Determination
136
Minnesota
News Council
In the Matter of the Complaint of Rep. Arlon Lindner v. Star Tribune
The Minnesota News Council voted to deny complaints by Rep. Arlon Lindner (R-Corcoran) that the Star Tribune and the Associated Press had unfairly covered the controversy about his bill to remove sexual orientation as a protected class under the state’s human rights act.
Lindner was roundly attacked by political opponents and rejected by some in his own party for remarks he made questioning the history of Nazi persecution of homosexuals.
Lindner turned down an offer from the Star Tribune last fall to write an opinion piece explaining his views
“I didn’t want to write it myself,” he told the News Council. “My name was already mud out there, and it still is. I didn’t think anybody would pay attention.”
A six-term legislator, Lindner recently failed to get his party’s endorsement for re-election.
The Star Tribune published a news story reported by the Associated Press in March 2003 on DFL critics accusing Lindner of denying the Holocaust. Lindner complained that the news organizations should have asked him to state his position and not just allowed his critics to characterize it.
The newspaper and the wire service both published corrections saying that Lindner had not denied the Holocaust, but the corrections generated another complaint: that they stated inaccurately that Lindner had questioned whether the Nazis had persecuted homosexuals. Lindner told the News Council he had questioned “the extent to which” the Nazis had persecuted homosexuals.
News Council members debated whether news organization should show proposed corrections to subjects of stories who feel wronged by inaccurate reporting. Some media members resisted the idea. But Mike Parta, former publisher/editor of the New York Mills Herald, said:
“Why not take the extra step to see that the correction is enough to solve the problem?”
Lindner also complained that the Star Tribune gratuitously and wrongly inserted the term “anti-Semitic” into an AP story about legislators who wanted Lindner censured for what they called racism and homophobia. The Star Tribune corrected that error. Chris Ison, leader of the newspaper’s investigative team, explained that the staff member who wrote the story mistakenly included the term “anti-Semitic” because she had heard a woman legislator say that, as a Jew and a Lesbian, she was offended by Lindner’s remarks in the House debate.
That term did not appear in the complaint against Lindner that the legislature had drafted. The News Council was satisfied with the Star Tribune’s explanation of how the mistake was made.
But one Council member, former Star Tribune reporter Gwenyth Jones Spitz, was not satisfied with the editor’s stance on why the newspaper had not asked Lindner to state his view of the Holocaust, in response to the DFL accusation that he had denied its existence.
“Would you print anything someone said on the House floor?” she asked Ison. “If someone said a legislator beat his wife?”
Ison said the newspaper would not print such an accusation. Spitz responded:
“But you did print that he [Lindner] denied the Holocaust. What’s the difference? They’re both outrageous charges.”
Media members of the council noted that covering legislative debates is different from covering a single event; they are ongoing. So, they said, balance and context emerge from continuing coverage. But the AP bureau chief, Dave Pyle, said that his agency insists each story must be balanced.
News Council public member Karen Runyon, a forensics specialist, asked the news people why they did not publish passages from a House transcript that would have made Lindner’s position on the Holocaust clear.
“It’s interesting,” she said, ”that something was deleted [from the transcript by Lindner’s DFL critics]. Why wasn’t that a news story?”
The Star Tribune’s Ison and some media members of the council said it was impractical to run long sections of transcripts. Runyon said, “I resent having a reporter interpret what someone said that I didn’t get to hear. Let the public [read the words actually said] and decide for themselves.”
Council member Vicki Gowler, executive editor of the Pioneer Press, said, “We run portions of transcripts that become controversial, and we refer people [who want longer versions] to our on-line service. But our role is to boil it down and give people the news.”
Lindner’s three complaints were denied by votes of about two to one.
Although he declined to write an opinion piece for the Star Tribune months ago, because he was afraid he would appear to be whining, he said he would like to write one now:
“I can’t believe anyone can say anything about another person and have it printed without that person having a chance to reply. It’s hurt me politically.”
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