Former Projo Reporter and Brown Prof. Threatened Author With Legal Action on Book About Station Fire
Monday, November 16, 2020
The new book by Scott James, "Trial by Fire," chronicles the Station Fire in West Warwick that killed 100, one of the deadliest nightclub fires in U.S. history.
But one player in the book -- former Providence Journal reporter and now professor at Brown University Tracy Breton -- repeatedly threatened legal action to block a portion of the book from being included.
According to multiple sources in the book, in 2013 at the 10th anniversary of the fire, Breton threatened to write about the owners of the club Jeff and Michael Derderian’s children, if she was not afforded the brothers' first media interview since the fire.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAt the time the Derderians' children were in high school.
And, when James reached Breton regarding the incident, she in emails and a voice mail threatened legal action if the story was included in the book.
“She was trying to bully us into doing an interview. That is how we took it, as a threat," Jeff Derderian told GoLocal in an interview.
“The message we received from our attorney [Kathleen Hagerty] was Breton was trying to force us. It was bullying and no one else had ever done or has ever done since — it crossed the line,” said Derderian.
"What did my and Michael’s kids have to do with the story. Mine were 6 at the time of the fire,” he added.
Breton Denies Charge and Threatened Legal Action -- “If You Put That in Your Book There Will be Trouble”
More than a month after James had first reached out to Breton at her office at Brown looking for comment on the incident, Breton responded with emails and a voicemail.
“Just left you a voicemail. You can call me back or not — your choice — but if you put that ridiculous scenario in your book, it is dead wrong and I will get a lawyer to contact your publisher before the book comes out to make that super clear. It never happened that way,” wrote Breton in an email to James.
The email from Breton to James continued, "I have no problem with you using what I told you today in the book if you plan to include Kathy Hagerty’s assertion. But my hunch is that she told you what you assert she told you as an after-the-fact excuse as to why her clients would not sit down for an interview with reporters even years after all the litigation was over."
James is an experienced journalist and author. He worked in Providence in the 1980s and 1990s at WLNE-6. Since then, he has had a stellar career as a contributor for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The London Times, The Guardian, and many more. He's been honored with three Emmy Awards for his work in television news. He lives in San Francisco, and is co-founder of The Castro Writers' Cooperative, known as The Coop, a co-working space for Bay Area writers.
The voicemail from Breton was equally threatening about the consequences.
"I just was thinking a few minutes about our conversation relating to your book, and I do have to say as a professor of journalism at Brown for over 22 years and having spent 40 years at the Providence Journal, having won a Pulitzer Prize and I think being an incredibly trustworthy reporter, I find your approach with me rather troubling," said Breton, who was part of the team that won the Journal's last Pulitzer in 1994.
HERE BRETON'S VOICEMAIL
"And I'm just telling you that if you put that in your book, there will be a problem because I'll take it up with a lawyer," added Breton in the voicemail.
For James, who had worked for years on the book, he believes Breton was trying to intimidate him.
"I think Breton used the legal threat to try to intimidate and bully me into not including the incident in my book," said James in an email to GoLocal. "The fact that she also went to someone who she thought was my source and tried to get that person to retract seems to be clear evidence that she wanted this incident to never be reported."
"And Breton repeatedly invoked her status as a (shared) Pulitzer Prize winner and Brown University journalism instructor, as if there were some sort of consequences for me in the journalism profession if I reported what happened," James.
Breton Said She Never Tried to Force the Derderians By Threatening to Write About Children
Breton was a prolific writer on the Station Fire incident and says she is writing her own book. "My book is about organ donation and transplantation and one of the people I am writing about is Joe Kinan, a Station fire survivor who got a hand transplant," said Breton in an email.
"I wrote a lot of stories about the 10th anniversary of the fire and as part of that coverage, did try to get both Michael and Jeffrey to speak with me for a 'where are they now?' type of story. I wanted to find out how the fire and all of the litigation that stemmed from it -- both criminal and civil -- had affected the Derderians and their families. I know Michael and Jeffrey Derderian never intended to harm anyone in operating The Station nightclub and can only imagine the emotional toll it has taken on them and their loved ones," wrote Breton in an email to GoLocal.
Breton said she went to their homes and left notes. "I did say to him I'd like to know how this has affected your family [and] your children, I think in a note I might have left at the house, but what was I supposed to be writing about their children. I mean I never wrote about their children," said Breton in a phone interview.
James said that while Breton denied she was bullying, she was bullying.
"The irony is that she's making the general claim that she does not threaten, intimidate or bully people, and yet she did exactly that to me. Frankly, her actions with me undermine her claim that she's not the type of journalist who would ever threaten anyone," wrote James to GoLocal in an email.
"This was the only legal threat made against me in reporting the book. There were innumerable obstacles, including uncooperative government officials, but this was the only legal threat," James added.
The passage from James' book about the incident reads:
"The only time the brothers felt their families directly threatened came on the eve of the fire’s tenth anniversary in 2013, when Tracy Breton, a reporter for the Providence Journal, asked the Derderians to grant their first interviews.
The request went to the brothers’ attorney, Kathleen Hagerty, who thought of it as an innocuous 'where are they now?' anniversary story. But in the request Breton mentioned Michael and Jeffrey’s children in a way that Jeffrey, as a former journalist, interpreted as suggesting that Breton might write about the children, who had nothing to do with the disaster and who were never the focus of news coverage, if the brothers refused the Journal’s interview request.
Breton would later deny that she employed such a tactic to pressure the Derderians into an interview, and called the allegation 'ridiculous.'
'Anyone who knows me and my reporting techniques knows I would never try to extort an interview from anybody,' Breton wrote in an email.
Whatever the intentions, Jeffrey was upset - he had used many strategies to entice subjects into interviews when he was a reporter, but they never involved someone's children. The brothers stood firm and denied the interview request, and no story about the children was published, but the incident further cemented the Derderians’ disgust for the press, and especially the Providence Journal."
GoLocal sent the passage to Breton and she said, "I think it fairly represents [in the passage in the book] what I told Mr. James and what Kathy Hagerty told him too. I'm sorry that Jeffrey Derderian felt bullied or threatened in some way by me asking for an interview and going to his home to see if he would talk to me. That's what reporters do."
Hagerty told GoLocal in a phone interview, "I never felt threatened. I just don't remember [Breton] making a threat." Hagerty has represented the Derderians for years and before entering private practice was a prosecutor in the Rhode Island Attorney General's office.
"I am sorry that Jeffrey felt threatened by my reaching out to him and his lawyers for an interview. Neither he nor his brother agreed to be interviewed and I never wrote a story about the Derderians' children. I hope that sets the record straight," said Breton.
Editor's Note: updated at 7:15 PM the story now includes Breton's description of the book she is writing and the addition of the voicemail she left for James.
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