When some news executives find themselves on the receiving end of reportorial scrutiny, they don’t really seem to want to explain what got them there. Exhibit A would be the Northeast Ohio Media Group, whose top brass have clammed up in the wake of a much-publicized controversy over why they yanked a video interview of a candidate off their news site.
Other news executives are (eventually) more open about what they’ve done to attract uncomfortable attention. That commitment to transparency is certainly more admirable, even if the results can sometimes be a little odd.
Exhibit B here would be Colorado Springs Independent publisher John Weiss, who on Oct. 22 penned a 2,500-word note to readers and staff of the alt-weekly to explain why he participated in a political action committee that tried to embarrass a local congressman, Republican Doug Lamborn, into debating his Democratic opponent–and kept his participation secret.
I should mention that Weiss’ initial obfuscations involved not owning up to his role when asked about it straight-up by an Independent reporter. And also that the PAC’s activities involved arranging for people to dress up in chicken costumes, to highlight what they saw as Lamborn’s cowardly refusal to honor a debate pledge. (The PAC’s name: Colorado Springs Citizens For A Congressman Who Won’t Chicken Out.)
“In order to understand my quandary,” Weiss writes near the top of his piece, “I need to go into some details on events that led up to the chicken campaign.”
Which he does. You can read the whole letter (and see a picture of the chicken) here, if you have time, but the takeaway is this: Lamborn had promised the Independent and the Gazette, the local daily, that he would participate in a general election debate. Then he backed out. Weiss, who doesn’t think much of Lamborn in the first place, was peeved; he started brainstorming with some like-minded citizens, and the chicken campaign was hatched.
Then, shortly after the PAC officially launched its campaign, one of Weiss’s reporters called to ask if he was involved. He had promised to stay behind the scenes, so he fudged: “Maybe I am and maybe I’m not.” The reporter, Weiss wrote, “was disgusted, and she wasn’t alone.” The publisher was soon called into an emergency meeting with senior managers, editors and reporters.
More from his letter:
A senior editor stated that several employees were on the verge of resigning over the position I had placed them in. Their credibility was on the line.
I fought back at first, thinking that I had not embarrassed Lamborn, but that he had embarrassed himself. Then I got to thinking—that my staff, as usual, was right. I cannot separate my public and private civic engagements.
So after much discussion, I agreed that I owed it to our readers and our reporters to come clean about my involvement with this campaign, as well as to publicly apologize to our reporters for the difficult situation I placed them in.
Like all good news organizations, we have strong conflict-of-interest and disclosure requirements for all our employees. When in doubt, we avoid even the appearance of a conflict. While I do not think I crossed the ethical line, I did come too close for comfort.
I also agree that I should not have made a flip statement to Pam [the reporter] when she called me. I thought my non-denial denial (a term made popular by both President Nixon as well as anti-Vietnam War activists in the late 1960s and 1970s) had indicated that I was involved in the chicken campaign, but that because of promises made to others, I was not able to answer her question. But that was not understood by Pam. I thought wrong.
…The Independent has formed a committee to explore what, if any, changes are needed in our already strong conflict-of-interest policies.
On Monday I caught up with the Indy’s news editor, Robert Meyerowitz, on the phone to see how the publisher’s note has been received in and out of the newsroom a week and a half later. “These things flare up, you have people threatening to quit, and they often times flare down again just as quickly,” he said, though he added that there might be some unresolved issues that the newsroom hasn’t entirely worked through.
Outside the building, though, the Earth did not quake in Colorado Springs.
“There was very little external response to it,” Meyerowitz said. “We tend to see ourselves as involved in some Wagnerian opera internally about ethics. Externally, the sad thing is that very few people seem to give a damn.”
Corey Hutchins is CJR’s correspondent based in Colorado, where he teaches journalism at Colorado College. A former alt-weekly reporter in South Carolina, he was twice named journalist of the year in the weekly division by the SC Press Association. Hutchins writes about politics and media for the Colorado Independent and worked on the State Integrity Investigation at the Center for Public Integrity; he has contributed to Slate, The Nation, the Washington Post, and others. Follow him on Twitter @coreyhutchins or email him at coreyhutchins@gmail.com.