the town dandy / By Hank Sims

Nattering nabobs

(March 15, 2007)  Oh, puhleeze.

That’s about the only conceivable response to the Eureka Reporter‘s hyperventilating editorial last Saturday, in which reporter John Driscoll and his employer, the Times-Standard, are made to stand in the dock while charges of unethical conduct are read out against them.

To recap, briefly: Driscoll had been covering the Pacific Lumber bankruptcy case, which is currently being staged at a federal courthouse in Corpus Christi, Texas. Members of the public can listen to the proceedings by telephone, through a paid service that costs around $25 per hour. A group of citizens, including activist Mark Lovelace, a Palco critic, had signed up for the service and had been listening along. When the case reached a critical turn, they invited Driscoll to join them. He did, and he covered the proceedings for his paper.

The Reporter says that the fact that the call was paid for by someone else - anyone else - “calls into question [Driscoll’s] entire history of reporting on Palco-related issues.” This fact, the Reporteralleges, was a galling breach of professional ethical standards. Well, the Reporter is wrong, and I’ll get to that. But first I’d like to take the paper’s argument against Driscoll to its logical conclusion.

There’s about a million clichéd phrases to describe the mess that the Reporter has stepped into, here. You can take your pick between glass houses, pots and kettles, geese and ganders, beams in eyes, protesting too much. The fact is, simply, that the paycheck of everyone under the Reporter‘s roof comes from the account of a man who has a standing lawsuit against county government; who has vowed to see certain county employees fired; who has contributed generously to innumerable local, state and national political campaigns; whose wife served as a member of City Council, and ran for mayor; whose proposed Marina Center project for the Eureka waterfront is the most controversial development to come along since Wal-Mart was booted out of town in 1999. Etcetera.

If there’s one thing that the recently leaked Eureka Reporter circulation audit made clear, it’s that the paper is nothing close to a healthy, self-sustaining business. Its editorial-to-advertising content ratio, a key metric in the health of any newspaper, stands at 70:30, which in the real world is absolute death. Even leaving aside the fancy paper and the free delivery, owner Rob Arkley is pouring money into the paper to keep it afloat. Lots of money. So what was that you were saying about avoiding, at all costs, any “conflicts of interest - real or perceived”? If that’s the Eureka Reporter‘s credo, there’s nothing for it except for everyone in the building to quit their jobs. Or to stop reporting the news. A tagline affixed to every other story stating the paper’s ownership can’t cut mustard as thick as this. A tagline isn’t a magic wand.

Here’s the tragedy: The Reporter has embraced the kind of slipshod argument that its own critics have used against it. The paper’s reporters quite often do fine, important work, but just try and tell that to the many for whom Arkley’s name is the beginning and end of the discussion. I can testify that Reporter people are well aware of such plugged-ear critiques, and that it can sometimes drive them batty, understandably so. But the paper’s own editorial board now apparently endorses this kind of reasoning. And if it’s a horrid breach of ethics for John Driscoll to tag along on a phone call, then it’s a horrid breach of ethics 10,000 times over to rely on the largesse of one of the region’s top movers and shakers just to keep the lights on.

Take it in the other direction. Inviting Driscoll to listen along cost Lovelace’s group nothing. The Reporter still considers it a conflict of interest, real or perceived. Well, then, imagine you are at a press conference. Someone gives you a photocopied press release, which you will use in your reporting. You are therefore in receipt of a non-monetary donation, the value of which is in the neighborhood of 10 cents per page. Do you dig in your pocket for change? Do you disclose the value of the donation in the story? A lawyer hands you a copy of her 30-page legal brief. Do you shun it? Or have you been bought off? The Reporter‘s stance is wide open to reductio ad absurdum.Andthe Driscoll Affair is already solidly on the absurd side.

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