The Minnesota News Council voted Thursday to deny three complaints against the Duluth Budgeteer News, affirming the paper’s decision to run a Nov. 4, 2007 opinion column critical of Duluth School Board candidate Gary Glass.
The Minnesota News Council voted 15-0 to uphold a complaint that a Woodbury Bulletin editorial was factually inaccurate in its portrayal of an Afton City Councilman’s conduct at a city council meeting. The News Council denied a second complaint, that the paper had a responsibility to check the accuracy of a similar letter to the editor. The vote was 9-4, with two abstentions.
In May 2007, local artist Mari Newman filed a complaint about an article in the Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Minnesota. A review of a play called “The Madwoman of Chaillot” had opened by referencing the disabled artist as a local “crazy woman.”
In April 2007, twelve participants in a tax-cut rally held at the State Capitol in St. Paul filed complaints against WCCO-TV. Footage of their rally had been edited into a feature on WCCO’s Web site entitled “Raw Video: Global Warming Protest on Capitol Hill.” Though the caption that accompanied the video read, “Hundreds of activists gathered on Capitol Hill Saturday to urge Congress to enact an 80 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050,” about half of the footage was of the much larger local tax-cut rally.
A complaint by two Winona State University professors against the Winona Post and Shopper was upheld. The Hatfields complained after a Sept. 6, 2006 story challenged the validity and credibility of a survey prepared by Susan Hatfield to evaluate the performance of Winona School Superintendent Paul Durand.
A complaint against the Star Tribune by the former mayor of Roseville, John Kysylyczyn, was denied today by the Minnesota News Council. The vote was 11-to-0 with one abstention. Kysylyczyn, mayor of Roseville from 2000 to 2003, said that the Star Tribune unfairly editorialized in a July 23, 2006 news story when it used the word “antics” to characterize his administration.
Two complaints by the Minneapolis City Council about a KSTP-TV news story that said the city wrongfully demolished a house in the East Phillips neighborhood were upheld by lopsided votes at a Minnesota News Council public hearing.
A complaint from three Maplewood city council members that a KSTP-TV news story in July inaccurately reported that the council had stalled progress on an area redevelopment plan was narrowly upheld today by the Minnesota News Council. The vote was 6 to 4.
The Minnesota News Council voted 11-1 to uphold a complaint against WCCO-TV by a St. Paul family who said the station misrepresented them as unable to afford to attend the Minnesota State Fair except on a Bargain Day.
Complaints against FOX 9 News by the Lions Club of Shell Lake (WI) and by a trust fund set up to help a savagely beaten girl were upheld.