Poco Bravo blog uncovers Arizona Daily Star fabricating a story?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Friend of Blog for Arizona Luke Knipe at Poco Bravo blog has been piecing together a story that the Arizona Daily Star may have fabricated a story by reporter Rob O'Dell about the proposed City of Tucson budget. Letcher: I did not propose 'selling' City Hall | PocoBravo:

The Arizona Daily Star reported on Wednesday, February 24, that Tucson City Manager Mike Letcher proposed selling City Hall.

The Star's report is false.

PocoBravo questioned the accuracy of the dubious report yesterday, pointing out that documents released by Letcher's office do not indicate such a proposal, and that no evidence suggests Letcher indicated this verbally to reporter Rob O'Dell or to anyone else. In a telephone conversation earlier today, Letcher confirmed that he did not propose selling City Hall.

Letcher said that Finance Director Kelly Gottschalk had spoken with O'Dell about sale/leaseback options on certain city properties, and O'Dell had asked her hypothetically if City Hall could be considered such a property. Unaware of the stretch O'Dell was prepared to make, Gottschalk apparently answered in the affirmative, though her answer in no way entailed what O'Dell reported to be proposed by the City Manager:

…he is proposing one-time sell-offs of city land, and sales and lease-backs of City Hall and other public buildings, along with numerous other "Budget Options Balancing System," which Letcher has defined as "BOBs."

Knipe had reported in an earlier post Star report about Letcher proposing 'selling' City Hall may have been fabricated | PocoBravo: 

No proposed sale and lease-back of City Hall, or any specific city building, appears in the 152-page BOBS document issued to the Mayor and Council on Tuesday.

Assuming that O'Dell didn't simply make the story up, he might have been referring to a four-item overview diagram at the bottom of page 20, describing the budget-balancing strategy for fiscal 2011, which concludes with the sentence "Sale of Land/Asset Leaseback/Refinancing/Grants," but in no way refers to City Hall.

Knipe followed up speaking to Mike Letcher by calling Arizona Daily Star Executive Editor Bobbie Jo Buel. Bobbie Jo Buel on bogus Star report: Letcher "told us the story was quite accurate" | PocoBravo:

The Arizona Daily Star reported last Wednesday that City Manager Mike Letcher proposed the sale and leaseback of City Hall, in a story headlined "Letcher proposes 'selling' City Hall."

Letcher made no such proposal, in writing or otherwise, and confirmed this to PocoBravo on Sunday.

Bobbie Jo Buel, who sometimes goes by the full name Bobbie Jo Buel Carter (she is married to local developer David Carter), is the Star's Executive Editor and the newspaper's second-in-command under Editor/Publisher John Humenik. She was reached by telephone on Sunday.

Here's a transcript from PocoBravo's audio recording of the call:

BJB: Star news, this is Bobbi Jo.

LK: Hi there Bobbi Jo, this is Luke with PocoBravo.com

BJB: Hello.

LK: Hello. I was wondering if you guys were going to run a correction for Wednesday's story about Letcher saying he wanted to sell City Hall?

BJB: If we were going to run a correction… no, he's told us the story was quite accurate.

LK: I spoke with him this morning and he said he never made any such proposal.

BJB: Oh, well thanks for bringing it to my attention.

LK: Ok, are you guys going to run a correction?

BJB: Well I don't know, we'll have to research it.

LK: Ok, um… if you do find out that he never made that proposal, will you run the correction?

BJB: We correct anything that we make that's an error.

* * *

I don't take stories that affect folks' credibility lightly, so I called Buel yet again, moments before posting this story, to ask if she was really 100% sure she wanted to stick with her "he's told us the story was quite accurate" bit.

An angry Buel squawked "lying is not something I'm in the habit of!" and slammed down the phone.

(No one's saying Buel's in the habit of lying, or at least I'm not. But her newspaper's credibility problems are no secret. I wonder if she realizes: if the Star's report—including its headline—were accurate, the question would have never been asked in the first place.)

Keep after them Luke. I can tell you from experience that the folks at the Daily Star get angry when you question the accuracy of their reporting or biased headlines. The "blow off" is not unusual. It's like we're just supposed to take their word for it and never question.