MEDIA WATCH
Incomplete reporting
Greg Pearson

The Richmond Times-Dispatch (RTD) is doing it again - telling you the part of the story they want you to know and ignoring the rest. In a Mar. 16 story, it spotlighted the success of Henrico Supervisor Patricia O'Bannon's effort to get the Henrico County leadership to broadcast its board meetings. We salute her too, though Chesterfield has been practicing that form of open government since 1983. Yes, that's a full 25 years earlier than Henrico. What the RTD failed to report - again - is who on the Henrico board or in the county government has been blocking all those prior year broadcasts.

Reporters Katherine Calos and Will Jones have both covered the Chesterfield board, so they should know how woefully behind Chesterfield Henrico has been. Will the RTD ever report who delayed Henrico's entrance into open government, or is that another example of favoritism toward Henrico?

The next day (Mar. 17), the RTD practiced the time-honored self-flagellation that some daily and weekly newspapers succumb to when it comes to awards: ignore the other newspapers. Because good journalism practices were abandoned, the readers were left with the impression that only the RTD won awards at the Virginia Press Association's annual gathering. (No, we're not talking about our newspaper.) The RTD devoted three-quarters of a page to its successes without naming any other daily newspaper.

To be sure, the staff of the RTD won a lot of awards, but so did other dailies. Actually, the Virginia Pilot in Virginia Beach and the Roanoke Times - both in the same contest category as the RTD - scored more points for awards, but the RTD kept them nameless.

Here's an award-winning story idea for the RTD for the next Virginia Press contest: a series of stories identifying the Henrico leaders who were able to suppress open government for 25 years by not broadcasting their meetings.