PBS’s Frontline had a story about a conservative mayor in Spokane, WA named Jim West who was found to be participating in online chats (and more) on Gay.com.  The mayor was also linked to a sheriff’s deputy who’d been found to have been abusing boys when he was a Scout leader in the late 70s.  The mayor had also been a deputy at the time, was the pedophile ‘s partner on the force, and was his Scout co-leader.  The combination of close ties to a child molester and his participation on a gay website attracted the interest of the Spokane Spokesman Review, which had been tipped off about his online activities and probable screen name and decided to try and find out if the mayor was trolling for boys online.

The newspaper hired an outside firm to investigate. To make a long story short the firm’s representative created a false identity, engaged the person they suspected of being the mayor in conversation, and tried to smoke him out.  The interesting thing is that the fake persona was originally said to be 17, legally underage, and the mayor never made any overtly sexual gestures or comments to "him".  Then the firm had their persona turn 18 and that’s when the mayor seemed to become interested sexually.  He arranged a meeting at a golf course with the fake persona, showed up and waited for 20 minutes (he was photographed by the paper) and then left when the fake persona didn’t show.

In the interviews with Frontline the editor and reporter from the Spokesman Review acknowledge that the pedophile angle didn’t play out in their story (they never found proof of any abuse by West) and they also say that at that point they decided it was a non-story, because even though it might be scandalous that a conservative mayor who had been identified as anti-gay in the past was himself engaging in gay activities, it was really his private business.  But then the mayor suggested to the fake persona that he could get him an unpaid internship with the city and the paper decided that they did indeed have a story since the mayor was abusing his office to provide jobs to young men he met online. 

They ran the story, and despite havng no proof that he had been involved in molesting children at any time, they used the headline: "West tied to sex abuse in 70s, using office to lure young men". The mayor’s career was effectively over and he was outed as either bi-sexual or gay.  Not long after the story broke a college student who’d chatted with West came forward to say that West had gotten him a spot on a commission because of West found him attractive and had told him that it was the only way he could see him (I’m paraphrasing).

All of this happened in 2005, and after refusing to resign West was recalled and voted out in December of that year.  He had a recurrence of colon cancer during the scandal and ended up dying in July, 2006.

Here’s my issue with this whole thing; can we really believe that the paper would have run with this story about abuse of office if it hadn’t involved gay men?  We’re not talking influencing mega-contracts with the city, or high-powered, high-paying jobs.  We’re talking about internships.  And let’s be real about how internships and committee assignments are generally made in the real world; first choice is given to personal connections of the people in power or their benefactors.  So this story probably would have been found on page "B4" if it wasn’t for the gay angle, and I think it’s disingenuous to say otherwise.

Using the sex abuse allegation in the headline was particularly egregious.  In fact that whole angle disappears in follow up stories, but the cat was already out of the bag.  It’s this kind of reporting that lends credence to the belief many people have that the media is biased.  Of course media people are biased, they’re human beings after all, but a media operation that is striving to be objective should avoid giving weight to a story merely because it is sensational. 

And of course in order to remain objective a media operation should try to constrain the inherent, human bias of its members.  That’s why it’s truly disturbing to find a memo from the VP of News at Fox that says, among other things, "And let’s be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled Congress".  In other words the leader of the news operation is mandating they operate by his own bias and saying he wants his people to find him stories that fit his world view. (I know, I know, it’s Fox and what else do you expect.  But as long as they’re pretending to be a news operation and not an entertainment channel we have to treat them as, ahem, newspeople).

In the end that’s what the Spokesman Review did; it started with a premise and when the story ended up not fitting its premise it shoe-horned the square story into its premise’s round hole. Sure the mayor made some mistakes, but had he been doling out internships to pretty 18-22 year old women I don’t think it would have gotten him recalled.  Hell it probably would have won him re-election.

Unfortunately stories that don’t feature titillation, scandal or blood (if it bleeds it leads!) don’t sell newspapers, and objective reporting doesn’t win you a rabid, loyal audience.  As they lay dying the newspapers and traditional networks probably feel that producing crap like this is the only way to stay in business.  Unfortunately I think we’ll see more of this as they struggle to survive. Hopefully we’ll see the growth of a new branch of the fourth estate, one free of the vagaries of quarterly reports to investors, that will wear the mantle of true journalism.  If we don’t I think we’re damned to a lifetime of dumbass blatherers flinging "facts" at us like monkeys hurling poop at zoo visitors.  It’s kind of entertaining until the poop hits you squarely in the face.