Published in The Deseret News: Friday, March 12, 2010 5:15 p.m. MST

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah House Majority Leader Kevin Garn is not the only one taking lumps for hot-tubbing in the nude with a 15-year-old and later paying her hush money. The Deseret News is, too — for knowing about the incident eight years ago and not reporting it.

“It was a bad decision not to report it,” said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a journalism training organization.

To its great credit this contrite story was published in The Deseret News. At this point The Tribune has not publicly recognized that it was aware of the story. This was about the time that Dean Singleton took over as publisher of The Tribune from the McCarthey family and so the newspaper, especially the editorial department, was in a bit of turmoil itself. Singleton became publisher on August 1st, 2002. The date of Garn’s interview with the Deseret News is not fixed, but it was around this time frame. The Tribune may or may not have received the letter Maher contends she sent.

The public relies on major newspapers to dig up stories and make reliable judgments and to protect the public interest. At what point in time should The Deseret News have responded? It’s hard to pass judgment without more information. The fact that Garn confessed to the Deseret News is troubling, but the reader is not aware of whether the Deseret News knew that hush money was being paid or had been paid. That was probably something that happened at about the same time and Garn probably didn’t tell the News about that. That it is responding now and explaining the details of its decision process at the time is noteworthy and a credit to them. It will certainly be helpful to them going forward.

“You essentially have someone who has presented one face to the public and it has been revealed that may not be true and accurate. And most likely you guys (the Deseret News) helped him present his narrative to the public. For that reason alone, you have an obligation to correct the record,” she said in a telephone interview.

That was typical of many comments on web sites and from some readers. But top Deseret News editors say they believe they made the right choice back in 2002, and they still defend it.

Former Deseret News reporter Jerry Spangler said the episode began in 2002 when he wrote a profile of Garn and his congressional race just before the Republican primary election. He said Cheryl Maher called him to say “there is a side of him you don’t know about,” and told him about the nude hot-tubbing.

Maher said Friday that she also contacted the Salt Lake Tribune in 2002 and told it the same story.

“It was the week before the election,” Spangler said. He remembers writing a draft of a story about the incident with Bob Bernick, the political editor, and inviting Garn to comment. He also remembers that Maher was hesitant to give many details and seemed “flaky.”

He and Bernick said Garn came into the Deseret News offices and met with them and several editors. “I remember him crying,” and (more…)

It’s official: Americans admire Glenn Beck more than they admire the pope.

This news, at once unsettling and unsurprising, came from the Gallup polling organization on Wednesday. Beck, the new Fox News host who has said President Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people” and alternately likens administration officials to Nazis and Marxists, was also more admired by Americans than Billy Graham and Bill Gates, not to mention Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. In Americans’ esteem, Beck only narrowly trailed South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, the man who defeated apartheid.

The 45-year-old recovering alcoholic and Mormon convert has become the first true demagogue of the information age. His nightly diet of falsehoods and conspiracies on Fox, and his daily outrages on the radio, have propelled his popularity past even Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. His method is simple: He goes places where others are forbidden by conscience.

Death panels? Government health insurance for dogs? FEMA concentration camps? An Obama “civilian national security force” like Hitler’s SS or Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard? An administration official advocating forced abortions and sterilization agents in drinking water? Beck trafficked in them all in 2009.

He also proposed on his radio show that people should read Hitler’s Mein Kampf to prepare for Obama’s health care plan — and that’s in addition to the 28 times (more…)

Published in City Weekly, Dec. 3, 2009

Published in Boston Phoenix

Glenn Beck: Latter-day Taint

Glenn Beck’s Mormonism may even frighten fellow believers.

By Adam Reilly

Fifteen years ago, Glenn Beck was a small-market DJ with a drinking problem, no friends and bleak professional prospects. Today, he’s a Fox News superstar averaging 2.4 million viewers (in a mediocre time slot, no less), an inexorably successful author (his new book, Arguing with Idiots, is the fourth Beck opus to top the New York Times best-seller list), and the leader of a popular movement that condemns government in general and President Barack Obama in particular.

What’s more, he’s gotten under the skin of politicians from both parties. In recent months, the White House took vigorous issue with Beck’s criticisms of senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina ripped Beck’s cynicism and teary tendencies in an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.

Notwithstanding Beck’s reckless asininity—e.g., his infamous claim that Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people”—that’s an impressive career arc. And the media, naturally, have been striving to grasp the Beck phenomenon: witness Time magazine’s credulous Sep. 28 cover story, a sharp column by The New York Times’ Frank Rich, an earlier New York Times profile and sundry other treatments ranging from the academic (Columbia Journalism Review) to the middlebrow (CBS’s Katie Couric).

Beck’s would-be interpreters occasionally note that he’s a Mormon: He joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as an adult, in 1999, with his wife and children. But in contrast with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whose Mormonism was discussed in great detail during his failed 2008 presidential bid, the ramifications of Beck’s faith have gone largely unexplored. That’s unfortunate, because a case can be made that Beck is to Mormonism what Father Charles Coughlin was to Catholicism in the 1930s, when the “radio priest” peddled nasty, faith-based opposition to another ambitious Democratic president.

Given the ease with which this discussion could degenerate into Mormon-bashing, this reticence may be understandable. To fully ‘get’  Beck, though, it’s necessary to understand just how many of his beliefs have specifically Mormon roots or are conveyed in uniquely Mormon ways—from his embrace of former Mormon leader Ezra Taft Benson’s insatiable anti-communism to his Mormon-bred suspicion that the government is the agent of Satan. For some of Beck’s co-religionists, these links are obvious. Back in March, for example, writing on the Mormon-history blog The Juvenile Instructor, Christopher Jones—a doctoral student in history at William & Mary— noted that Beck seemed to be plumbing the disturbing depths of Mormon millenarianism and marveled at the media’s seeming disinterest.

Once the link between Beck’s faith and politics gets made, intriguing questions emerge: Without his unsettling brand of Mormonism, would Glenn Beck still be Glenn Beck? Should members of the LDS Church be cheering or lamenting Beck’s protracted moment in the spotlight? Could Beck’s forays into stealth Mormon sermonizing make his conservative evangelical fans rethink their loyalty? And, if Beck’s religiosity finally becomes a story, what might that mean for the lingering presidential (more…)

This letter of praise to the Tribune is spot-on. We also love the Tribune editorial page. It is always full of interesting observations from all sides of the spectrum. Our Watts Cookin’ Blog is full of articles from the Salt Lake Tribune because they are timely, informative, and crucial.

Everyone in Utah should subscribe to and read the Tribune, otherwise they are simply uninformed about what is going on around them.

The Tribune ’s Oct. 4 op-ed page was exceptional. First, Nicholas Kristof explained rationally why more troops are not the answer in Afghanistan, helping me change my position (”Sending more troops to Afghanistan a bad bet”).

Next, Ed Firmage Jr. takes on Sen. Orrin Hatch about global warming, explaining how the science the senator uses is fundamentally flawed and how Hatch is wrong (”Professor Hatch’s ‘Climate 101′ lacks science”). I hope Hatch sees this article; every Utah fifth-grader ought to read it. It’s simple and understandable.

Lastly, Karrie Galloway explains how some in the Legislature simply have no idea what Planned Parenthood does to help thousands of Utahns every year get the help and education they need (”Planned Parenthood given bad rap by legislators”). This is not some evil organization, as many of them believe; it plays a necessary and practical role in the lives of many Utah families. As a result, I’m joining PP and donating $100. I hope others do, too.

These are the types of articles that inform, educate and entertain. They are at the heart of the reason I subscribe to The Tribune . Please keep it coming.

Tom Love

Salt Lake City

By Brian Maffly

The Salt Lake Tribune

Thou shalt air only “nonsectarian” shows may be a tenet of public television, but PBS leadership on Tuesday chiselled in an exception that will allow Brigham Young University’s KBYU to keep broadcasting Mormon devotionals on Channel 11, while hanging on to PBS staples like the “NewsHour,” “Nova,” “American Experience” and “WordGirl.”

KBYU’s status as a public television station was jeopardized under a PBS membership policy overhaul, which had considered barring member stations from airing church services and other faith-oriented programming. But in a compromise gesture, the PBS board, which is comprised mostly of station managers, decided to permit the handful of member stations that air such material to continue doing so as long as they don’t add new programming deemed “sectarian.”

“It allows us to continue the programming we have. We are very pleased,” BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said. Had the PBS board struck a hard-line position, KBYU would have had to either quit airing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints General Conferences and other Mormon material or sacrifice its PBS membership. Four other public television stations, which broadcast Sunday Masses, were in a similar situation.

PBS officials stressed that the decision arose during a much-needed review of membership policies, the first since the digital revolution transformed the media landscape allowing stations to “multicast” on Web sites, podcasts and other new platforms in addition to the airwaves. But during the review, the board realized some public stations, such as KBYU and WLAE in New Orleans, historically provided sectarian programs, said board member Peter Morrill, Idaho Public Television’s general manager.

“They have provided these services for decades. That fact needed to be recognized,” Morrill said. The board’s decision to allow these members to continue such broadcasts is a testament to the organization’s diversity and commitment to local autonomy, officials said.

In the meantime, a PBS policy adopted Tuesday encourages members to “migrate” sectarian content from their main channel to other platforms. Long-standing policy also bars members from airing commercial and political content.

Published on Monday, June 1, 2009 at Salon.com

It was one thing when President Obama reversed himself last month by announcing that he would appeal the Second Circuit’s ruling that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compelled disclosure of various photographs of detainee abuse sought by the ACLU.  Agree or disagree with Obama’s decision, at least the basic legal framework of transparency was being respected, since Obama’s actions amounted to nothing more than a request that the Supreme Court review whether the mandates of FOIA actually required disclosure in this case. But now — obviously anticipating that the Government is likely to lose in court again (.pdf) — Obama wants Congress to change FOIA by retroactively narrowing its disclosure requirements, prevent a legal ruling by the courts, and vest himself with brand new secrecy powers under the law which, just as a factual matter, not even George Bush sought for himself.

The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman — called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 — that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any “photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States.”  As long as the Defense Secretary certifies — with no review possible — that disclosure would “endanger” American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure.  The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely.  The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.

(more…)

Published on Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at Media Matters

Last week’s press coverage of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court was gruesome in so many ways, as reporters routinely fell down and failed to reflect even the most basic tenets of journalism.

One of the most disturbing examples of how fundamentals were ignored involved Sotomayor’s now-infamous quote from eight years ago about a “Latina woman” judge reaching a “better conclusion” on the bench than her white male counterparts. Sotomayor made the comment as part of a speech she gave at University of California, Berkeley, in 2001 in which she explored what it would mean to have more women and minorities on the bench.

To see just how dreadful the coverage of that story became, let’s look at the efforts by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, which published nearly identical news articles about the unfolding political battle surrounding Sotomayor and the “Latina woman” quote, which conservatives have latched onto. The quote became the basis for the incendiary claim made by Newt Gingrich and Glenn Beck, among others, that Sotomayor is, in fact, a racist because she thinks Hispanic judges render better decisions than whites.

(more…)

Samuelson is right, democracy demands an informed public through an aggressive, fair, and open media, but where was he when the media went into hibernation and turned the country lock, stock, and barrell over to Bush and Cheney and their neo-con extremists? We are in a mess because of the lack of a fair, objective, dependable press independent of corporate dominance.  How to improve the quality of our media is an important public discussion.

Published: Monday, June 1, 2009 12:18 a.m. MDT

WASHINGTON – The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment; but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America.

Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest. They come from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals if not always his means. The leaderless and confused Republicans don’t provide effective opposition. And the press – on domestic, if not foreign, policy – has so far largely abdicated its role as skeptical observer.

Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism shows. It concludes: “President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House.”

The study examined 1,261 stories by The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, Newsweek magazine and the “NewsHour” on PBS. Favorable stories (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent) , while the rest were “neutral” or “mixed.” Obama’s treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the presidencies of Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent). (more…)