One key point that has been made in The Turner Report over and over is that the deaths of prominent citizens are not covered properly by area media. When a newsworthy person dies, whether it be a person who is newsworthy for a lifetime of accomplishments, or someone who became well-known because of a connection to a news event, death is always an important and major event in a community and newspapers that treat the dead with the respect they deserve are the newspapers that earn a loyal following.
Two examples of how not to do it were the Lamar Democrat's coverage of O'Sullivan Industries founder Tom O'Sullivan's death earlier this year, and the Neosho Daily News's recent coverage of the death of former Neosho Mayor Col. Jack Cornett.
The Daily did not even put Col. Cornett's death on page one. It ran his obituary on page two and never ran a separate story. This is not the way to treat the death of a man who served as mayor, helped create the present library, taught at Crowder for several years, and was a long-time businessman in the city.
The Democrat did run Tom O'Sullivan's death on page one, but not enough in a prominent enough fashion, considering Mr. O'Sullivan created the company that has been the biggest employer in the city for four decades and he was a longtime member of the board of education and civic leader.
I also have criticized The Joplin Globe's coverage of the death of its longtime reporter/columnist Gary Garton, who certainly deserved a page-one tribute in the newspaper whose pages he enlivened for decades. The Globe chose to run a photo and outdated story of the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake controversy on the same day Mr. Garton died. A small photo of Mr. Garton was featured above the banner with the direction to go to page three to see the story. He deserved better than that.
One newspaper editor/publisher who knows the importance of the proper coverage of death in a local newspaper is Bob Foos at the Webb City Sentinel.
Civic leader Robert Baker's death received prominent page one coverage in Friday's Sentinel. Mr. Baker was a former mayor, was responsible for the purchase of the land that became King Jack Park, served on the school board, and was a founder of the accounting firm of Myers, Baker, Rife, and Denham.
Foos' coverage honored the long and distinguished career of Mr. Baker, let the community know that a man's accomplishments are going to be remembered by his local newspaper after he dies, and did what a community newspaper is supposed to do.
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One of the worst things that has come from the squabble between Cable One and Nexstar (which you can read more about in earlier Turner Report entries) is the awareness that Nexstar is perfectly willing to allow the news teams at KODE and KSNF to prostitute themselves in order to promote the company view.
There is a big difference between running advertising saying that Cable One should fork over the money for the local stations' programming, and running advertising disguised as news. That was exactly what KODE was doing the other day when it showed footage of protesters who were upset with Cable One. I am curious about these protesters. Who are they? Who organized them? Quite frankly, this does not seem to be the kind of thing that would have people taking to the streets. The TV stations have also made it appear that there is only one side to the issue. Normally, that would be the expected behavior for one company that is having a dispute with another company, but news is a different animal.
KODE and KSNF have an obligation to explain these complicated issues to their viewers and neither one has stepped up to the plate to do so.
Maybe they think the public won't remember this or that the public doesn't know what constitutes a lapse in journalistic ethics. The dumbest thing you can ever do is to underestimate the public.
And how about these dish network advertisements that are disguised as news? Unfortunately, KODE and KSN are not the only ones guilty of that. The Joplin Globe recently ran a feature on former weatherman Jeff Welborn's company had gave a percentage of how many more satellite dishes he was selling since this controversy came up. In this case, percentages only tell us part of the story. A car salesman can have a great day increasing his sales from one car to four cars, but it's still only four cars that have been sold. How many satellite dishes has he actually sold. Have there been 100 or 200 new ones sold? Maybe. I don't have any idea from the Globe story, but I have my doubts. This sounds more like the Globe inadvertently helping Welborn and the TV stations create a groundswell for a product by making it sound like everyone is buying it.
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Just a hint for a story that has not been covered by The Globe or any of the TV stations. If the documents filed by the lawyers for the Webb City R-7 School District in the Brad Mathewson civil rights lawsuit Wednesday are accurate, it seems hard to believe that he just began causing problems after he came to Webb City. (That is, of course, stressing that the documents are accurate). A little research into his days at Fayetteville High School would seem to be in order. I was surprised when that was not done by the Northwest Arkansas Times, which wrote almost totally about Mathewson's Webb City controversy and very little about his time in Arkansas.
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One of the biggest stories to hit Barton County a decade ago was when a deputy was found guilty of embezzling a substantial amount of money from the Barton County Sheriff's Department. She was placed on probation and required to repay the money, which she did.
One of the biggest stories to hit Jasper County in recent years was the resignation of Sheriff Bill Pierce after a string of stories in the Globe revealed how he was making money off the commissary at the jail, and a few other problems, which definitely all appeared to be criminal in nature.
The Globe did the right thing in keeping the heat on Pierce. The Missouri Attorney General's office did the wrong thing by not filing criminal charges against him, just as the Barton County courts did the wrong thing by not giving the deputy prison time. When someone who is sworn to enforce the law breaks an oath and walks on the criminal side, that person should be sent right to jail, do not pass GO, do not collect $200 (or more if you really know how to run a commissary).
I would like to see the Globe take the same approach with the Ron Doerge situation in Newton County. Doerge's comments that the ethical violation he has been found guilty of was actually done by someone else are not going to stand up to scrutiny. Who is this phantom person? If he is actually the subject of a criminal investigation, when can we expect to see charges filed? How can Doerge actually say he did not use the office computer for election purposes when he has already admitted that he wrote the questions for John McCormack's radio sheriff candidate forum? The Globe and the Daily need to begin interviewing every disgruntled employee (and heck, just for good measure, talk to a few gruntled ones, as well). The election of a sheriff is an important thing for Newton County and for a man who is charged with enforcing the law to show such contempt for the people he is sworn to protect, well...that is a story that needs to be told.
And how about the situation in McDonald County. Someone stole money from the sheriff's department, according to a recent state audit. Who is this person? Has she been charged? If not, let's get something done. Why has there been no followup on this in the media?