Being a guardian of the public’s trust

TONY DODERO

Readers may soon learn that Newport Beach Mayor Steve Bromberg has

severed his relationship with the Daily Pilot, refusing to give our

reporters comments for stories about city government.

I’m not going to get into the reasons why, nor am I going to

discuss the details over who is right or wrong in the disagreement.

But I thought the readers may want to know in the future why we

weren’t quoting the mayor on big stories, since the protocol has

always been to do exactly that.

Government officials refusing to talk to reporters or the media is

nothing new. In Orange County, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas

engaged in a fairly public spat with reporters from our parent

newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, refusing to grant interviews to

staffers there.

That feud went on for some time, though I hear things are just

fine now.

In Baltimore, the Sun, a paper owned by our parent’s parent, the

Tribune Co., filed suit late last year against Maryland Gov. Robert

Ehrlich, who issued a ban prohibiting state officials there from

talking with reporters from that paper.

The suit challenged Ehrlich’s ban on the grounds it was violating

the newspaper’s 1st Amendment rights.

And I really doubt that Richard Nixon, who famously spoke ill of

the press, had a good relationship with the Washington Post after

that paper broke the Watergate scandal.

Over the years, the Daily Pilot has had good and bad relationships

with mayors in either Costa Mesa or Newport Beach.

Through it all, though, we just stick to our mission to provide

our readers with what we hope will be thorough reporting on the

decisions made and actions taken by their government officials.

The Daily Pilot is so much more than that, though. Readers look to

us for reporting on their schools, their churches, their sports teams

and their businesses.

We provide a forum for readers to air their grievances, and every

day we send our reporters out to find the best stories in the

Newport-Mesa community and tell them to our readers.

We may miss things here and there and be guilty of not looking at

the whole picture. But that’s why newspapers are often called the

rough drafts of history. We have time to come back and make the final

draft better the next day.

This week, I was discussing the role of the media in the

journalism class I teach at Orange Coast College.

One of the students asked me why we print certain controversial

things. At one point, he said he understands we do things to sell

newspapers.

I told him that’s not necessarily the case.

The truth is, reporters are reluctant to print information that

will create conflict with their sources, people who they are in

contact with sometimes on a daily basis.

While the story may get them top billing, the first instinct is to

keep everyone happy and avoid the angry phone calls or e-mails in the

morning. I remember as a young reporter, one of my mentors sensed I

was getting too close to a certain school district official.

It was during a time, like today, of deep school budget cutting

and my mentor suggested I do a story on school superintendent

salaries.

To begin, he suggested, I should call my close superintendent

friend and ask him how much he got paid.

Imagine how uncomfortable that phone call was.

Editors aren’t much different. When a reporter is too gung ho, we

sometimes need to rein him or her in. We don’t want to get the angry

call either, especially if our reporter has been unfair.

At the end of the day, though, we have to ask ourselves what is

most important, befriending the powerful or being a guardian of the

public’s trust.

It’s an easy call.

Is it unfortunate when sources get angry with us and refuse to

talk? Sure it is.

But as reporters and editors have learned and continue to learn,

the business of the 1st Amendment and freedom of the press can be

hard to undertake sometimes.

As someone reminded me earlier this week, the Daily Pilot has been

a part of this community for a long, long time and will continue to

be a part of this community long after this latest feud with the

mayor has ended.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

* TONY DODERO is the editor. He welcomes your comments on news

coverage, photography or other newspaper-related issues. If you have

a message or a letter to the editor, call his direct line at (714)

966-4608 or the Readers Hotline (714) 966-4664, send it by e-mail to

tony.dodero@latimes.com or dailypilot@latimes.com, or send it by mail

to 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.