Determination
1
Minnesota
News Council
In
the Matter of the Complaint of
Earnest Lindstrom against the Union Advocate
Ernest
A. Lindstrom, state representative and House majority leader, complained
that the newspaper was inaccurate and defamatory to him in two stories
it published about alleged influence buying at the State Legislature.
He claimed the paper failed to make a reasonable effort to verify
the accuracy of the two stories it ran in consecutive issues. The
Union Advocate is a weekly paper serving primarily organized labor
in the greater St. Paul area.
Background:
In July 1971 the Minnesota Legislature had been in special session
for two months; a tax bill was the primary piece of uncompleted legislation.
During a dinner break on July 27, Lindstrom and two other members
of the Tax Conference Committee decided to eat at a restaurant in
downtown St. Paul. A liquor lobbyist and six friends, including two
other members of the committee, also ate at the same restaurant. At
that evening's conference session the committee voted for a tax bill
that did not contain tax increases for beer, liquor or taconite.
On July
28 the newspaper editor received tips from three separate sources
about a dinner the previous evening that was hosted and paid for by
the liquor lobbyist and attended by, among others, Lindstrom and his
two committee member friends. None of the sources had been at the
restaurant, but they supplied names of eight others who were firsthand
witnesses. After receiving telephone confirmation of the story from
five of the claimed witnesses and agreeing to withhold the informants'
names, the paper published a story on August 5 describing how pressures
from vested interests shaped the conservative tax bill, stating that
five conference committee members, including Lindstrom and his friends,
had been dined by the liquor lobbyist, and further stating that Lindstrom
had left the July 27 evening committee meeting briefly to confer with
the taconite lobbyist.
After
the August 5 publication, one of Lindstrom's dinner companions wrote
to the paper asserting that the story was false. The letter was used
in an August 12 story that reiterated the statements of the earlier
piece as confirmation that the men had dined together on July 27.
To substantiate
his charge that the stories were false and defamatory, Lindstrom at
the hearing produced evidence clearly establishing that he had not
had a meal with or paid for by the liquor lobbyist and that he had
not met with the taconite lobbyist.
Response
of the news organization: The newspaper editor produced no factual
evidence and maintained the anonymity of his informants, as they had
requested. The editor admitted that he did not check any aspects of
the two stories with the legislators or lobbyists involved for fear
of losing an "exclusive," and said he preferred to trust the word
of his informants.
Determination
of the Council: The newspaper stories were inaccurate. The paper
erred in initially relying and subsequently insisting upon its own
interpretation of the events of July 27, 1971, thus failing to fulfill
a professional journalistic obligation to check its information with
the principals and others known to have been present. The complaint
against the newspaper is upheld.
September
17, 1971
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