una extraña inconsciencia”.

Pero ¿qué “extraña inconsciencia” se apoderó de él, que a pesar de las cinco luces rojas que anunciaban el abismo, el señalador eléctrico que no indicaba ‘acceso libre’ y el silencio de la sirena que advertía que no podía pasar, no detuvo la marcha del coche, ni siquiera la aminoró, sino que, según muchos testigos, la aceleró?.

Ese misterio que turbó a la sociedad entera hace 72 años jamás ha sido resuelto. Aunque la investigación se cerró una semana después, el acertijo es más difícil de responder que el primer día: ¿por qué lo hizo? ¿por qué aceleró?.

El tranvía número 75 partió de Lanús pocos minutos después de las cinco. Pertenecía a la línea 105 de la compañía Tranvías Eléctricos Del Sud y efectuaba el trayecto entre Temperley y Constitución. El primero en subirse fue el obrero italiano Remigio Benadusi, uno de los tres pasajeros que lograron sobrevivir. Su testimonio coincide con el de los otros dos sobrevivientes: ninguno recuerda cómo consiguió salir del coche después de la trágica zambullida y todos fueron conscientes de que iban a caer en el vacío dejado por el puente al levantarse.

Como todos los días, Benadusi salió de su casa a las cinco para ir a su trabajo, en los talleres gráficos de la Cía. General Financiera, y ocupó el primer asiento de la izquierda, adelante, pero a poca distancia subieron otros y algo más adelante, varios más. Los asientos se completaron antes de llegar a Avellaneda. Los pasajeros que fueron sumándose se acomodaron como pudieron en el pasillo, en la plataforma trasera y hasta en los estribos “al extremo de que no cabían dentro más personas”.

A esa hora muchos de los obreros que vivían en los distritos del sur iban sus trabajos y el tranvía transportaba casi el doble de su capacidad normal: en lugar de 40, al llegar al puente eran más de 70 los pasajeros que viajaban a la Capital. En Banfield, las vías torcían Beruti y seguían por Pavón (hoy Hipólito Irigoyen) hasta cruzar el Riachuelo por el puente Bosch que pertenecía a la compañía de tranvías. Benadusi dijo que esa madrugada de niebla no notó nada anormal, excepto la velocidad, a ratos peligrosa, que llevaba el coche.

Al llegar a la orilla del Riachuelo, Benadusi se alarmó al oír las voces de mujeres y hombres que esperaban en sus vehículos que el puente levadizo bajara para cruzarlo y que al ver la carrera del tranvía 75 le gritaron para prevenirlo del peligro. Miró hacia adelante y vio que el puente estaba alto. Entonces estalló un grito unánime de los pasajeros que calcularon que ya no había tiempo para la frenada salvadora. Un segundo después, el tranvía perdió contacto con los rieles y quedó en la oscuridad. Los pasajeros, chocando unos contra otros, rodaron en montón por el piso hacia adelante, en medio de horribles crujidos de maderas y de vidrios. Como dando un salto, el tranvía caía, de plano, a las aguas.

Benadusi se acuerda de que rompió el vidrio y del agua entrando a borbotones, luego los rayos del sol fragmentados por los remolinos de la superficie del Riachuelo. Supone que salió por esa ventana. Él y los otros dos sobrevivientes no saben exactamente cómo se salvaron pero tienen grabado en su memoria el terror de ser conscientes de que caerían al agua. Benadusi no oyó el toque de la sirena pero sí vio las luces rojas encendidas que denunciaban peligro.

El jefe de tráfico de la empresa, Manuel Gilli, mostró a los periodistas los diferentes indicios de que el puente se encontraba levantado, que percibieron los pasajeros del tranvía 75. “Vean las señales desde aquí” les dijo a los periodistas. Desde la puerta de la estación de Puentecito se advertían sobre el puente con toda claridad las múltiples señales de peligro en forma que no podían haber sido pasadas por alto. Las luces se mantenían encendidas desde que se levantaba el tramo hasta que volvía a su situación normal. Para Gilli sólo era posible pensar que el conductor hubiera tenido un síncope, alguna “enfermedad imprevista de alguno de sus sentidos, que pagó con su propia vida”.

Pero con el correr del tiempo se comprobó que el conductor no había sufrido ninguna “enfermedad imprevista”. La autopsia reveló que estaba vivo en el momento de caer el coche al agua, que no había rastros de sustancias tóxicas en su sangre y la pericia técnica mostró que no había intentado parar el tranvía pues el freno funcionaba y los demás interruptores también.

El motorista, Vescio (y no “Besio” como figuró en los primeros reportes del caso), era novato. Había hecho los tres meses de prácticas y obtenido su aprobación del examen de conductor hacía sólo una semana. El tranvía, según figura en el expediente,“voluminoso y completo”, llevaba algunos minutos de atraso y para los expertos “si se tiene en cuenta que Vescio era novicio, no es aventurado presumir que haya impreso a su coche una velocidad excesiva, a fin de recuperar el tiempo perdido, creyendo probar con ello su capacidad para el puesto.”

Pero Vescio sabía, había sido entrenado para eso, que debía parar cuando viera las luces encendidas y no avanzar hasta escuchar la sirena. Los pasajeros que él transportaba al notar que el puente estaba levantado, supieron que el tranvía caería y gritaron con horror a coro con los demás testigos de la caída. Sucedió tal como lo había augurado Jorge Luis Borges ocho años antes del accidente, en un poema de 1922 llamado Tranvías: “Carteles clamatorios ejecutan / su prestigioso salto mortal desde arriba”. Múltiples señales y carteles en vano clamaron y en vano se encendieron esa madrugada de 1930 para prevenir al tranvía que ejecutó su salto mortal desde arriba.

Nota de Investigación Histórica. Maestría en Periodismo Diario La Nación - Para Ernesto Castrillón