Miami Herald reporter cleared?

Here’s the initial story.

Military and Media Clash In Complaint

Navy Spokesman Alleges Abuse by Miami Reporter

By Howard Kurtz

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 25, 2009

Tensions between journalists and military officials are nothing new. But a bitter series of clashes between a top Navy spokesman and a Miami Herald military reporter reached a new, eye-opening level this week.

In a letter to the paper’s editor, Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon accused Carol Rosenberg of “multiple incidents of abusive and degrading comments of an explicitly sexual nature.” Gordon, who deals primarily with the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison, said in the letter that this was a “formal sexual harassment complaint” and asked the Herald for a “thorough investigation.”

“Her behavior has been so atrocious over the years,” Gordon said in an interview. “I’ve been abused worse than the detainees have been abused.”

Now here’s the Miami Herald response reported by Jack Dolan on 8 August 2009.

Review clears Miami Herald’s military affairs writer

Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg will continue to cover the U.S. military after an investigation into allegations by a Navy public affairs officer that she verbally abused and sexually harassed him at Guantánamo Bay.

In a letter Monday to the Pentagon, Miami Herald Vice President of Human Resources Elissa Vanaver wrote that the newspaper’s internal investigation “did not find corroboration” for the complaint of sexual harassment and abusive behavior made last month by Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon.

Herald executives interviewed military officials and journalists from other news outlets, some of whom had witnessed the incidents Gordon cited in his complaint. “We found some inconsistencies in [Gordon’s] version of events,” Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said.

/tip Military Reporters & Editors