Breathe easy, Gannett execs

By Joel Thurtell

Bet some Gannett news execs are heaving giant sighs of relief that their company lost their case in the arbitration of my $500 donation to Michigan Dems in 2004.

Turns out nearly 30 top Gannett honchos did the same thing I did in 2004 — contributed money to political parties or partisan causes.

When Free Press execs belatedly caught wind of my donation in June 2007, they quickly re-wrote the paper’s ethics policy to ban political contributions. That didn’t stop Editor Paul Anger from donating $175 to the Detroit Regional Chamber Political Action Committee a couple weeks later. But Anger is only one of a bevy of Gannett execs who’ve contributed to political campaigns, candidates or causes in the past few years. Thanks to my arbitration ruling, all of these malefactors can rest easy. While I was told I’d face discipline up to an including termination if I made another donation, no such sanctions will await them.

Thanks to arbitrator Paul Glendon, who set aside the new rule and called it “null and void,” those Gannetoids who made political gifts can’t be disciplined for violating their company’s ethics policy.

Of course, I’m kidding, since it was clear the company didn’t consider managers covered by the ethics rules in the first place. Otherwise, they’d have brought Anger up on ethics charges when I first revealed his transgression here months ago. Wouldn’t they?

Neat, huh? One standard — actually no standard — for the brass, but a high bar for the grunts.

But the real concern for these Gannettoids should not be with their toothless and vague ethics pronouncements. It should be with federal law. Paul Anger’s donation to the chamber’s PAC appears on the Michigan Secretary of State website. You would assume the $175 gift was from Anger. Not so. Apparently, Gannett wrote the check. That’s what he said when he testified during my Jan. 18 arbitration hearing.

“It was a company expense,” Anger testified.

Hmmm. Isn’t that what brought on Geoffrey Fieger’s woes? Federal prosecutors accused him and a partner of reimbursing employees’ donations to John Edwards when he was running for president in 2004. According to Anger, the Free Press bypassed that middle step. Gannett paid directly for the donation. Fieger was acquitted of reimbursing political contributions made by his employees, which is a felony. But all that means is the jury didn’t buy federal prosecutors’ case against him. The acquittal didn’t legalize the practice.

Oh, I know, Freepsters claim the money was for a ticket to dinner at last year’s Chamber shindig on Mackinac Ialand. One dinner for a hundred seventy-five smackers? Come on. the rubber chicken costs ten or twelve bucks. The rest of the moolah is gravy ladled into a huge trough of funding the Chamber directs to its pro-business, anti-labor political causes.

But in any case, the contributions by Editor Anger, Executive Editor Caesar Andrews ($175) and Detroit Media Partnership President David Hunke ($350) are dwarfed by gifts made by Gannett muck-a-mucks like Gannett Broadcasting CEO and President Craig Dubow, who donated $10,250 to the National Association of Broadcasters, a lobbying group, between 2003 and 2005 or Gannett Senior Vice President John Jaske, who gave $2,000 to presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004 or Gannett Chairman Douglas McCorkindale, who donated $1,000 to George W. Bush and $1,000 to the Federal Victory Fund in 2003. Last year, Gannett general counsel Kurt Wimmer donated $2,300 to presidential candidate Barack Obama and in 2006 Gannett Human Resources Vice President Jose Berrios gave $2,000 to Hillary Clinton.

In a quick check at www.opensecrets.org, I found 28 Gannett higher-ups who made this kind of donation.

Now, here’s my question: Did Gannett execs dig deep to make these political gifts, or did Ma Gannett cover the costs?

If it should turn out that this was what Paul Anger terms “a company expense,” Geoffrey Fieger might want to ask why the federal government prosecuted him so diligently (he was acquitted) while letting a big media company slip through their fingers.

Could be quite a company expense.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com