MPBN Slow to Respond to Information Request
Public radio ignores a member of the public: Jonathan Reisman of Cooper is a conservative activist, former congressional candidate, and teacher of environmental policy at the University of Maine at Machias. On October 7, Reisman sent the following e-mail to Jim Dowe, president of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network:
“I am writing to request information on how much support environmental groups have given MPBN since 2001. I want to know the level of financial support and in-kind support/volunteer efforts given to MPBN from the
following groups:
Natural Resources Council of Maine
Maine Audubon
Sierra Club
Environment Maine
Cool Air-Clean Planet
Maine Peoples Alliance
Nature Conservancy”
More than a month passed without a response, so Reisman sent a second e-mail (which he copied to me) repeating his request and “formally invoking Maine’s Freedom of Access Act guaranteeing access to public records.”
Again, nothing.
On Nov. 29, I e-mailed Dowe and MPBN vice president and chief financial officer John Isacke to ask why Reisman was getting the cold shoulder. No word from Dowe, but Isacke replied promptly, saying this was the first he’d heard of the matter. “While I do not believe that the information requested is subject to a FOAA request,” he wrote, “we will provide it to him nonetheless.”
A few hours later, Isacke sent Reisman a detailed accounting of the environmental groups’ contributions, which amounted to a combined total of about $70,000 over the last decade, a fraction of a percent of total donations during that period.
And there the matter rests. Except for lingering questions about why the president of a news organization that advocates openness in government and transparency in the use of public funds would ignore Reisman’s initial e-mail for almost two months, and why it took a query from a media critic to prompt one of his subordinates into action.
Just because it’s public radio doesn’t mean you can steal its stuff: On Nov. 22, Keith Shortall, news director at MPBN radio, produced a story about an increase in the number of Maine homeowners falling behind on their mortgage payments.
The following day, Staho.com, a news Web site that boasts of its “great team of regular writers,” posted a nearly identical story.
The major difference was the Staho piece was credited to Daniel Martin, said to be the site’s “financial expert.” Martin lifted whole sentences from the MPBN story and made it appear as if he’d interviewed people he never spoke with.
Shortall discovered the unauthorized appropriation of his material when he checked to see if Google News had picked up his original report.
I sent both Martin and Staho.com an e-mail asking for an explanation. No reply from Martin, but Staho responded:
“We've contacted Keith and apologized. We've added a link to his article, but we are ready to remove the article entirely at your request.
“It's not our practice to do that, it was a mistake. We are truly sorry.”
Adding a link doesn’t mitigate plagiarism. The piece should have been removed from the site promptly, replaced with an apology and explanation. And it wouldn’t have hurt if Staho decided to find a new “financial expert,” one with some background in journalistic ethics.
Moving and management shifts at MaineToday Media: The Kennebec Journal will be moving to new offices somewhere in Augusta by March of next year. MaineToday Media, the paper’s parent company, announced in the KJ’s Dec. 1 edition that it has sold its Western Avenue home to Crisis & Counseling, a non-profit agency dealing with mental health and substance abuse issues.
The sale price wasn’t disclosed, but the agency’s CEO said it paid less than the property’s assessed value of $3.3 million.
MTM had been seeking a buyer for the building since consolidating its printing operations at its South Portland plant earlier this year.
Even more significant than the real estate transaction were several personnel moves also announced at MaineToday.
Dale Duncan, former publisher of the Indianapolis Star, was named president and chief operating officer of both the KJ and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville. Duncan joined MTM earlier this year on what was supposed to be a temporary basis to direct political coverage.
In other moves, KJ editor and publisher Tony Ronzio’s responsibilities were expanded, as he assumes those same posts at the Sentinel. Former Sentinel editor and publisher Bill Thompson will become editorial page director for all the MTM papers.
On the cyber side of the business, the company’s new vice president of new media and digital operations, Tim Archambault, has resigned. Scott Wasser, executive editor of MaineToday’s Portland Press Herald, will assume his duties.
What’s it all mean?
On the plus side, Ronzio will have broader authority over the news content of the papers, which should bring some life to the anemic pages of the Sentinel. Thompson’s title change looks as if he’s been kicked upstairs, but at the least, the move should result in some local editorials finally reappearing in the Augusta and Waterville papers, which have been relying for more than a year on opinion pieces written by Portland staffers.
Duncan got high marks from some MTM insiders for bringing some direction to the papers’ haphazard election coverage. Whether he does the same to managing the central Maine papers remains to be seen.
On the minus side, Wasser has seemed disconnected from day-to-day operations since arriving at the Press Herald shortly after MaineToday purchased the paper in June 2009. That can’t be a good sign for an online operation that requires constant monitoring.
Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
The views expressed on this Web site are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Down East Enterprise or its employees.
more about Big Environment lobbying(advocacy in MPR speak)
I assume my first post, err, comment was 'lost'.
I'll recreate it and post again, since your readers are probably unaware of the relationship between large powerful environmental organizations like the NATURE CONSERVANCY; the desecration of nature preserves in their trust by large wind farmers; and various IRS audits & investigations into the deductions awarded land owners well described in the Washington Post's serious on the N.C. as a member of the 'DIRTY DOZEN'.
There is also the growing scandal Professor Reisman alluded to, where political advocacy groups like the N.C. who have spent tens of millions to elect Democrats will 'donate' money to MPBN who in turn will treat their candidates very favorably.
Then it gets more interesting.
The N.C. has authored studies and held forums on the safety of large wind turbines. In turn it has allowed wind farms to locate on its trust lands, i.e. Buffalo Ridge in the Dakotas. Couple this with the donations to various groups in Colorado and you have a set of connected dots between a very powerful environmental organization, the wind industry, and wealthy land owners seeking tax exemptions.
...and you wondered why FIRST WIND has donated so much money to environmental organizations?
Political ties between the NATURE CONSERVANCY & MPBN
There is a scandal lurking in Maine with the deals between FIRST WIND, MAINE PUBLIC BROADCASTING, and well-heeled groups like the NATURE CONSERVANCY who have 'enabled' wind farming to co-exist with their nature trusts.
One problem are the huge tax breaks on environmental easements that have prompted the IRS to audit NC and other 'big green' organizations --indeed, the Washington Post ran a whole series that was ignored in Maine Media;, but resonated all the way to Colorado and the Buffalo Ridge wind farm on a nature preserve in N. Dakota. see http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/2004/articles/irs_to_audit_nature_...
The details are staggering:
"The audit was triggered by a report in the Washington Post in 2003 about the conservation organization (followed by an entire series on the organization, here). The report startled members of the Conservacy by revealing that executives on the board of the Conservanccy had paid millions in environmental fines. It also revealed close ties to oil and mining companies and chemical manufacturers and mishandled profit-making activities by the Conservancy, including oil drilling and hotels. Land bought for conservation purposes might be preserved or it might be sold, in part, for development, with some restrictions. Even worse, the report revealed a tax dodge that the Conservancy had used in some of its land purchases. The charity would purchase a parcel of land but then sell it at a loss, based on some development restrictions, to a buyer, often one of its own trustees. The buyer would then make cash contributions to the Conservancy in an amount approximately equal to the Conservancy's loss on the sale. By arranging the sale and contribution in this way, the Conservancy would be essentially whole after the transaction, but the buyer would benefit by having a charitable tax deduction for the cash gift. The ultimate loser was the federal fisc. See more about these deals and the IRS's response to them in this Washington Post story from 2004."
Let me point out that these contraversal easements have been finally removed from the IRS's 'dirty dozen' list
of "abusive transactions"...see “Conservation Easements Removed from "Dirty Dozen" List. http://www.landtrustalliance.org/policy/taxincentives/ce-audits/irs-audi...
The foul odor lingers till today:
Then there are the links between donations to public broadcasting by wind corporations underwriting programs which extol the virtues of wind and downplay the concerns of neighbors and others......a hundred thousand here; a hundred there and pretty soon you have ethical and moral corruption of some of America's once respected organizations.
The Nature Conservancy was a major donor to the Democratic Party and their causes over the past few years; and unless MPBN is a money laundering operation, one has to look askance at favorable treatment of their candidates and causes or is it 'hold your nose' all the way to the bank?
It is time to expose this moral decay; time for MAINEWIKILEAKS to release the IRS audits, time to make the inner workings of MPBN visible and show people how underwriting results in favorable publicity, which in turn paves the way for permits and subsidies from the wealthy policy makers who are their core constituency.