The Shady Ethics of Colorado Ethics Watch

Kliebenstein, Schaffer Unfairly Targeted Through Manufactured Leftist Attacks
Face The State Staff Editorial

Franklin D. Roosevelt understood the relationship between politics and journalism. To get the kind of stories he wanted on the campaign trail, he started the tradition of providing a fully furnished press car. Once elected, he is rumored to have gotten reporters tipsy and let them crash on a White House couch.

For good and for bad, FDR helped open the door to a system of modern day political reporting that is too often swayed by the power of personality and convenience. While the Washington Post's Woodward and Bernstein helped put a halt to the campaign-funded martini lunches of yesteryear, and stringent campaign finance laws have significantly limited overnight slumber parties in the Lincoln bedroom, reporters assigned to cover our political leaders still crave — and still partake — in political reporting that should make every ethics professor in every journalism school in America scream.

In today’s journalism schools, students are taught the gospel of objective reporting. Your editor hands you a story, you interview both sides, include a quote from each perspective, throw in some background facts, and send it on through the process as quickly as possible.

Too often missing from the equation is a critical inquiry: Why should I report this? Or even more important: Why should I not?

These are questions that should have been asked—but likely weren't — in at least two political news stories published last fall that you likely missed - or didn't think twice about.

For Nick Kliebenstein, a Republican state legislative candidate from Broomfield, Colo., the dark side of news reporting began just days after he filed his first campaign finance report when his local newspaper, the Broomfield Enterprise, ran a story with the headline “HD33 candidate target of campaign finance complaint.” The report highlighted false allegations that Kliebenstein had broken state campaign finance laws.

The source of the story — a liberal interest group called Colorado Ethics Watch — launched a complaint against Kliebenstein with the Colorado Secretary of State. As it turns out, Kliebenstein’s alleged violation was actually caused by a technical problem within the state’s computer software. According to Kliebenstein, Chantell Taylor, the Democratic activist-attorney behind the complaint, never called his campaign to confirm these facts. After the glitch was discovered, the Secretary of State sent Kliebenstein an apologetic letter. Still, the damage was done.

Three months later, Colorado Ethics Watch still the complaint — with no correction posted — highlighted on its Web site under the headline “Ethics Watch Files Campaign Finance Complaint Against House Candidate Kliebenstein”.

While the Enterprise ran a short brief highlighting the fact that Taylor was forced to withdraw her complaint, Kliebenstein is left with an initial headline that sours his reputation.

A little investigative reporting would have revealed that there was nothing to report. At minimum, due diligence would have revealed that Taylor is not an impartial observer — she is an activist with past and current ties to multiple Democratic organizations, including the Blueflower Group and Progress Now Action. If the newspaper insisted on running the story, her connections should have been noted.

But the Enterprise isn’t the only paper that has given Taylor and Colorado Ethics Watch a pass on its partisan leanings. In an Oct. 31 Rocky Mountain News report, the organization is referred to as “a non-profit group that tries to hold public officials accountable for their actions.” There was no mention of the organization’s partisan leanings or past political actions.

Kliebenstein is joined by elite company in taking unfair hits by paid media-savvy activists with an agenda. Former U.S. Congressman Bob Schaffer, R-Ft. Collins, is constantly attacked by opposition planting manufactured stories. In a series of August news reports, Schaffer was broadsided by Michael Huttner, a well-known liberal who heads up Progress Now Action, for allegedly allowing campaign contributions to influence his actions on the state board of education. At question was a vote over the fate of a Denver charter school.

Schaffer, an outspoken advocate of school choice and a current candidate for U.S. Senate, surprised no one when he voted in favor of the school. Meanwhile, Huttner insinuated that the vote was somehow the result of political contributions from fellow school choice supporters.

While the news coverage was generally unbiased in the sense that it presented both sides of the story and allowed Schaffer and his supporters an opportunity to respond — the allegations should never have been presented in the first place. Huttner’s suggestions were baseless and personal.

Americans love to believe in the ideal that reporters can be objective. The bottom line: Every single person is subject to their own biases. And that’s okay. But with each story assignment a reporter receives, he or she needs to ask: Why is this news and what are the agendas behind those who are trying to get me to report it?

For voters tired of business as usual in political reporting, there is at least one Denver media new source that is taking a different approach. The city’s NBC affiliate, Channel 9, known for its “Truth Test” political reporting, provides candidates unedited access to its Web site, www.9News.com, and in exchange, according to station’s political reporter Adam Schrager, they are not allowed to personally attack an opponent. For Kliebenstein, Schaffer, and others suffering the effects of manufactured attacks, maybe this is just the venue they need.