Political Reporting Issues: The Press Does Ray Metcalfe

Bloggers overlap with various other more traditional categories - diarist, gossip, and journalist seem to be among the more common. When we morph into a journalist form enough, people start sending us press releases. I don't get too many. APU's Engaging Muslims series started sending them after I posted on the first evening of the series. The Alaska Report has sent out links to some stories. And I've been getting Wednesday sneak previews of the Anchorage Press. I've always wondered how, say, NPR gets their stories. How many come from their reporters actually going out and finding a story and how many are based on press releases? Of course, the email I mentioned yesterday offering to exchange links falls in a related category of self promotion.

I write all this because as someone new to much of this, I don't take these things for granted, and I want to comment on them before I do. Most of us probably don't know why certain stories become news and others don't. And part of me wants to work on stories that others aren't working on, and not be a promotion site. Or work the stories in ways others aren't working them.

So this story from the tomorrow's Press (well, by the time I'm done it will be today's Press) is about something I've been thinking about. And I have mentioned that Brendan Joel Kelley, who wrote the story and emailed it out to various reporters (the list isn't visible) and I had lunch a couple of weeks ago. He ended up paying for mine because mine was only $5 and I had a $20 and a $1. I contributed the $1. I mention this because I think politicians who have their lunches paid for by people lobbying them on various issues should tell us who they talked to and if they got a free lunch out of it. And I'm willing to disclose that even though I don't have to.

Anyway, I'm not ready to do this story, but I think there are a couple of angles here to be explored that Brendan doesn't explore.

The story is basically about whether Ray Metcalfe is a serious candidate for the Senate. According to the story, Metcalfe says he is.

The issues this story stirred up for me - still unresolved but I can raise them here and say that I may actually follow up on them or not - are about:

1. How journalists cover politicians
2. Ray Metcalfe's political personas

The media issue is ultimately the more important long term issue and Metcalfe is more a case study to help us think about the first.

Brendan Joel Kelley writes:

Metcalfe points out that Palin exposed the Republican Party chair, Randy Ruedrich, for ethical violations, and says that he’s exposed a hundred times as much corruption as that. “Look what the public did for her. It’s not the good ol’ boys that are going to put you in office, and it’s not the guys with the thousand dollar campaign checks. It’s the guys with the five dollar campaign checks and the yard signs and the elbow grease.”

Here, Brendan has interviewed Metcalfe and is reporting what Metcalfe says. This is an important part of journalism, as reporters on behalf of the rest of us, talk to the candidates. We need to know two things about candidates:

• Content - where do they stand on the issues?; and
• Credibility - do we feel comfortable with them and can we trust them?

Television has the advantage of showing us the interview so we can judge for ourselves (though we don't know what they cut out or how different camera angles subliminally affect how we perceive the candidates.) We get the feel and intonation of the candidate that help us judge credility, but this can distract us from the content.

The written report has the advantage that it can be more in depth than most television news stories - Charlie Rose's interviews being an exception - and they can focus on the content and analyze in more depth as Richard Mauer's infrequent, long, and informative investigative reports do.

This Press piece is more like a tv interview, telling us what the candidate said and and not doing much research to find out whether it's true or not.

In the above quote, Metcalfe is trying to grab some of Sarah Palin's glow as a stalwart who refused to go along with corruption. But Palin's just isn't going to stick for Metcalfe. While Metcalfe has standing up against corruption in common with Sarah Palin, how they stood up aginst corruption and their whole demeanor are totally different.

Palin was put in a position where she had to go along with corruption or stand up and say, publicly, these guys are cheating and I can't work with them. But that's just one part of what makes her attractive to Alaskan voters and national Republican strategists. She's also a good looking woman with a warm personality who makes people (except Republican party leaders) feel comfortable.

Metcalfe, in his own words says he’s "exposed a hundred times as much corruption." Metcalfe probably thinks that makes him a hundred times more deserving of the public's gratitude. The Greeks talked about doing all things in moderation. And for many people, I suspect, it raises questions about why he seems so obsessed with exposing other people's wrong doings. And he doesn't have Palin's smiling personality which goes a long way in the trust department. And becoming a hero by turning on your former friends (Metcalfe is a former Republican) was never a sure path.

Whistle blower is the most positive word we have for such people, and some even use whistle blower pejoratively. Other words for what Metcalfe has done include tattletale, snitch, and turncoat. Don't get me wrong. I think that Metcalfe has performed an invaluable service and we need more people to follow his example, but our society is ambivalent about this kind of work. I suspect because it seems to conflict with our value of loyalty.

Spousal immunity is a principle that reflects this conflict between loyalty and turning in a criminal. In court it helps protect the necessary bond between a husband and wife that

... was thought to require a testimonial privilege, one that would both reflect and foster the loyalty that married people should feel toward each other.

For Palin, calling out Ruedrich and Murkowski was an important act, but it was one of many things she did and stood for. For Metcalfe, in most people's minds (those who even think about these things at all), it is his purpose to go after corrupt politicians. In the public's view, this isn't balanced out by other aspects of his life. It's not balanced. Brendan writes:

It’s worth asking what Ray Metcalfe is running for, as opposed to whom he’s running against.

(The article does also then give a list of things he's for.)

Brendan also raises the question whether the US Senate is the right job for someone who appears to excel in criminal investigations, asking

. . .if he wouldn’t be better suited for a job other than Senator from Alaska. Like working for the Department of Justice. Or becoming a private investigator.

Another identity issue for Metcalfe is whether he is becoming the Hillary Clinton of the Alaskan US Senate race.

His allegations against Begich are complex and involve real estate deals with local developer Jon Rubini, of JL Properties, who’s also connected to Ted Stevens through property deals. Metcalfe’s compiled his paper trails and accusations in documents that are on his website, www.metcalfe4senate.com

While he says he is serious about this campaign, the money and polls suggest that Begich is the likely Democratic candidate, with a far more significant lead over Metcalfe than Obama ever had over Clinton. If he has no chance of winning, does he have a good chance of causing the Democrats to lose?

As one rebel union member who also has issues with Begich said to me, "Yes, I have problems with Begich, but I'm going to vote for him over Stevens. But I won't be out campaigning for him." Primary elections are all about politicians from the same party showing why they are the best candidate and sometimes that involves showing the weaknesses of their, same party, opponents. But while I don't think the McCain campaign will need any help from Hillary when they attack Obama, I suspect that Stevens' campaign will use Metcalfe's material against Begich, and it wouldn't have had that material without Metcalfe.

Comparing Metcalfe to Clinton works only in one aspect - being the potential spoiler who won't let go to the point where many think he/she will enable their shared opponent to win in the general election.

And this raises another journalistic issue. Brendan raises Metcalfe's allegations and then he offers a response from the Begich campaign:

For its part, the Begich campaign has a thick stack of papers rebutting one of Metcalfe’s claims—that Begich assisted Rubini by pushing to rezone of a parcel of land, boosting its value significantly. The federal government subsequently purchased it from Rubini’s company, at what Metcalfe says was an inflated price, for the National Archives building. Begich disputes all of Metcalfe’s accusations, calling the situation a shame.

“He throws these allegations around because they make good political hay and he never has to back it up,” Begich says. “Honestly, I run my campaign focused on the issues that I want to talk about; Ray would rather throw grenades and he doesn’t really care where they land."

This is the same sort of 'he said, she said" journalism we get every day, which clouds the issues in voters' minds, but doesn't dig deeper into the validity of the claims. We need some people to read through all of Metcalfe's allegations and take his tour and then go to the Begich people and sort through their responses. And then map them out. Are the allegations merely correlation without evidence of cause and effect? Are the responses credible and do they effectiely refute Metcalfe's claims? I know Metcalfe believes he's right, so do Pete Kott and Vic Kohring. I don't mean to lump Metcalfe with those folks, but merely to point out that believing you are right is not the same as being right.

One person who has a better perspective on these things than I do, says that Begich has some blindspots like everyone else. A member of his campaign just as vigorously defends Begich's actions on the waste issues. But good journalism should do some of this work for the public. And I say some people instead of someone should do this so we have various people reviewing and then interpreting the evidence.

One other thing wasn't quite clear to me. Did Brendan actually take the Metcalfe tour of Anchorage? He writes:

There’s a tour of Anchorage that Ray Metcalfe likes to give to journalists, politicians, FBI agents, and other interested parties. He calls it his “three-hour tour,” although it could probably go on longer. The tour hits everywhere from base housing at Elmendorf to parking lots in downtown Anchorage to a lot in Midtown near Loussac Library to a road in a sprawling development in South Anchorage.

This second quote (below) indirectly hints that he did, and I suspect he did, and he just didn't realize anyone would even question it, but it would be helpful if he just came out and told us directly that he took the tour.

One wonders, when you take the three-hour tour and listen to Metcalfe pontificate on his passion for independently investigating political corruption, if he wouldn’t be better suited for a job other than Senator from Alaska. Like working for the Department of Justice. Or becoming a private investigator. Or charging money to tourists for the three-hour tours.

I noticed at the trials that the Main Stream Media (MSM) and us bloggers didn't really do the work. The FBI and the prosecutors did all the work. We just had to be in court and listen and take notes.

The same thing is true about the Republican and Democratic conventions (I was out of town for the Republican convention, but the other bloggers were there) and the AGIA workshop last week. The Governor's team at the Department of Natural Resoures did all the work, we just listened to what they reported.

Metcalfe did the real work of the journalists of doggedly tracking down information and making sense out of it. And whether that makes him a good candidate for the Senate, I can't determine, but we owe him a great debt for the hours and hours of work he did so well. But I also wonder about people who spend so much time exposing other people's failings. In some cases such people appear to have some complex pyschological issues - such as evangelist Ted Haggard or New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Others appear to simply have a strong sense of justice such as Ralph Nader whose life has been thoroughly investigated with no evidence found to impugn him.

The facts allow for lots of different interpretations. Getting enough information is a long and difficult job. Right now I think too many people claim to know the answers when at best, all they can really do is guess at possible ways to interpret the data. And reporters have a real role in helping the public in this process - and bloggers can fit in that role of reporter.