Michael Morris – In Focus

Well folks, the Alamogordo Daily News is back on the Mountain View trailer park again. This one is different though featuring a different set of opinions as the basis of the story. This time we hear from a former City employee and a former City Commissioner claiming that City Manager Pat McCourt ignored the problems at Mountain View when other more Alamogordoish people owned it. The claims range from instructions to employees to ignore the sanitary issues to approval of illegal “fixes” intended to hide the problems. The pause here is that claiming that Don Carroll and Pat McCourt are simply crooks is almost too easy. Of course everyone is going to believe it. I am still wondering what the original article said before the damage control department of ADN Editor Michael Becker abridged it. He has publicly admitted adding disinformation to the story before it was published.

You may remember that the coverage of the Mountain View MHP by the ADN has been factually challenged and one sided even by ADN standards. On the Mike Haymes radio show on KRSY AM 1230 today there were a few revelations that not only undermine the credibility of the ADN and staff writer Karl Anderson, but also give us a glimpse into the kind of reporting one can expect from this rather unwholesome “newspaper” in general. Some of you may know that Mr. Haymes has taken Mr. Anderson as a co-host on the show. Early on in today’s show Anderson casually mentioned that his source for the lion’s share of the initial story of the original story on the Mountain View fire, Eddy Burks, owns an apartment building near the trailer park. In that story Anderson makes no mention of this interest on the part of Burks referring to him solely as a retired DPS lieutenant. Of course most people I have spoken with about the story simply assumed we were getting the opinion from a seasoned fireman, not that of an angry property owner whose net worth is affected by the disposition of the park. Beginning to get the picture?

The original story reported that some source had reported that the fire was the result of fireworks tossed into high weeds in the shuttered trailer park. Shortly thereafter we learned that this self serving tale was untrue. At the same time I rode through the area and observed that no one actually at the scene could have come to the conclusion that this was a brush fire. The actual case was that an arsonist had set the fire on the inside of a trailer. For me the obvious question became, “Who set the fire and why?” Apparently that question never crossed the mind of the ADN’s star reporter Karl Anderson. This question also does not appear to be on the mind of the DPS either. Why is that?

Then, of course, we were treated to the story of the park owners being arrested at their store in El Paso for buying stolen baby formula from a police officer run as the banner headline for the day. Interestingly, a few days later, an Otero County resident was shot and killed by an El Paso police officer under questionable circumstances. This, as you may have guessed, did not make the top headline.

Now reporter Karl Anderson, after continually trashing the park owners in print and on the radio, has come out with another attack piece based on the accusations of 2 individuals formerly involved in city government. I know some of you are saying, “Hey, he seems to be taking the same position on these people as you do, so what is up?” The short answer is that all of my accusations against city officials are based on public records and not on the word of people with possible vendettas. This is a problem with journalists far beyond the ADN. I had a conversation the other day with Michael Becker. In this Becker complained that I do not do interviews in connection with my stories. My answer was how do interviews get to facts? I talk to sources that sometimes lead to facts, but they are not facts themselves. And there you have the problem. Most so called journalists prefer reporting what the subjects of their stories and others have to say about an event. While that may be fine when covering the soap box derby an interview with someone is not much of a substitute for signed documents that indicate what actually was done. This is why we end up with such things as Ed Carr claiming 4 different values for the equipment in the Sunbaked plant and two on the building value instead of the one in the records. Instead of facts these fiction writers merely take their agenda into an interview and give you what they went in looking for couched in the veneer of an interview in lieu of fact.

In this case Karl Anderson has proven he has no integrity or credibility. He has also shown that he has no problem twisting his purposeful ignorance of the facts into a ridiculous excuse for sham journalism while sharing another fantastic yet unverifiable story from his exciting past. So why should I impute any more credibility to him when he raises the innuendo that Mayor Don Carroll is dishonest or that City Manager Pat McCourt is corrupt, dishonest or incompetent? The fact that Carroll is an embarrassment to the city in word and deed and that McCourt is just out for all he can get for the least effort at our expense is readily apparent to those with the sense god gave a goat if they have the capacity to be honest with themselves. That does not make these latest accusations by our itinerant attack journalist facts or even true for that matter. What Karl Anderson published as a story I call a source with information to be verified. The way this story was handled is little more or less than a gossip page trashing a la National Inquirer.

Apparently there are some in the community lacking the ability to grasp what it is I write here. It is not because the words here are beyond them. It is simply that they do not have the capacity to be objective. Their various loyalties seem to cloud their judgment. In some cases these people see what I write as all lies even though I routinely publish the documents that show this not to be the case. In the other direction there are fans who are such because I point the finger at corruption. This is the faction most upset by my take on the latest diatribe from the local fishwrapper. Everything Karl Anderson wrote today could be true. The problem is that no proof was offered to that effect. The trashing put out by this unethical rag of a paper today was a fine example of what I call attack journalism. Statements were published with no thought of verification in sound bite fashion in an attempt to manufacture sensational press. This is the kind of irresponsible journalism some people want. Now you have it. Freedom of choice and all of that.

Certainly it takes some effort to make a bunch of dry facts interesting. That is what I try to do. I find it a lot more honest than packaging a bunch of allegations together into a smear piece. I work hard to present even the driest facts in a way that they don’t put my readers to sleep. While some people may surmise that I enjoy delving into stacks of court or accounting records or inane laws this is not the case. Those dry facts bore me just as much they do you. That is why I do my best to contextualize them for you and make them entertaining by tying them to the real world events with which you are already somewhat familiar. Otherwise what value have I added? What have I done then to deserve your time reading? What value do you get when a newspaper conceals the agenda of a source then publishes quotes by that source in that absence?

In closing it must be noted that the ADN once again ran the story with the lie that it was the park owner who filed his case against the City of Alamogordo in federal court when, of course, the City was the one that moved the case into federal court then filed a motion to dismiss the case saying the Plaintiff needed to try parts of his case in state court first. If the ADN’s motive in this latest example of irresponsible journalism was to disprove the allegation that they run PR for the City this disinformation certainly torpedoed that while making no friends in City Hall. Is this really the kind of fact mangling and distortion that qualifies as news?

In the further damage control mode ADN Editor Michael Becker has made significant modifications to the online version of this story – significant in that they appear to address, to some extent, the fact mangling and credibility gap.