Complaint: 

Complaint 1: The news article as a whole was unfair to Judy Peterzen
Peterzen’s complaint alleged: that the Sun-Post was unfair in its use of the word “breach” in reporting differences among school board members over the evaluation of the superintendent, implying that she violated her duty; that the Sun-Post’s inclusion of information on the Robbinsdale board’s evaluation of its superintendent was unfair because it did not explain the legal process the Robbinsdale board followed, and; that the article showed bias against Peterzen as school board chair by reporting five times that she had not provided a summary of the board’s evaluation of the superintendent.

Complaint 2: The editing of Peterzen’s letter to the editor as a whole was unfair.
Peterzen’s complaint alleged: that the Sun-Post was unfair in changing the language of her letter from “A report in the Sun-Post on July 24 was embellished to give an impression that I was in violation of my duty.” to “A report in the Sun-Post on July 24 may have given some the impression that I was in violation of my duty”; that the Sun-Post unfairly deleted from Peterzen’s letter her explanation of the Robbinsdale action; that the paper unfairly changed the language of her letter from “But if you look closely at that law, it states that a ‘summary of results‘ must be given . . .” to “But if you look closely at that law, I believe it states that . . . ” and; that the paper showed bias by deleting from Peterzen’s letter the following line: “A possible explanation for what I believe is highly charged and biased reporting is that the writer disagrees with the decisions being made and has lost a sense of objectivity.”

Response: The Sun-Post declined to take part in the hearing but sent a written response to the complaint. The paper’s response said that the law could be interpreted differently, so it felt the need to qualify her words with the insertion of “I believe.” The paper acknowledged that it would have done well to use brackets around the phrase, or some other device, to let the reader know the words were not Peterzen’s.

Discussion: Council members, representing both the news media and the public, felt strongly that when a person is the subject of aggressive reporting and editorializing, as Peterzen was, a news outlet should give that person a lot of freedom to defend herself and to criticize the news outlet.

“I think that when a paper is critical of a public official in print,” said Duluth News Tribune editorial editor, Pia Lopez said, “it should give the widest possible latitude for response after that.”
Council member Mike Parta or New York Mills, a former president of the Minnesota Newspaper Association, said, “It’s important for our readers to know we allow that type of open discussion” of a paper’s work.

Peterzen objected to the Sun-Post’s including in its story information about how differently the Robbinsdale district handles evaluation of its superintendent, since there was no discussion of that topic at the Osseo board meeting that was the subject of the story. St. Paul Pioneer Press executive Editor Vicki Gowler responded by saying, “Your comment [about a reporter doing independent gathering of data] is jarring to me. The role of a journalist is not stenographic. Our job is to make comparisons, give context and go deeper so the public can better understand an issue.”

Peterzen contrasted the Sun-Post story with a heavily edited and rewritten version that appeared a week later in a sister publication, the Osseo-Maple Grove Press. She said that version of the story was fair, as was the version of her letter to the editor that ran in the Press.
Council members agreed that a newspaper could do well to call a letter writer to clear changes before publication and, if a letter is considered too long, offer a writer the chance to shorten it while preserving its strongest points.

Brandt Williams, a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio, responded to Peterzen’s claims of bias. He said that the idea shouldn’t just be thrown out. While he couldn’t decide on the evidence of bias specifically, he said, “it would be a concern of mine.”

Vote:
Complaint 1: not upheld (13-4)
Complaint 2: upheld (17-0)

Background: On May 1, 2001, WCCO aired an I-Team report on mold in school walls, and the expense of cleaning them up to avoid health hazards. The story focused on several outstate schools, most of which happened to have been designed many years ago by an architect named Ken Walijarvi, who died some time ago, and showed his picture three times. His son, Michael, who lives in Maine, got a copy of the story and objected to the station, saying it had no need to single out his father, portraying him as some kind of wrongdoer, especially since the story itself stated that the design Walijarvi used was considered the state of the art at that time.

Response: WCCO’s former news director, Ted Canova responded to the complaint in a letter, stating that the station stood by the accuracy and fairness of the reporting. The letter said, “We clearly stated that the building design which your father used and which experts now say is to blame for the mold was a ‘commonly used’ design in those days. We said . . . your father was ‘an architect with a good reputation’ and that while ‘many of his buildings were fine, others are rotting and hazardous.’

“We never said or implied . . . that your father, or anyone else for that matter, had reason to know at the time that the design was flawed. However, to report on the issue, to tell taxpayers that it could cost them millions of dollars to fix, and not tell them when the problem started and why would be a disservice.”

Discussion: Charles Claude, an old friend of Ken Walijarvi represented Michael Walijarvi at the hearing. WCCO chose not to participate in the hearing. News Director Maria Reitan told the News Council staff that she prefers to handle complaints in private. Claude said he watched the story because the station’s promotional announcements for it, which did not name or picture the architect, convinced him WCCO had a major exposé. Several News Council members said WCCO appeared to have been looking for a villain to humanize and sensationalize the story, and that the choice of a deceased person who could not sue for slander appeared to be convenient.

Vineeta Sawkar, a KSTP-TV reporter and anchor, said she has covered many school mold stories and she saw no need to name a single architect in a story intended to alert the public to a widespread problem.

“Context is what’s missing,” said Vicki Gowler, executive editor of the Pioneer Press. “Discovery that the same architect had designed several affected schools drove the coverage. Regardless of whether the person named was alive or dead, what they (WCCO) owed us was better context.”

“What they could have done,” said Sawkar, “was to have talked to someone from that era who designed buildings that way.” That would have softened the focus on Walijarvi and helped the audience understand the design decisions better, she said.

Council member Patricia Berg, a journalism teacher at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, called the letter’s reference to Walijarvi’s “good reputation” disingenuous and out of context. She said the way WCCO referred to his “good reputation” in the broadcast was actually “a foreshadowing of doom,” and not an attempt to provide balance.

The News Council also voted to communicate to WCCO-TV that its presence at the hearing was needed and that it would have benefited the station and all professional journalists to have the station answer questions about its reporting.

After the hearing The Pioneer Press’s Gowler said, “WCCO’s absence prevented us from knowing exactly what their reporting showed and why they decided to single out one architect.

“Most news organizations start out with good intentions. Sometimes we get excited about what we find and overstate the case. Sometimes we get excited about what we find and really need to dig deeper to find the real story.

“For the Minnesota News Council to assume that WCCO was looking for a villain, because we could not ask the station questions, is not a bright spot for journalists in general.”

Vote:
15-0 to uphold

Complaint: 1. The headline “MnDOT contracts called illegal” did not fairly reflect the facts of the situation or of the published story. 2. The page-one placement of the headline was sensational, inflammatory and misleading, in that it implied a pattern of wrongdoing that the facts did not justify. 3. The news story listed items and quotes that make serious allegations of wrongdoing are not backed up by facts. 4. The news story is unbalanced, and it unfairly sides with MnDOT ’s critics in the Department of Administration. 5. Reporting on the independent audit was incomplete and did not reflect audit’s findings that MnDOT contracts were made within legal and ethical bounds under both state and federal law.

Response: The Star Tribune says its headline and story accurately reflected what officials charged with exercising oversight of MnDOT activities had alleged. The newspaper says the headline and the story draw attention to “a dispute over the behavior of the state’s transportation department, which spends millions of dollars of public money annually [which] is important and is of interest to the public. The Star Tribune did not raise this dispute. It was raised by the public officials. The community should expect its newspaper to cover it.”

The Star Tribune also said that the audit did not conclude that MnDot’s contract awards were clearly legal and ethical. The newspaper says the audit warned that “there were grounds for further inquiry regarding a number of allegations suggesting that MnDOT, in certain instances, had failed to adhere to best contractor bidding and selection practices, or had failed to exercise adequate management oversight after contracts were awarded.”

Discussion: MnDOT Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg criticized the Star Tribune’s reliance on “a few Department of Administration employees with a clearly vested interest” in protecting their power to exercise control over MnDOT contract awards.

Chris Ison, Star Tribune projects editor, said that when MnDOT ‘s Tinklenberg cited the audit’s conclusion that the agency was in the clear, “he left out the opening phrase that said, ‘generally speaking,’” MnDOT’s activities were above board. Ison said the audit went on to cite allegations that needed investigation of serious problems in the awarding of contracts.
Pioneer Press Editor, Vicki Gowler, supported MnDOT’s challenge to the Star Tribune headline: “The Pioneer Press talks a lot about putting both sides in the headline [and the sub-headline]. I would have done it differently [from the StarTribune].” MnDOT’s view did not appear in a headline until the continuation of the story on an inside page.

Many News Council members said they felt that readers were quite able to sort out the various contentions in the story. Tony Carideo, a former Star Tribune staff writer now in public relations, said, “The state’s customers are taxpayers and citizens. The oversight responsibility of the media for an agency spending so much money and dealing with public safety is the overriding factor in my thinking when I look at this story.”

Reed Anfinson, publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News said if the outcome of the story was to get two state departments to clean up their process, it is a public service.

Vote:
Complaint 1: not upheld (9-3)
Complaint 2: not upheld (11-1)
Complaint 3: not upheld (11-1)
Complaint 4: not upheld (10-2)
Complaint 5: Not upheld (8-4)

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)