News Council denies complaint that Bemidji Pioneer was unfair in running news story about a full-page ad the same day it appeared, but upholds complaint that the story on Red Lake Reservation was unfair to those who ran the ad.
Veda Ponikvar, publisher of the Chisholm Free Press-Tribune Press, did not attend but responded to complainant and to the Council in writing and met with the Council’s executive director in Chisholm on March 2, 1988. Complainant Edward Tekautz attended the hearing.
The grievance arises out of the news coverage afforded by the three newspapers of the 1984 election campaign for state representative of District 35B, between K. J. McDonald (I-R), the incumbent, and Jim Hoese (DFL), the challenger. McDonald won the strenuous campaign. The Hoese DFL House Campaign Committee raises the following issues …
Complainant John Meiners claims the Delano Eagle should apologize for choosing to run an advertisement in which false information was written about him. He claims the news source should have known the facts or at least contacted him about the ad.
Grievant claims the newspaper improperly refused to accept two of her campaign advertisements.
Jim Bartlett, a deputy sheriff of Mower County, ran for the office of county sheriff against the incumbent, and following a heated election campaign, his campaign committee filed a multiple complaint against the paper, implying that it had contributed to Bartlett’s defeat in the general election. The committee complained that the paper:
Regina’s Fine Candies, St. Paul, complained that a taste survey of chocolates was unscientific and unfair to Regina’s and to the U.S. chocolate industry.
Citizens for Community Action (CCA), an anti-life group, complained that the two papers used arbitrary standards when they refused to print as submitted to them a paid advertisement that opposed construction of an abortion clinic in a St. Paul neighborhood. The ad listed the clinic’s officers and sponsors, their home addresses and phone numbers, but the papers insisted that only business addresses be used for the clinic’s officers.
Larry Blahauvietz, a candidate for Pipestone City Council, complained that the paper was unfair and discriminatory when he was refused paid political advertising space in the issue running the day before the elections. A rival candidate’s ad appeared in the paper on that day.
Complaint: Mary Jane Rachner, a candidate in the 1972 elections for St. Paul School Board, complained that the newspaper was unfair and discriminatory when it refused to accept her paid political advertisement. The Union Advocate is a weekly serving primarily organized labor in the greater St. Paul area. Rachner was not a labor-endorsed candidate and did not claim to be in her ad.