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Easley assails some newspapers' treatment of his administration
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Gov. Mike Easley says that the 24-hour news cycle puts pressure on newspapers to run “gotcha” stories.
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Published: December 31, 2008
RALEIGH - Outgoing Gov. Mike Easley is complaining about how he and his administration have been treated by some North Carolina newspapers.
In an interview with the Greensboro News & Record, Easley said that the 24-hour news cycle is putting pressure on newspapers to run what he calls "gotcha" stories, some of which have scrutinized state government.
The governor, whose term will end in January, complained about the Raleigh News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer. Both papers are owned by McClatchy Co., based in Sacramento, Calif. The Raleigh newspaper has written stories about problems with the state's probation and mental-health systems.
In audio posted on the Greensboro paper's Web site, Easley also said that the series on probation problems wasn't fair to Correction Secretary Theodis Beck.
"Thirty-three years in public service, and he's got three weeks left, and they decide they're going to do this hatchet job on him," Easley said.
John Drescher, the executive editor of The News & Observer, said that the paper was doing its job by running tough stories.
"Gov. Easley might be the only person in North Carolina who thinks our probation system is working well and that the state is monitoring probationers as it should," Drescher said. "The correction secretary himself has acknowledged the state needs to do a better job."
Easley said that under Beck's administration the number of probationers who killed after being released from prison declined 25 percent from the previous administration. The News & Observer series said that 580 probationers had killed since 2000, and said that the system lost track of thousands of criminals.
Easley spokesman Seth Effron told The News & Observer on Monday that failing to include the 25 percent figure in the stories was "dishonest." Easley declined to talk to reporters who worked on the probation series and refused to talk to the newspaper about his earlier comments.
The audio, posted by the Greensboro paper on Christmas Day, had Easley saying that the unending news cycle means that radio and television reports ask questions about stories published by newspapers.
"The trick is to try to get away from that," Easley said.
The governor said he believes that newspapers were critical of him because of a dispute over whether state employees should delete e-mail. After the mental- health series was published in February, it became clear that e-mail was being deleted.
Ten news organizations, including The Associated Press, sued the administration, contending that the deletion of e-mail violates state records law.
Easley said that keeping e-mail is costly, and he thinks that the news organizations wanted to see messages that were confidential. Drescher said that the parties in the lawsuit are in discussions and that all state government e-mail should be considered a public record.
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