Determination
131
Minnesota
News Council
In the Matter of the Complaint of James Keating,
City Treasurer v. St. Paul Pioneer Press
Background
James Keating was city treasurer in Grant, MN when $120,000 worth
of assessment checks went missing. The Pioneer Press ran a story on
November 15, 2001, when the Grant City Council instituted a deadline
for finding the checks. The story stated that Keating would pick up
the checks or have them delivered. It also quoted a City Council member
saying that Keating was instructed to turn over deposit slips to the
clerk, but he didn’t. Keating thought that the article should
have explained that the acting city clerk, who was supposed to give
him the checks, was an untrained temporary employee who never delivered
them. The reporter did not contact Keating for that story. Another
story ran on November 17th. For this story the reporter tried to contact
Keating at his home, leaving a message with her pager number on his
home machine. She said she thought he was out of the office looking
for the checks, and so did not try to contact him there. Keating didn’t
get back to the reporter, thinking it was too late.
Complaint
1. That the November 15th story was unfair because
it did not include his point of view – that the temporary clerk
never conveyed the checks to him, and that he did not want the checks
cashed until the assessments were certified, months later. He said
the reporter had had no trouble reaching him at work when he ran for
City Council, but on this missing check story tried him at home during
the day, instead of calling his office.
2. That the headline (without the subhead) on the
November 17 story ("Residents to pay assessments again: City
lost checks, will pay stop payment fees") could have easily misled
readers into believing that Grant taxpayers were being billed twice
for the road-paving assessment.
3. That the March, 2002, follow-up story, on partial
rebates of assessments, did not forthrightly acknowledge the alleged
shortcomings in the first two stories.
Response
The Pioneer Press said that the reporter thought under the circumstances
leaving a message at his home was the best way to contact Keating.
The inaccuracies cited in the complaint, it said, were accurate reports
of what other Grant officials said.
The paper claimed that with the subhead in the November 17th story
was accurate and that the follow-up story was the best way to bring
readers clear information about the situation, since so much time
had passed. The paper said once it was aware of Keating’s concerns,
it made a good faith effort to address his concerns.
Discussion
Many News Council members said Keating should have sought an immediate
correction from the paper. He said he did not because he felt the
paper was avoiding him, as he said it had done before, and he preferred
to file a complaint with the News Council.
The Pioneer Press reporter, Amy Becker, said she had
no reason to avoid him. She said she wanted his views in the story,
but she acknowledged that she could and should have called him at
the financial services office in Edina where he works. Instead, she
left a voice message at his home the afternoon before the story appeared.
He said he did not get it until after the 6 p.m. deadline her message
mentioned. Neither Keating nor Becker placed a call to the other that
night. The paper said it actually had until midnight to include his
version.
Keating said the paper had had no trouble finding
him in Edina when it wanted to question him during his unsuccessful
run for city council last year.
One media member said that if Keating had demanded a correction immediately,
the story that appeared last month would have appeared in November,
and the dispute would have been resolved.
Another media member, Reed Anfinson, publisher of
the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, Minn., suggested that this
dispute reveals a basic flaw in the attempt of major metropolitan
daily newspapers to cover complicated governmental issues in short
stories.
Becker, the Pioneer Press reporter, said she covers
14 communities and the police and court beats for all of Washington
County. She did not attend the Grant City Council meeting at which
the missing-checks matter arose. She developed a story later, by phone.
Council member Jay Furst, managing editor of the Rochester
Post-Bulletin, questioned the need to publish the story quickly, instead
of waiting to include Keating’s comments.
Public member Neil Neddermeyer, a retired Hennepin
County sheriff’s detective, said he agreed the reporter "should
have gone the extra mile (to get Keating’s comments), but Keating
also should have gone the extra mile (and called her even though the
6 p.m. deadline she told him about had passed). If I came home at
6 o’clock and got a message like that I’d be on the phone
right away."
Pia Lopez, editorial page editor of the Duluth News-Tribune,
a media member, asked Keating: "How do you make a paper improve
itself? Contact the paper (about errors) and make the story clear.
It’s not clear to me that Mr. Keating was interested in that."
Public member Karen Runyon, a forensics expert, said
she thought a citizen should not be held to a higher standard than
a newspaper is held to. She said the original story made the behavior
of the city treasurer sound suspicious, and he deserved a chance to
tell his side of the story.
The Vote
Complaint 1: upheld (11-5)
Complaint 2: not upheld (10-6)
Complaint 3: not upheld (15-1)
April 18, 2002
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