Accountability 102 (Part I): Maybe No News is Good News When It Comes to the Local Paper

Instead of helping the public sort out an admittedly complex set of issues, including environmental awareness, historic preservation, and economic development, our local paper has been adding to the confusion surrounding the “305” debate. Inaccurate reporting, sloppy editing, and an editorial bias about the matter has done the public a great disservice. We post a lot about accountability in government and part and parcel of that is having an accurate and accountable press.

Last Wednesday, the paper ran a story on a public hearing on 305. The hearing was held because federal law requires such a hearing before the City draws down any federal grants for the environmental clean up of the site with a “demolition” approach. “Section 106” of the National Historic Preservation Act says the City must demonstrate that they have created a plan with the least “adverse impact” on the historical properties on or surrounding the site. The City must also demonstrate they have considered all feasible alternatives to demolition. (For complete provisions of the act, click here).

As a consequence, the consultants hired by the City-- Dovetail Consulting and Brownfield Redevelopment Solutions, Inc.-- conducted a public hearing on 305 Main Street. Over 40 people attended the hearing. It was not a City Council meeting and the City Council was not conducting business. At one point during the hearing, Mayor Einstein himself stated clearly to the public that the gathering was not a Council meeting. He was emphatic that no Council business would or could be transacted that night.

True, five members of Council were present for most of the hearing (Mayor Einstein and Councilors O’Malley, Augustine, Valentino, Hagerman, with Councilor D’Amico making a brief appearance). But the consultants running the meeting were quick to point out that the purpose of the meeting was not to revisit the previous Council’s vote to demolish the building. The purpose, they declared, was to look at how to “mitigate” the adverse impact of demolition.

Next day in the paper, to our great surprise, we read that the hearing was a “special City Council session” and that its purpose was for “the City Council to reconsider its 2007 vote to demolish.” The headline and the story’s lead sentence portrayed the whole event as “deja vu.” On the contrary, Council made its decision two years ago. Grant givers were now trying to determine if that decision can be carried out with federal tax dollars.

The local paper’s story contains several other inaccuracies regarding both the scope and the content of the meeting. While we’ve expressed our ongoing concerns about that, in today’s post we want to express our grave concern about the role of the local paper in shaping, or mis-shaping, public policy in the City. What they say does matter. And the latest round of articles about the gas station dramatizes the problem.

First of all, how could the paper be so far off on the facts? In fairness to the reporter assigned to cover the hearing, he’s new on the beat and was not the reporter who has covered the 305 story over the past few years. It’s hard to fault him for making mistakes in covering such a detailed and technical set of arguments, especially when everything he writes is reviewed, edited, and approved by the paper’s editorial staff. Regardless of who covered the event and drafted the story, it is up to the editors to make sure reporting is accurate, all facts are checked, and the news, including the headline and opening ‘hook’ is free of bias.

Ideological bias is a special, more serious case of inaccuracy in reporting. In our point of view, at every step of the way in the 305 fiasco, the Finger Lakes Times has conveyed the idea that saving the building is ‘doing nothing’ about it, as if anyone who wants to save the building simply wants to keep an old, abandoned building just sitting there for the heck of it. So, too, the paper has never critically examined the dollar amounts used to justify the argument that it is cheaper to demolish the building than to clean it up. They just keep re-printing numbers given to them by city officials. Their presentation of the hearing is the latest installment of their bias, leaving the suggestion that a special Council meeting was called to put 305 up for grabs, with certain members of Council seeking a flip-flop on the vote to demolish.

That’s been since former Finger Lakes Times publisher Phil Beckley himself changed his mind about 305. As we’ve previously posted, Beckley was a key originator of the idea to preserve 305. He and his group later flip-flopped and sought the demolition of 305 at all costs, and now demolition is a good idea in the eyes of the paper.

All of this was brought to the editorial board’s attention through letters and direct contact, but no meaningful follow up was undertaken. In fact, the newspaper took the misinformation a step further by composing an ‘our opinion’ piece that took the city’s figures and ran straight to the wrecking ball, no questions asked.

The paper has yet to hold the City Council accountable for bad decision-making regarding 305.

The City had undertaken a fundamentally flawed process, and in clear violation of the open meetings laws. The proposal to acquire the building for a performing arts center, for example, was presented to Council in Executive Session--not a legitimate topic for such sessions. The former City Manager then sought consensus on a variety of issues related to acquiring and transferring the building via e-mail, which, again, is not playing by the rules.

What did come out at the hearing on 305, and what went unreported by the Finger Lakes Times, was confirmation of how the City acquired 305. Former Councilor Espenscheid and Carl Fribolin, two key players in that development, were on hand at the hearing to refresh the public’s memory, confirming the www.nostringsgeneva.com account. Part III of this post will discuss in more detail what transpired at the hearing, but first stay tuned to Part II in which we discuss the importance of good journalism to good government.