Jeffrey Keating, a reporter at WGBH, wrote to clarify what happened with Professor Richard Thomas regarding the WGBH story on Larry Summers…this is reprinted with his permission.

First, I should say that Prof. Thomas posted his message before I had an opportunity
to explain to him what happened. We have since spoken and, although he is justifiably
frustrated by how we handled this, he told me he appreciated the explanation.

We had produced a taped report that was highly critical of Lawrence Summers. Most
of it was drawn from interviews with Daniel Fisher and Judith Ryan. Basic fairness
dictated that we follow that taped piece with an on set discussion that included
a Summers defender. We had initially asked Prof. Ed Glaeser to appear alone. We
later reconsidered and invited Prof. Thomas to appear as well. In a mistake on our
part, we did not communicate this to Ed until the last minute and he refused to
come on the show with Richard. A last minute attempt to find an alternative Summers
defender from within the FAS faculty was unsuccessful. Stuck in a predicament of
our own making, our fairness concerns prompted us to go forward with Glaeser alone.
Glaeser did have time issues and that prevented us from pushing back the taping
time, which would have given us more time to find a better resolution.

I regret that we did not better communicate with Prof. Glaeser and Prof. Thomas,
but our mistakes were honest and not in bad faith. Naturally, having Prof. Thomas
on the set with Prof. Glaeser would have been preferable, but I believe what we
aired was fair. It is available for viewing on our website at www.wgbh.org/greaterboston.

Sincerely,

Jeff Keating
Associate Producer
WGBH