Soccer Dad

The Sun's contrition. not.

The Baltimore Sun has evaluated the complaints of bias lodged against it by the Baltimore Sun. It has found them to be exaggerated. Paul Moore the Sun's ombudsman puts it thusly:

In the weeks after the Dec. 19 meeting, Governor Ehrlich alluded to this list when he publicly accused The Sun of "serial inaccuracies" in stories. On the radio and in interviews, he also claimed that some stories had been made up.

A close analysis does not support such conclusions.

While there is no doubt that some mistakes have been made in The Sun's coverage of the Ehrlich administration, there is no evidence of the grievous, purposeful mistakes publicly referred to by the governor. As I see it, those claims are grossly exaggerated.

The Governor is unimpressed.
One of the reasons Ehrlich should be unhappy with the Sun is the recent controversy over Joseph Steffen's role in spreading false rumors about Mayor O'Malley's. Steffen, an aide to the Governor, resigned when these allegations came to light.
In addition to coverage that tried to link Steffen's efforts to the Governor, the Sun published an inflammatory editorial "Dirty Tricks Redux" placing the blame for the rumors squarely on the Governor's shoulders. (There is no longer a link to the editorial. It's one of the few items from the controversy that the Sun has not continued to make available.)
However, the situation may not be as clear since two reports by David Collins at WBAL-TV.
On April 20, 2005 Collins reported that, rather than being the source of the rumors about the Mayor, or being involved in an effort to circulate the rumors, Steffen sounded a cautionary note to someone wishing to do just that and told that person to attack Mayor O'Malley on the issues.:

But the complete private e-mails obtained by the I-Team revealed another side of Steffen.

E-Mail Exchange
MD4Bush: "If some of my friends and I were interested in keeping the story floating, do you have suggestions for us on how best to do it?"
Steffen: "I cannot and will not offer suggestions that may be considered unethical concerning what you should do, campaign wise. This is especially true concerning MOM's (Mayor O'Malley's) personal life. Work to hit the mayor constantly in letters to the editor (about city issues, not personal issues), call in radio shows etc."

The next night Collins reported something else. The O'Malley campaign apparently had advance knowledge of the Washington Post story that implicated Steffen:

On Feb. 8 -- five hours before The Washington Post broke the story on its Web site exposing Steffen -- another e-mail went out. Collins said a member of the Maryland Democratic Party with close ties to the O'Malley administration wrote that message, providing instructions on how to react to the story.

The e-mail touts:

"This will be the biggest story of the year, in The Post, either tomorrow or Thursday, that credits Gov. Ehrlich's staff for creating and spreading the nasty and untrue rumor about our mayor and his family."

Collins said the e-mailer urged showing "your disgust by calling in WBAL Radio, it also provides talking points."

This information shows that a lot of the early reporting about the Steffen controversy may have been wrong.
Perhaps instead of splitting hairs in order to defend its inaccuracies the Sun could take a number of steps right here. Though the Sun picked up the first Collins story, it has not yet reported on the second.
1) Retract "Dirty Trick Redux" and apologize for the unfair treatment of the governor. Not only does it now seem that Ehrlich had nothing to do with circulating he rumor, but Steffen himself may not have done anything wrong and took the high road despite someone's effort to bait him. Why did he resign then? He saw that he'd be a liability to the Governor and like any good soldier, fell on his own sword rather than damage his boss.
2) Investigate the link between the Washington Post and the O'Malley campaign. (The Hedgehog Report's suspicion.)
3) Find out who MD4BUSH is. (I suspect that it's not that difficult if they'd want to invest the resources in it.
4) Explain why it didn't uncover the e-mails that Collins did. Did it just find what it was looking for and then stop looking? Did it know that exculpatory evidence existed but chose not to pursue it. Seems to me that they have some explaining to do.
5) Get some humility. This is what banned reporter David Nitkin wrote in a Q & A:

Nitkin: Richard, every one of the stories you mention has been written about, and given much prominence, in The Sun. We broke several of the stories you reference. I see no evidence of a timid press. Indeed, I don't think the governor would have banned state government from speaking with me and columnist Michael Olesker if he thought we were timid.

Actually, he flatters himself too much. The Washingtonn Post has been just on tough on Ehrlich as the Sun has been, yet Ehrlich didn't ban any Post reporters. Why not? If Ehrlich was striking back at critical media he would have banned some Post reporters too, but he didn't. It's something else.
Other important and relevant articles from the Hedgehog Report are here and here.
( A side note: Paul Moore, like Michael Getler at the Washington Post seems less interested in getting at the truth than in explaining to us simpletons how real journalists make those all-important decisions and how they are above petty biases. Daniel Okrent at the NY Times is not perfect but he's a lot more candid than either of these two.)

Posted by SoccerDad at April 22, 2005 6:19 PM