Determination 131: James Keating v. St. Paul Pioneer Press
James Keating was city treasurer in Grant, MN when $120,000 worth of assessment checks went missing. The Pioneer Press ran a story on November 15, 2001, when the Grant City Council instituted a deadline for finding the checks. The story stated that Keating would pick up the checks or have them delivered. It also quoted a City Council member saying that Keating was instructed to turn over deposit slips to the clerk, but he didn’t. Keating thought that the article should have explained that the acting city clerk, who was supposed to give him the checks, was an untrained temporary employee who never delivered them. The reporter did not contact Keating for that story. Another story ran on November 17th. For this story the reporter tried to contact Keating at his home, leaving a message with her pager number on his home machine. She said she thought he was out of the office looking for the checks, and so did not try to contact him there. Keating didn’t get back to the reporter, thinking it was too late.
Complaint:
1. That the November 15th story was unfair because it did not include his point of view – that the temporary clerk never conveyed the checks to him, and that he did not want the checks cashed until the assessments were certified, months later. He said the reporter had had no trouble reaching him at work when he ran for City Council, but on this missing check story tried him at home during the day, instead of calling his office.
2. That the headline (without the subhead) on the November 17 story (”Residents to pay assessments again: City lost checks, will pay stop payment fees”) could have easily misled readers into believing that Grant taxpayers were being billed twice for the road-paving assessment.
3. That the March, 2002, follow-up story, on partial rebates of assessments, did not forthrightly acknowledge the alleged shortcomings in the first two stories.
Response: The Pioneer Press said that the reporter thought under the circumstances leaving a message at his home was the best way to contact Keating. The inaccuracies cited in the complaint, it said, were accurate reports of what other Grant officials said.
The paper claimed that with the subhead in the November 17th story was accurate and that the follow-up story was the best way to bring readers clear information about the situation, since so much time had passed. The paper said once it was aware of Keating’s concerns, it made a good faith effort to address his concerns.
Discussion: Many News Council members said Keating should have sought an immediate correction from the paper. He said he did not because he felt the paper was avoiding him, as he said it had done before, and he preferred to file a complaint with the News Council.
The Pioneer Press reporter, Amy Becker, said she had no reason to avoid him. She said she wanted his views in the story, but she acknowledged that she could and should have called him at the financial services office in Edina where he works. Instead, she left a voice message at his home the afternoon before the story appeared. He said he did not get it until after the 6 p.m. deadline her message mentioned. Neither Keating nor Becker placed a call to the other that night. The paper said it actually had until midnight to include his version.
Keating said the paper had had no trouble finding him in Edina when it wanted to question him during his unsuccessful run for city council last year.
One media member said that if Keating had demanded a correction immediately, the story that appeared last month would have appeared in November, and the dispute would have been resolved.
Another media member, Reed Anfinson, publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, Minn., suggested that this dispute reveals a basic flaw in the attempt of major metropolitan daily newspapers to cover complicated governmental issues in short stories.
Becker, the Pioneer Press reporter, said she covers 14 communities and the police and court beats for all of Washington County. She did not attend the Grant City Council meeting at which the missing-checks matter arose. She developed a story later, by phone.
Council member Jay Furst, managing editor of the Rochester Post-Bulletin, questioned the need to publish the story quickly, instead of waiting to include Keating’s comments.
Public member Neil Neddermeyer, a retired Hennepin County sheriff’s detective, said he agreed the reporter “should have gone the extra mile (to get Keating’s comments), but Keating also should have gone the extra mile (and called her even though the 6 p.m. deadline she told him about had passed). If I came home at 6 o’clock and got a message like that I’d be on the phone right away.”
Pia Lopez, editorial page editor of the Duluth News-Tribune, a media member, asked Keating: “How do you make a paper improve itself? Contact the paper (about errors) and make the story clear. It’s not clear to me that Mr. Keating was interested in that.”
Public member Karen Runyon, a forensics expert, said she thought a citizen should not be held to a higher standard than a newspaper is held to. She said the original story made the behavior of the city treasurer sound suspicious, and he deserved a chance to tell his side of the story.
The Vote:
Complaint 1: upheld (11-5)
Complaint 2: not upheld (10-6)
Complaint 3: not upheld (15-1)
Tags: St. Paul Pioneer Press