[donation]
By Joel Thurtell
Did I actually say that? In a headline?
That Monica Conyers might be correct?
Yes. I think the media are handling her roughly.
I know, I know. Who am I to talk? I was critical of Monica before it was chic to lambast the Detroit city councilwoman. I revealed that she took and flunked the Michigan bar exam four times.
I criticized the way her husband, U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Detroit used his federal office and his staffer to get her elected to the council. Why, I even caught one of his staffers working on congressional time in the presidential campaign of a Conyers pal. I also took Conyers to task for using his office workers to babysit his kids on the federal payroll.
I wrote about the police report of her altercation, including a pistol and a knife, with her own son.
Check out my blog categories, “Conyers series” and “JC & Me” for a slew of stories I’ve written about John and Monica Conyers.
Am I defending her? No. I think she’s a bully, and I’m glad she can’t practice law.
But the Detroit media smell her blood and with Kwame political corpse losing interest by he hour, Monica offers shooting practice for reporters addicted to the hunt.
It’s true that her bar fight, her shouting down the hotel staff in Denver and her remark that the media are “evil” don’t exactly endear her.
But the real biggie lurking out there, this federal investigation of a city scandal known as “Sludgegate,” is a far cry journalistically from the revelations about Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s text messages with his chief of staff/paramour, Christine Beatty. We can now safely say that the text messages showed Kwame committed perjury, since he’s pleaded guilty to doing that.
While I’ve criticized the Detroit Free Press for bullying Kwame into giving up his right to a trial, it’s important to distinguish between the two very different kinds of journalism involved in Kwamegate and Sludgegate.
The Kwame text message story came about through first-rate, intense reporting by the Free Press team. However they got those text messages, they knew what a bombshell they had, and they worked all angles to buttress their reporting. Without the Free Press, there would have been no Kwamegate.
Sludgegate, on the other hand, is the product not of tenacious, thorough journalism, but of leaks. That story depended on government sources deciding when to talk to reporters and choosing what to tell them. That’s not supposed to happen. Grand jury deliberations are supposed to be secret to protect people until indictments are handed down. Actually, the system is not quite so perfect, since the paperwork for search warrants is a matter of record and diligent reporters can find those things. Nevertheless, the reporting on the FBI investigation into the granting of a sludge-processing contract to a Texas firm was based on leaks.
When they run stories based on leaks, the media allow the government to use them as a bullhorn. The government lets the public know just as much as they want them to know, when they want them to know it. We don’t know the officials’ motives, though we can guess at one — prepping potential jurors on the government’s side of the case. But the officials are in control of the information.
That’s why we aren’t reading much about the case right now. When government investigators decide it’s time for more news about the case, they’ll phone a trusty reporter.
But it’s that Sludgegate cloud that’s driving media interest in Monica Conyers right now. I can’t help wondering if anything more will come of it.
Remember the investigation of the late Ed McNamara, Wayne County executive in 2002 when FBI troops seized files from county offices in Detroit and beat a big drum about their probe of Mac? They came up with a couple of prosecutions of minor players and after that, zilch.
And there was the prosecution of onetime Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga. Or more recently the prosecution of attorney Geoffrey Fieger.
Lots of hullabaloo.
Both men were acquitted.
Now we have television reporters staking out the Conyers house in Detroit. Based on what? Leaks from a federal office with a lackluster record of prosecution.
Shouldn’t the media wait till there’s something more substantial before harrying this woman at her home?
Or hey, here’s a thought: Emulate the Free Press approach to Kwame: Do some original research into Monica’s history.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
