| By Joel Thurtell
He’s no journalist, but Paul Glendon has some sage advice for newsroom bosses who want to make their publications bias-free. Don’t be obsessed with contributions your staffers make to political causes, says Glendon. Look at your paper itself, or listen to your radio station or watch your television signal. Is your product free of prejudice? In other words, police the output, not the input. Glendon was the arbitrator who ruled June 27 in my case against the Detroit Free Press’s ban on political contributions. Editors issued the prohibition a year ago after learning that I’d donated $500 to Michigan Democrats in 2004. “Political contributions really should not be the issue,” Glendon wrote in May 27 7-page arbitration ruling. “The company’s appropriate concern should be whether reporters’ work…is slanted subjectively by political beliefs that might be reflected in their donations to political parties, candidates or causes they believe in. The contractually proper means to avoid any such compromise of editorial employees’ (and consequently the newspaper’s) integrity are management vigilance over the (contractual) ‘professional integrity’ obligations…and editorial vigilance over the work itself.” No need to set up mini-red squads dictating staffers’ behavior outside of work. What’s on the pages, or the screen or coming over the loudspeaker? That’s what counts. Makes sense to me. The product — what people see or hear — that’s what counts. I’d give media bosses another piece of advice. In my case, top brass at the Detroit Free Press argued without presenting any evidence that my donation somehow compromised the paper’s credibility. Glendon disagreed. Editors didn’t offer one scintilla of evidence that my donation compromised the paper’s integrity, he ruled. But since the big guys raised the issue, I’d like to chew on it for a minute. I didn’t compromise their integrity, but they may have done a number on themselves in their recent coverage of the federal trial of attorney Geoffrey Fieger on charges he illegally reimbursed employees for donations to a political campaign. Now, if you were a media boss obsessed with your publication’s credibility, wouldn’t you want to be as honest and forthcoming as you possibly could if you maybe had a dog in a particular race your paper was covering? If there was any hint that you might have done something similar to what your reporter was covering at trial, wouldn’t you want to be candid about it with readers? That way, nobody could later impugn your motives for publishing balanced, fair reports. It came out in my arbitration hearing that at least one Gannett exec, a Free Press editor, made a contribution to a political action committee in his name. But Gannett, it appears, actually wrote the check. I’m referring to the $175 donation Free Press Editor Paul Anger made to the Detroit Regional Chamber PAC in July 2007. During my January 18 arbitration hearing, Newspaper Guild attorney Duane Ice asked Anger about that donation. Ice’s point, of course, was simply, Why was it okay for Anger to make a donation two weeks after issuing a ban on editorial staffers doing that very thing? The editor’s response: “It was a company expense.” Makes me wonder how many other checks Gannett has cut to political causes in the names of company bosses. “It was a company expense.” Ice’s response: “Are you aware that companies can’t pay PAC expenses?” Replied Anger: “No.” But at that point, Free Press editors knew it was at least questionable for their employer to cover the cost of political contributions made in editors’ names. Same issue the paper was covering in the Fieger trial. Why not run a notice to readers that the Free Press had an unusual interest in this case? I don’t know. It makes me wonder. The paper’s reports at least twice quoted Fieger, without rebuttal, asserting that nobody has ever been tried and convicted of reimbursing employees’ political donations. Everyone had pleaded guilty without going to trial, Fieger said. Fieger meant to trivialize the prosecutor’s case by claiming the issue had never been before a jury. But is that true? There was a time when Free Press would have browbeaten a reporter for turning in a story that made an unsubstantiated assertion without any other attribution than “Fieger said.” I can remember a time when that kind of claim would have been the subject of its own story. How many cases of this nature have gone to trial? If not, why not? But from the Free Press, we got mere repetition of Fieger’s claim. Makes me wonder why. Could it be related to the fact that editors (well, in at least one case we know for a fact) may have had contributions paid for by the company, same as Fieger? A simple disclaimer might have set aside the suspicion. Aggressive reporting — putting Fieger’s statement to a real journalistic test instead of regurgitating it verbatim — would have made it unnecessary for me to write this column. Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
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