Participants in the tax-cut rally complained that the feature was inaccurate, misleading, and biased. Of the twelve rally attendees who originally submitted complaints, seven people opted to submit waivers in order to move forward as private complainants. All private complainants must sign waivers of their right to sue the media outlet for libel; in exchange, they become eligible for a public hearing, should their complaint remain unresolved.

It was the Minnesota News Council’s first opportunity to examine a complaint regarding news that appeared only online.

Media Response: Due to the policies of CBS, their national affiliate, WCCO-TV did not participate in the complaint process. News Director Jeff Kiernan, however, responded directly to the participants via e-mail, conceding that “a mistake was made in the production of this national story and the wrong video was attached.” He apologized for the error and arranged to have the story that accompanied the incorrect footage taken off the Web site.

The complainants remained dissatisfied because the contested footage continued to remain accessible through the site’s video library. WCCO-TV declined to respond and did not attend the hearing.

The Hearing: Council members considered the following questions:

1. Did raw video posted by WCCO-TV in its online video library misrepresent Minnesota Tax Cut Rally attendees when it featured video footage of the complainants with a caption that described a global warming protest, while not noting that the beginning and the end of the video footage featured pictures of their much larger tax rally? 
2. Did WCCO-TV act unfairly when it failed to cease using mislabeled video of both the tax cut and global warming rallies at its Web site after the complainants notified WCCO-TV about their concerns over a previous story at its Web site, a story about the global warming protest that misrepresented the size of that rally by using the video of the larger tax rally?  

Q & A with the Complainants:

As the hearing began, complainant Sue Derhaag shared that WCCO-TV News Director Jeff Kiernan had contacted her just moments earlier. He told her in a phone conversation that the video in question was the work of a shared news gathering service, not WCCO-TV. Kiernan went on to say that he was “unaware the video was still active,” and said its caption would be changed.

As Derhaag finished, MNC Interim Director Sarah Bauer clicked “refresh” on the Web site displaying the video. As the Council watched, the site reloaded to reveal that the original caption, “Global Warming Protest on Capitol Hill,” had been replaced with “Rally Protests Cross Paths Near Minn. Capitol.”

Given this development, the Council discussed whether or not to continue, but decided to proceed with the hearing.

The complainants began by clarifying that it would have been difficult to confuse the tax-cut rally and the global warming protest. They were held at the same site on the same day, but Derhaag said, “There were police, a street, and 600-800 yards separating the two rallies.” The scale of the rallies was also dramatically different; the tax-cut rally attracted several thousand participants while the global warming protest had a few hundred.

The complainants said the online footage featured 15 seconds of the tax-cut rally, 22 seconds of the global warming protest, and finally, 4 seconds of the tax-cut rally. The caption, “Global Warming Protest on Capitol Hill,” they said, made it appear as though they had attended the global warming protest.

Carolyn Wetterlin said, “I wasn’t personally damaged, but it’s like misquoting me. I was used for a cause that I don’t believe in. Whether it was inadvertent or not, it was still a misrepresentation. My effort was stolen.”

Derhaag said that she would have been better served by an immediate posting of the correct caption rather than a late apology.

The Council’s Deliberation:  

“They changed the coverage today,” began Al Zdon of the Minnesota American Legion, “so why couldn’t they have done it earlier?”

Jim Pumarlo, a newspaper consultant, agreed. “If that text was changed two months ago, this complaint would hold no water. But they waited until they were under the gun to change it. If they could change it today, why not two months ago? In one sense, it’s a testament to the power of the News Council.”

Thom Fladung, editor of the Pioneer Press, said, “It’s possible for stuff to linger forever on the Internet. Even when you correct something, I guarantee a version of that story lives on somewhere.” He also speculated that WCCO-TV might not have the ability to easily take down a national story.

Luz Maria Frias, St. Paul Director of External Affairs, asked, “We can’t mandate coverage, but what about a retraction?”

“I don’t think this would rise to the level of needing a retraction,” responded Steve Schild, a journalism professor at St. Mary’s University. “And we must establish if we’re taking WCCO to task for a national story that they may have had no control over.”

Retired Pioneer Press journalist Dave Beal commented, “I think WCCO is responsible for anything they may use locally or nationally.” Beal thought that the new caption posted moments before the hearing should have included some acknowledgement of the original error.

John Simonett, a former Minnesota Supreme Court justice, concluded, “Was it a mistake? Yes, everyone admits that. Was it intentional? We can’t know. So the question is, was the response timely and adequate?”

Vote:

Both complaints were upheld.

1. Did raw video posted by WCCO-TV in its online video library misrepresent Minnesota Tax Cut Rally attendees when it featured video footage of the complainants with a caption that described a global warming protest, while not noting that the beginning and the end of the video footage featured pictures of their much larger tax rally?The Council ruled “YES” by a vote of 14 – 0.

   Concurring: Beal, Berg, Berg, Fladung, Frias, Graham, Hussein, Johnson, Pumarlo, Runyon, Schild, Simonett, Wyatt, Zdon 

2. Did WCCO-TV act unfairly when it failed to cease using mislabeled video of both the tax cut and global warming rallies at its Web site after the complainants notified WCCO-TV about their concerns over a previous story at its Web site, a story about the global warming protest that misrepresented the size of that rally by using the video of the larger tax rally?   The Council ruled “YES” by a vote of 10 – 3 with one abstention.

   Concurring: Beal, J. Berg, Graham, Johnson, Pumarlo, Runyon, Schild, Simonett, Wyatt, Zdon

   Dissenting: P. Berg, Fladung, Frias,

   Abstention: Hussein

Attendance:

Council Chair

• James H. Gilbert, Mediator/Arbitrator, Gilbert Mediation Center

Media Council Members:

• Dave Beal, Columnist, Pioneer Press
• Pat Berg, Associate Professor of Journalism, University of WI-River Falls
• Thom Fladung, Editor/Vice President, Pioneer Press
• Jim Pumarlo, Director of Communications, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce; Newspaper Consultant
• Dr. Steve Schild, Associate Professor of Media Communications, St. Mary’s University
• Wendy Wyatt, Journalism Professor, University of St. Thomas

Public Council Members:

• Jane Berg, Fleishman-Hillard, Inc.
• Luz Maria Frias, Director of External Affairs, City of St. Paul
• Ron Graham, Chairman of the Board [guest]
• Hesham Hussein, President, Muslim-American Society of Minnesota
• Roberta Johnson, retired high school journalism teacher
• Karen Runyon, forensic document examiner
• John Simonett, former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice
• Al Zdon, Communications Director, Minnesota American Legion

Complainants

• Sue Derhaag
• Carolyn Wetterlin
• Forrest Wilkinson

Not present:
[Daniel Dietsche]
[Lisa Edwards]
[Lea Leonard]
[Roderick McKay]

Minnesota News Council Staff

• Sarah Bauer, Interim Director
• Erika Roland, Development Director
• Hanna Dorn, Operations Assistant 

Media Attention:

Press coverage of the Tax Rally Attendees’ complaint against WCCO-TV was seen in:

• City Pages
• KTLK Talk Radio with Jason Lewis

The Post published quotes from two people, stating that the Hatfield survey was “plagiarized,” and did not meet academic research standards. The Hatfields, although interviewed for the story, were not informed of the plagiarism claim, and did not have the opportunity to respond to the charge before the front-page story was published. They asserted that the survey was not plagiarized, but rather adapted from a standard superintendent evaluation used by several school districts.The Hatfields said the paper acted unfairly by failing to investigate the accusations made against them and by failing to ask them to respond.

Responding to the Hatfields’ complaint, Winona Post Editor Fran Edstrom wrote in a letter, “The role of the reporter is to report that there is an argument and explain it to the public, acting as a medium for both sides of the issue, not to attempt to verify that one side is correct and the other is not.” Edstrom maintained that the story was reported fairly and accurately. The Winona Post did not attend the hearing.

The News Council voted 9 to 1 to uphold the Hatfields’ complaint.

“The reporter had an obligation to tell the Hatfields there was an allegation of plagiarism during the interview,” said media member Wendy Wyatt. “If Susan’s quotes had been in the story, it would have read quite differently,” said media member Kerri Miller. “The reader would have known there was a dispute regarding the charges of plagiarism.”

The complaints said that the story about the demolition process was inaccurate and that the story unfairly identified City Council Member Gary Schiff as having “spearheaded” the demolition. The News Council vote on the first complaint was 16-3, and on the second, 16-3.

The house – designated as condemned – was bought nonetheless by Dan Larson, who has a small business buying, rehabbing and selling homes. Plans he submitted for fixing this house were rejected by the City Council as recommended by the city inspection staff. The staff estimated that proper repairs would cost $240,000 and that Larson was proposing to spend $140,000.

The news story was broadcast on August 23, almost five months after the demolition order from the city, and a month or so after the demolition itself.

The story said that the city had its own plans for the property. Schiff said that when the reporter interviewed him she accused him of conspiring with a developer to clear the way for upscale housing. He said she refused to look at documents that he said would explain the demolition process.

Schiff told the News Council that the city had no plans, it merely dealt with a condemned property in a routine way. The committee he serves on considers three to six demolition cases a month, he said: “We get only the worst of the worst of the worst.” He said that the police had received 52 calls to the property in the year past, and that the city staff rated Larson’s work substandard, pointing to Larson’s having covered windows with aluminum siding, for example, in previous projects.

In the news story Schiff told the reporter he had photos of Larson’s other work. At the hearing he said he offered to show them to her, but said she declined to look at them. He said she seemed in a hurry to leave. In a letter to the city communications director, a copy of which was filed with the News Council, the reporter said she had asked to see the photos but was denied access to them.

News Council members with TV reporting experience doubted that the city would deny them, since the photos apparently supported the decision to demolish, and they questioned the reporter’s refusal to take time to see the photos when Schiff mentioned them, since TV reporters always look for pictures, they said, to strengthen their stories.

News Council members noted that news coverage of government has suffered with the decline of beat reporting. Generalists, they said, are just not equipped to deal with the complexities of government processes.

News Council member Karen Boros, a former TV news reporter and now a journalism teacher at the University of St. Thomas, said, “I would be terrified if I were a reporter [given this kind of story to cover] and I didn�t know how things worked at city hall.”

Kerri Miller, a former TV reporter and now the host of a Minnesota Public Radio talk show, said, “There were omissions in this story. The reporter had ample opportunity to get more information. The story is misleading, and because it is misleading it is inaccurate.

“Someone calls the station with a tip [that the city is robbing a homeowner of his dream house]” she went on, “and you sit around the newsroom saying, ‘That’s going to be a good story.’ But when you go out to report it you don’t close your eyes. You say, ‘Let’s see those pictures, and where’s the list of things that the city said needed to be done to the house?”

News Council member Lorin Robinson, a former journalism teacher now in public relations at 3M, questioned the framing of the story, saying that it smacked of populism: the city is hurting the little guy, and the TV station is out to protect the little guy. Another member pointed to a line in the narration that said Larson “was trying to build a community, thwarted by its own leaders.”

Neil Neddermeyer, a retired deputy sheriff, said, “The story should have been about fact; instead, the reporter made it about passion.”

Since the story was broadcast, KSTP has done another story, revealing that the city had failed to mail Larson the required notice that demolition was scheduled. News Council member Reed Anfinson, publisher/editor of the Swift County Monitor-News, in Benson, Minn., said, “After sitting through 20 years of city council meetings and condemnation proceedings, [I can tell you] there’s no way Larson could not have understood his building was going to be torn down.”

Larson is suing the city for what he says is its failure to notify him and his mortgage lender of the demolition.

The news story focused on an area of Maplewood known as Gladstone, where existing businesses and housing have been described as tired and deteriorating. Proponents of change have differed on how many housing units should be built, and that has slowed progress.

The outcome reflected the difficulty news council members had in sorting through the views of the complainants and of their critics on facts about the redevelopment project. Critics say the city council has done nothing since receiving a proposal from a task force last fall. The complainants pointed to several official council and city staff actions to show that there has been progress.

News Council members generally agreed that both the complainants and the station deserved some criticism. Members learned that the KSTP story was produced live on the night of a special city council meeting to consider a felony allegation against the city manager. When the charge proved unfounded, the reporter decided to do a story on bitterness over the redevelopment project, even though it was not discussed that night, and she interviewed a critic of the council but no council members.

News Council members also learned that the main complainant, Council Member Erik Hjelle, called KSTP the day after the story appeared to object to its conclusions. He acknowledged that the station offered to do a follow-up story and asked him to grant an interview, but he declined, saying he wanted a story that was more comprehensive than an interview with him would be.

Several News Council members asked Hjelle how he could know how the station would use an interview with him in a story, and they observed that he had been mistaken to refuse the offer.

But most of the News Council’s concern focused on the news story, which members said combined unrelated matters to craft a tale about conflict without making any of the threads clear. News Council member Karen Boros, a former WCCO-TV and CBS News reporter now teaching journalism at the University of St. Thomas, said, “If one of my students had done this story we’d be having a serious talk right now.”

News Council members expressed appreciation to KSTP for its co-operation in the proceeding. As has been KSTP’s practice, no station representative attended, but the news department did prepare a detailed response to the complaint and sent it to the News Council, something it had not done in the 36-year history of the News Council.

David Downing, a graphic designer and writer, said he and his wife told the WCCO reporter before they were videotaped that they were attending the fair only one day last summer because that was all the time they had and not because they could not afford to go more than once. He said the reporter ignored his remarks and then on camera asked leading questions about finances and edited the answers to support the premise that money-strapped fairgoers had no option besides a Bargain Day.

The News Council also voted, 10-2, to state its view that the television station’s response to the family’s complaint was inadequate and unprofessional. The only responses Downing received, he said, were one e-mail from the reporter saying, “I’m sorry you feel I misrepresented you and your family,” and another from the news director saying, “I appreciate you writing WCCO-TV. I have thoroughly reviewed your concern. I am confident that our story was accurate and did not misrepresent anything you or your wife said to us.”

Downing told the News Council that he was disappointed that the news director did not invite him to meet at the station to acknowledge his concerns and discuss the editing so that, if the discussion established that the story did misrepresent the family, the station would make itself accountable and take steps to avoid such a mistake in the future.

“It makes a person wonder how many other stories are inaccurate,” Downing said.

Council member Benno Groeneveld, a freelance journalist, said the WCCO story was not the result of reporting, but of the work of someone who goes into an assignment with a story already in mind and then finds victims to flesh it out.

Council member Nancy Conner, former reader advocate of the Pioneer Press, said: “This is the kind of thing that chips away at the credibility of the news media and the trust people have in them.”

WCCO-TV did not participate in the hearing. Participation is voluntary, and the News Council does not permit the fact that a news outlet chooses not to attend to affect the determination on the merits of the complaint and response.

Three news stories broadcast in February generated moral outrage among thousands of viewers who learned from the reports that only a tiny percentage of the more than $66,000 raised to help the girl had been disbursed by the trust. The Lions Club organized a fundraiser 13 years ago after Miranda Paffel was beaten, and then handed the proceeds over to a trust.

News Council members agreed that the stories created the false impression that the Lions Club controls the trust fund. It does not. Lions member Rudy Kessler said that the bad publicity has harmed the ability of his and other Lions clubs to raise funds for charitable causes.

The chairman of the trust, William Taubman, and the man who wrote the trust, Eugene Harrington, were members of the Lions Club. Harrington later became a judge and oversaw the trust — a conflict of interest revealed by the FOX 9 story, which led him to transfer oversight to another judge.

The News Council voted 14 to 5 that the stories were inflammatory in their treatment of the Paffel Trust and the Lions Club, portraying them as stingy and corrupt and failing to explore the trust’s reasons for still holding onto more than $57,000 intended to aid Ms. Paffel’s recovery.

Taubman said the reporter knew that the trust had reservations about disbursing a lot of the funds because of documented dysfunction in Ms. Paffel’s family and should have pursued that angle to explain why funds have been withheld. He said he wanted to “travel the high road” by not making public comments about the family in his on-camera interview. But after the FOX 9 stories appeared, he said he was “taking the gloves off” to reveal what public records show about past abuse of Ms. Paffel in her home.

At a public hearing at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, FOX 9 News Director Ted Canova told the News Council that Taubman had every opportunity to tell the reporter why the trustees had decided to withhold funds, and that the station reported exactly what he and another trustee said: that the trustees thought the family should use funds for education and job training for the young woman, now 22.

Hundreds of donors who saw the news reports angrily wrote e-mails that they wanted their money given directly to Ms. Paffel and not controlled by the trust.

Canova said the station pursued the story because the trust provided that if the funds were not disbursed to Ms. Paffel they would go to local charitable organizations, including the Lions. That was worth investigation, he said, because the Lions raised so much of the money and a Lions member wrote and oversaw the trust. Taubman said in the story that the trust would never allow funds to go to the Lions, but would divert them to other charitable causes.

News Council members asked about the station’s motivation in doing the stories, which played a prominent part in a ratings-measurement period. Canova responded:

“It sounds like sensationalism, February sweeps, always a great criticism. But this story came out of the raging curiosity of a reporter who covered the original story 13 years ago.”

Taubman disputed that view. He said the reporter had done a story on Ms. Paffel in 1996 and learned then of the unsavory details that had raised the trust fund’s concerns.

The News Council, by an 18-1 vote, upheld a complaint that the FOX 9 report inaccurately said that two Lions, not one, were trustees of the fund, thus shoring up the view that the Lions Club was controlling the trust. Canova said the station relied upon an official court document, the petition asking for approval of formation of the trust. A Council member pointed out that a more thorough search would have discovered the actual trust document, listing the members. Only one, Taubman, was a Lions Club member.

Two features of the reports drew special attention from Council members. One was footage of the Lions Club fundraiser 13 years ago and footage of a contemporary Lions Club meeting, which in the absence of pictures of a Paffel trust meeting, they said, pointed to the Lions as controlling the funds.

Another was a very long pause in Taubman’s interview, where he was asked why the trust was not disbursing the funds, and he thought about his answer for many seconds before expressing the trust’s reservations about the family. That question was shown again in a follow-up report, with a long pause again, but the story cut away to another scene before his answer. Council members thought that technique unfairly made Taubman look bad.

News Council Board Chairman John Finnegan commended Canova and FOX 9 for taking part in the hearing and said they were setting a good example for other TV stations in making themselves accountable.

Complaint: The former mayor of Roseville complained that the story was unfair because it reported ethics charges against him without allowing him or his attorneys to tell his side of the story. He said that the magazine did seek out sources who opposed him, but never called him. He also complained that the magazine’s corrections did not go far enough.

Response: The magazine’s editor, Steve Kaplan, said that Law & Politics is not a standard journalistic enterprise, but rather a niche publication whose audience understands its irreverence and humor. He said that the story was designed as a roundup, nit as a primary reporting assignment, and that it depended upon clippings of newspapers many in the magazine’s audience would remember.

Q & A: Public member Jon Austin, a public relations counselor, asked Kaplan if he would acknowledge that the story, in including comments from sources opposed to the complainant, required a balancing comment from the former mayor.

Editor Kaplan agreed; he said, “The mayor should have been contacted. I assumed he had been, he wasn’t, and that’s a shame. If we were inaccurate, that’s a very serious matter. We did make two corrections. While we do not want to be unfair, I do not believe we were inaccurate in describing the ways the mayor acted [when he was in office}."

Kaplan said that since this complaint arose he had created a new editorial position: fact checker.

Kysylyczyn, the former mayor, was asked about the ethics charges he had faced for allegedly having lobbied the legislature for tax breaks for developers who were suing Roseville. He denied he had done that and reported that the city’s ethics commission had voted down the charges. He filed a claim with the city for reimbursement of $8,000 in expenses for defending himself.

Kaplan said that the seeming political circus in Roseville had prompted him to commission the article. "We mix gravity and levity," he said.

Media members Vicki Gowler, executive editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and Ben Taylor, a Star Tribune vice president, suggested that Law & Politics be transparent in presenting stories, by announcing the magazine’s standard and by labeling articles clearly for what they are.

Kaplan said, "We separate types of stories by use of pictures, graphics, the cover. We signal to our audience that we’re having fun."

Gowler asked, "Is there enough shared understanding among the readers? I thought [the story’s] underpinning was solid, [but] I will read this publication differently in the future. What did you owe the readers? It’s confusing, but not necessarily wrong if readers know what you’re doing.”

Kaplan said the magazine distributes 17,000 copies free to lawyers and business people and sells 600 on newsstands.

He said he had offered to publish a letter from Kysylyczyn on the magazine’s web site and to direct readers to it from the corrections column in the print edition. Kysylyczyn said he declined the offer because he sensed that the readers of the print and online versions of the magazine were different people. 

He said he was hurt that members of the public might see the article on a coffee table in a lawyer’s office and read a one-sided story.

Anfinson said he thought such a story, appearing in an influential publication and aimed at an influential audience, could ruin a young man’s political career.

Deliberation: Media member Reed Anfinson, editor/publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, MN, said, “Even if you publish that kind of story [a light feature], does it give you the right to paint someone in a false light? I get riled when someone writes that small-town politics is funny. I’m from Benson, where we have under 3,500 people, and I can tell you, politics there aren’t funny.”

Media member Pat Berg, a journalism teacher at the University of Wisconsin/River Falls, had a different view: “I don’t want to come out against outrageous publication,” she said. “It’s the lifeblood of our democracy. If you’re the mayor, you expect to get nicked once in a while, if you swim with the sharks.” 

Vote: Council members voted 7-3 that the magazine should have included comments from the complainant.

Members voted 6-4 that the magazine’s corrections were inadequate.

The suspect, who eventually pleaded guilty, was William Bell, then 20, who came from Chicago, was living in St. Paul and spending time with a girlfriend in Buffalo. He is black. The rape victim first identified her assailant as white.

The complaint to the News Council came on Bell’s behalf from the Center for Victims of Professional Abuse, represented by Marjory Aldrich, of Buffalo. She said the newspaper had failed to report Bell’s views on his case, even though he had written and telephoned the paper from jail while awaiting trial. He wanted to rebut news articles and to criticize the investigation and the public defender assigned to his case.

The Journal-Press’s publisher, James McDonnell, Jr., said the paper’s policy was to report the progress of a criminal case through the courts, to cite only reliable sources — the police and prosecutor — and, because its resources were limited, not to investigate cases.

The Journal-Press reporter/editor said he did not read the file on the case and did not attend the pre-trial hearing. After the hearing, the editor called the prosecutor to find out what had happened, but not the defense attorney. Council member Cathy Kennedy, a public relations counselor, criticized the paper’s reliance on the prosecutor to say what the defense attorney had said and done.

McDonnell said the paper did not publish Bell’s letter because it did not have his attorney’s approval, and that the paper did not call the attorney because historically defense attorneys do not want their clients to talk to the press. He said the paper did not want to publish something from the defendant that might hurt his cause. Besides, he said, an incarcerated person has no legal or ethical right to demand that his views be published.

Aldrich disputed that view. She held up a recent clipping from the Journal-Press that reported on charges against one of Buffalo’s most recognizable citizens, a businessman and civic leader charged with child pornography. The news story said the Journal-Press had tried to reach the man for his comments on the charges, but could not find him.

News Council member Rachel Quenemoen, an education specialist from Clarkfield, in western Minnesota, said she was horrified at the disparity in treatment the Journal-Press gave that man and the rape suspect. The publisher said the paper had used good news judgment: the local man was a major figure; the rape suspect was a stranger in town.

Quenemoen also questioned the paper’s attitude toward using sources it considered “reliable.” She said the New York Times and the Washington Post both have recently acknowledged in print that they failed the public in serving as conduits for “reliable sources” that misled them on Iraq’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction and that smoothed the way for a declaration of war.

Council member Brandt Williams, a Minnesota Public Radio reporter who once was editor of a black weekly newspaper, said he understood that the Journal-Press, like most Minnesota weeklies, has limited resources. He suggested that if such papers cannot cover crime properly, they not cover crime at all. Reed Anfinson, publisher/editor of the Swift County Monitor-News, in Benson, Minn., objected, saying small-town papers have a responsibility to report on crime in their communities. Williams agreed, but said that in major cases a newspaper should tailor its resources for the challenge.

Media member Gwenyth Jones Spitz, a retired Minneapolis Star reporter, said she had published country newspapers and worked for small weeklies, and understood the lament about meager resources. “But,” she said, “this was a big story. This was worth your time and effort. And you can’t say you’re not going to call the defense attorney just because other attorneys have refused to talk to you.”

Publisher McDonnell emphasized that his newspaper is neither a watchdog nor an ombudsman, and it is up to the public to hold elected officials accountable. Spitz objected:

“How are voters ever going to know what’s going on if you don’t tell them?”

Council member Nancy Conner, former reader advocate of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, said, “Open any edition of the metro dailies and you’ll find crime stories without statements from the defense. But in this case the paper showed a real lack of courage. After seeing the change in the description of the race of the suspect, and after seeing his letter, [they could have said] “maybe we’re going to risk something by inquiring, instead of taking the safe side [by following the long-held policies the publisher spoke of earlier].”

Council member Jon Austin, a public relations counselor, asked McDonnell why the paper felt responsible for looking out for the defendant’s best interests in not publishing his letter. McDonnell said, “The first thing is to do no harm. [What] if we run something that causes the defendant to shoot himself in the foot?” He questioned the reliability of the suspect’s statements and could not guarantee that they were not libelous. Publishing official reports protects a paper from libel.

While several News Council members noted that the stories tracing the case from arrest through sentencing were accurate, others questioned a column that congratulated local investigators, a commentary by the police chief and a thank-you to officials from the rape victim. The suspect’s plea of not guilty was never reported.

“What really concerns me,” said Karen Runyon, a forensics specialist and a public council member, “is the issue of access [to the defense]. Just because you don’t have access you say ‘They know where we are, so they can call us.’ That makes me really angry. That’s what’s so wrong with so much of the media; stories are one-sided.”

Dave Hage, Star Tribune editorial writer and former reporter for small-town papers, said, ”I understand the institutional forces and momentum — it’s easier to talk to prosecutors. These are exactly the forces that our legal system has been established to protect people from and that journalists should be aware of. Even a small paper has that obligation.”

Complaint: Gold’n Plump, represented by Dan Jacobson, a public relations manager, said that the report was: 1) inaccurate, 2) unbalanced and 3) sensationalized. The company said the news report gave a false impression that it was dangerous to eat chicken sold by such companies as Gold’n Plump. 

1) The company said that the WCCO report failed to note that proper cooking destroys bacteria and that antibiotics used in the raising of chickens vanish from their system days before they come to market. 

2) The company said the story lacked balance because it was based purely on a press release from the Institute for Trade and Agriculture Policy (IATP), which the company described as an advocate of organic foods and a critic of corporate farming and the brand-name food industry. Jacobson said that the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper had, by contrast, balanced the IATP data with information from a half-dozen varied sources.

3) The company said that WCCO-TV’s story deliberately twisted facts in the IATP press release to scare the audience. 

Response: WCCO-TV did not attend the hearing, but the station did submit as a response a letter it had written to Gold’n Plump. The letter said the story informed the public about the risk of contracting infections from bacteria in poultry. The station also said it confirmed data it cited from the IATP release with scientists from the University of Minnesota. 

(Gold’n Plump noted that the station did not identify those scientists by name.)

Deliberation: Public member Larry Kuusisto, a health care consultant, said that WCCO-TV unfairly set viewers up to fear antibiotics in chickens and then ended the story with comments attributed to Gold’n Plump and another company, Jennie-O, that made them seem defiant.

Public member Chris Gade, a communications manager at the Mayo Clinic, said it bothered him that the station relied on a study that was not reviewed by scientific peers and that the story featured a single source, the IATP researcher.

Some members observed that the story was produced on the same day the IATP news release arrived at the station, yet was presented as the result of an I-Team investigation. The story relied on the news release, one interviewed source and stock footage of chickens and, some members said, did not rise to the level of an investigative report. That kind of packaging of a story, they said, appeared to be intended to give weight to the report that it did not merit. 

News Council members needing technical guidance were able to rely on information provided by three scientists invited to the hearing as expert witnesses. They were not allowed to express any opinion on the quality of the journalism. They were: Dr. William Hueston and Dr. David Halvorson of the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine and Assistant Professor Jacqueline Jacob of the University’s College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences.

Vote: Members upheld the complaints unanimously.

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