Michael Morris - In Focus

I have no idea what the curriculum of Journalism 101 consists of, so I will explain Morrisism 101 in its stead. Not surprisingly our subject will be what I will call, for sensationalism's sake, The Grubstake Affair. More specifically I will try to tackle why the Alamogordo Daily News, more accurately the Alternate Dimension News, failed to attach even a pinch of objectivity to their cheerleading efforts on behalf of a man who seems to lack an appropriate portion of sanity.

Most people watching the fictional saga of Henry Morgan Smith playing out in The Grubstake Affair assume the whole mess at the Alamorosa truck stop began on Sept. 21 of this year when Smith was cited for violations of the smoking prohibition law. Remember when you consider renewing your subscription to the ADN that this was not the beginning. The first affectation to present in the case of Henry Morgan Smith began in earnest on Sept. 11. According to the Sheriff's Office Smith called for a deputy to respond to a larceny. When the deputy arrived, all of this according to the incident report (PDF), Smith wanted to report that the NM lottery had stolen scratch off tickets in May of this year.

According to the report Smith then claimed to be a lawyer and demanded charges be filed. Also from the report it seems that Henry Morgan Smith was no more the owner of the lottery tickets than he was of the restaurant he later claimed. As it turns out the lottery machine and tickets were in the possession of Chef Lupe. After failing to get an arrest from the Sheriff the deputy reports Smith then ran the same farce on the state police. Only the truly hardcore conspiracy folks could reason that both departments lied to make this up.

So, why did the ADN not consider or report this when taking up the cause of Smith? That answer is simple. Anderson's story was an attack piece intended to smear the Sheriff's Office. Since there was an agenda in place the ever dishonest Anderson never bothered to check out the history of the place. In fact Anderson, who continually claims to be fair and balanced in his reporting, merely parroted the claims of Smith. There was no mission to get the truth. Nope. Instead what was published consisted of accusations by Smith. Mr. fair and balanced never seemed to have considered checking into the other side of the story here leaving the entirety of the news at Smith's claims.

So, those of you who have gave money to Smith for his legal expenses, would you have given to this wing nut had you known about this? Now that you see that the nearly illiterate Smith has filed nearly meaningless papers he wrote himself, by mail, using your tax dollars for free process in the courts, do you feel like your dollars went down the toilet? Do you want your money back? See Karl Anderson.

The people I really feel for in this even more than those bilked out of the $$$ by Anderson and Smith are the poor souls who believed that this con artist was a victim of tyrannical government enough to risk their credibility by supporting him with letters to the editor in the ADN with their names attached. How ashamed they must be today.

It might be helpful to treat the stories in the Alamogordo Daily News in the same way as a letter explaining that you have won the EURO HUNGARIAN SWEEPSTAKES.

As big as the stories about all of the citations issued to Henry Morgan Smith have been, he will probably beat each and every one of them in court. Why? Well because he is not the owner of the business. He just claimed that. The violations are all for the owner which appears to be Chef Lupe. What needs to happen now is all of those charges need dropped and refilled against the owner Chef Lupe, obstruction of justice charges filed against Smith for impersonating the owner at the time of the citations and an investigation launched into the disposition of the money he bilked out of these people with his lies. Henry says he needs an education in law. I am certain the prisons have ample law libraries to facilitate his studies.