Well! I've never had this happen to me before. A Nashua Telegraph reporter called me at home this morning to debate my online comments about his articles concerning the "Duckgate" controversy in Nashua. Apparently he thinks I have been unfair to his reporting. He even made a mention that jobs are on the line, and that led me to think that he was worried for his. Boy! I never knew my opinion meant so much. There are plenty of people who tell me it doesn't.
However:
Just after 12:00 noon today, my home phone rang, displaying a Boston number. It was Jim Haddadin, reporter for the Telegraph. He was polite and asked to talk to me about his reporting. I consented, and we had a conversation.
It turned out that the conversation was more of a debate. We had a ten minute discussion (approximately). It ended on reasonably amicable terms.
The basic outline of his reporting is that, while driving, NH Democratic Rep. David Campbell of Nashua struck and killed some ducks outside of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nashua. A witness became outraged and confronted Campbell. Campbell left the scene. The police were called. Campbell was eventually interviewed and fined for killing ducks out of season.
But that's not all. What we've learned since the initial reporting is that Campbell admitted to having had a couple of drinks just before he hit the ducks. It turns out that, after he left the scene, he called his buddy, Nashua Police Commissioner Thomas Pappas, to whisk him away and clean up his mess.
As we learn more, the whole thing stinks. It's becoming apparent that Campbell probably had more than just a couple of drinks and is now concerned with covering it up. Witnesses have said that Campbell appeared to be drunk. Public corruption might be involved with the police commissioner's part.
I've been critical of the paper's reporting. Even more, I've been critical of the paper's editorial slant in the matter.
I don't think that my criticism has been unfair. I do admit that it has been uninformed, and that lack of information now undergirds further basis for criticizing the paper's reporting. I feel like I was led out onto a limb only to have the paper saw it off.
Initially, the story was presented as being one of animal cruelty. Now it's one of drunk driving and public corruption.
The first report was published on Dec. 29th. It made no mention of alcohol. It discussed a single witness who expressed outrage. No other witnesses were mentioned. The number of ducks injured and killed were characterized in a general way. We were given very few specifics. It wasn't until January 11th that we had a hard number for ducks killed and a mention of alcohol.
Based on the early reporting, I felt that Campbell had been unfairly targeted by the Telegraph. I read nothing there that I thought deserved the level of outrage the reporting was generating with its emphasis on killed ducks and vagueness of details. On December 31st, the paper published an editorial, "When Politicians and Ducks Collide." Based purely on a "he said/he said" narrative of only two witnesses, the editorial's concluding sentence was "'Duck killer' is probably synonomous with 'career killer.'"
That was unfair. Nothing they had reported indicated that the incident was anything other than an accident. The editorial plus the slew of letters jumping on Campbell as a duck killer were overreactions for the facts as they had been presented at that time. Nothing rational justified it to me. I concluded that the paper was trumping up the incident for a partisan motivation because, when the Telegraph sold last year, it passed into the biased hands of Ogden Newspapers Inc.
The Telegraph now publishes the columns of rightist types as fringey as Brent Bozell, Thomas Sowell, Rich Lowry and Ben Shapiro. Their balance is about three liberal columns for five rightist ones. They publish rightist columnists who are more influential than the liberals they let in print. The Telegraph got a "First Amendment Award" from the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications, "founded in 1999 by Mrs. Loeb, late president and publisher of The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News newspapers of New Hampshire." The Telegraph is a right-leaning newspaper dressed in moderate clothing.
Saying, with no other substance to support special condemnation, that an automobile accident involving wildlife is a "career killer" for a Democratic politician when wildlife accidents are commonplace is an exaggeration. Given the Telegraph's background and the weakness of their case against Campbell, it was reasonable at that point to conclude that partisan bias was their motivation for jumping to that conclusion. Then came a rain of letters the Telegraph published from people you wouldn't normally associate with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and a lot of online comments about Democrats.
The reporting initially led people to believe that Campbell was a bad guy for striking the ducks. I was willing to cut Campbell some slack because:
1) There was no evidence to indicate intent. Campbell had an accident. I've killed birds without trying to avoid them because I thought they'd fly away. I thought that's what happened with Campbell.
2) Killing birds is no big deal. Our society lets people shoot them out of the sky. That's not any more humane than running them over. Some ducks are injured without being killed when hunting. They suffer. We, as a society of laws, accept it.
3) Campbell left the scene. So what? There are no laws requiring motorists to call the police and wait until they arrive when someone hits a raccoon or skunk. The ducks, just like raccoons and skunks, were wild.
But what we have since learned after the early days of the reporting is that Campbell was drinking. That wasn't reported at first, and it completely changes the complexion of the story. Commissioner Pappas' intervention on behalf of his friend makes it all much worse. It's slimy.
I won't defend Campbell. I can't. His actions now look to be completely indefensible.
But they didn't at first.
And I blame the Telegraph for that.
