We Have To Do Better: Mob Reporting Faces Crossroads Amid 24-7 News Cycle, Journalists, YouTubers Not Doing Job
November 5, 2024 — The feverish itch to be first, fast and feed more content to the algorithm beast is effecting my credibility.
It’s doing a number on others in the mob reporting space and their reputations as well. We all need to check ourselves and be more deliberate in our work. If we don’t, it will be to our own peril and ruin. At the very least, it will significantly diminish, and possibly destroy, the very veracity and faith in our platforms that’s at the core of this type of journalism-content creation and has been forever.
The New York Times and Jerry Capeci are The New York Times and Jerry Capeci for a reason. Don’t get it twisted. We are not them. Not even close.
Over the weekend, the internet and social media in gangland circles was abuzz with chatter of former Genovese mob consigliere Bobby Manna’s passing in prison. I reported it. So did almost every other underworld-reporting platform in the genre. The problem is, Bobby Manna, while pushing 95 years old, is not dead. He never was. We all put it out there as if he was dead and gone and that the news we were reporting was the gospel.
He wasn’t. It wasn’t.
For Gangster Report, this is a bitter pill to swallow. We pride ourselves for having our finger on the pulse of the streets in North America, however, this is the second time in 10 months and third time since launching GR 2:0 almost two years ago that we have to issue a retraction (another false obit and a location misidentification from a social media post are the others). That is not acceptable. Totally. And completely.
The New York Times issues retractions practically once a decade. Maybe.
Capeci’s Gangland News, although not as consistently spicey as it once was, remains the gold standard of this space and will always be until further notice; Jerry is the Dean and is on-point with his reporting nearly 100 percent of the time. He doesn’t care how long it takes him to confirm scoops, nor should he.
That’s REAL journalism. Being accurate is the only issue that matters.
The New York Times waited two months before reporting that former Bonanno mob capo Frank Coppa died in the Witness Protection Program, well after the rest of us went with it and the Sitdown podcast broke it back in August. Do you want to know why? Because they waited until they saw a death certificate. It didn’t matter that it took them an extra nine weeks to track one down. They did it the right way. The way we all should be doing it. Maybe not a death certificate from the morgue, but definitely a public obituary or confirmation from a next of kin.
In the case of Bobby Manna, it was an alleged relative by marriage who was making the rounds and tipping off journalists and content creators in the genre to what the person claimed was the death of East Coast mob icon Manna. We all went with it. We all got burned. The echo chamber fed on itself and it undercut our collective credibility and reporting bonafides. Shame on us.
That bring us to Tommy Reynolds. The former Bonanno mob affiliate and hit man who got a sentence reduction earlier this year. The BOP says his out date is August 2026. Several different prominent mob-news platforms (GR was not among them) reported back in September that he was out already or on the verge of getting out within days. He hasn’t left FCI Otisville though……..almost six weeks after the news of Renyolds’s purported soon-to-be-free prisoner status surfaced. This is becoming far too common of a narrative, a pattern if you will, that GR itself is part of.
It needs to stop. There is not an alternative. The fate of this content space depends on it, our legitimacy as arbiters of facts, a free and fair press and most of all as crucial preservers of American true-crime history lies in the balance.
GR for one, pledges to do better and hold itself to a higher standard of vetting breaking news. Everyone playing in this sandbox needs to do the same.
If we fail, we will perish. All of us. And it will be our own fault due to caring more about clicks, engagements and hype than truth, professionalism and pride.
