Yesturday, Argus Leader executive editor Randall Beck took the opportunity to attack blogs for holding the Argus accountable for their headline blunder on Newt Gingrich. There's nothing new about this, of course; remember how Beck said that criticism of the Argus was "crap" and driven by a "violent" internet "cabal" of "yahoos" and "jokers," who are full of "hatred" and "vitriol" and lacked "guts" because they hid "behind their computer screens" and wouldn't face him "man to man"? Beck concedes that Gingrich's aides called to say the headline was wrong and heard from those that attended the speech to inform him the headline was misleading. His response? They sometimes "miss the mark occasionally, as any newspaper does." How do you mix up "pull out" with "pull back"? He continued to make excuses and wrote that "headline writing is an art form, and accurately boiling down an 850-word story into six or eight words is difficult." The problem with this headline, however, is that it doesn't summarize the article because Gingrich never said to pull out of Iraq! Of course, he still thinks that "the two headlines in the print edition of the Argus Leader captured the scope of [Gingrich's] comments – and needed no correction." Nevermind that the headline was misleading. Then in true Beck style he draws attention away from the topic and shifts to abortion and the attacks our legislators can expect.
Then the real off-topic spin begins: Beck takes the opportunity to attack Governor Rounds of "misinformation" for not revealing his hunting list. Unfortunately, in the shadow of Beck's statements and his pride in the Argus' suit against the governor, this report comes out ruling in favor of Governor Rounds:
Gov. Mike Rounds can keep secret the list of business leaders he hosted for an annual pheasant hunt that was organized by a state office, a circuit court judge has ruled.
The Argus Leader filed a lawsuit against the state earlier this year seeking to make public the names of people invited to the 2005 Governor’s Invitational Pheasant Hunt, during which Rounds and other state officials host business leaders to promote economic development.
The October hunt was paid for mostly with private money. Rounds has maintained that revealing the names of people who take part could harm business negotiations.
The lawsuit argued that because it was organized by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, the list of invitees should be open to public. The list has been public in past years.
State open records law says that any list required to be kept by a state agency should be open for public inspection. But Judge Max Gors noted in his ruling that “the Argus Leader cites no requirement, statutory or otherwise, that the Secretary of Tourism and Development maintain a list of invitees.”
Gors wrote that it is simply not practical to require all government communications to be recorded.
“Taken to its logical conclusion, the Argus’ argument would require state agencies to maintain every scrap of paper generated by state government and to allow public inspection,” the judge wrote. “Every time someone called to leave a message, the phone slip that was generated would have to be maintained and available for inspection. Notes, letters and other ephemera would proliferate until storage and retrieval would be difficult, if not impossible.”
Recent Comments