After submitting a comment to the Morrison County Record regarding the story written by Matt Perkins about my employment at Morrison County United Way, Matt called to say that he was sorry I was disappointed in his coverage and more or less passed the buck to the organizations editors. His call was followed by a phone call from Tom West who passed the buck to the papers attorney. Both Tom and Matt indicated that a number of items couldn’t be written about because they weren’t documented.
Okay, lets run with that theory:
Their decision to use the word terminated as a headline. In my press release I made it clear that my job status was unknown. The United Way asked me to voluntarily resign and I refused…beyond that it goes to a board vote. I asked for minutes to the meeting that this vote supposedly took place but Board President Teresa Scmitz refused to provide them even though board minutes are public documents. Matt Perkins said that he asked for the minutes to the meeting reflecting my termination from Steve Reger and he too was denied, even though Steve Reger is the boards secretary. While staff at the Record claim to need documentation, it seems that they didn’t require any whatsoever when they elected the language used in their article.
The article also state that I “claim” to have been offered severance, when Matt was provided access to the actual documents substainiating this “claim”. So why word it like there was no proof where there clearly was.
In contrast the article states Steve Reger said that Morrison County United Way is as strong as ever. Steve provided no documentation for his “claim” regarding organizational health in fact public documents such as the organizations 990 show that the organization closed 2007 with a revenue short fall of 30 thousand, not to mention the revenue short fall the organization was accumulating in 2008.
Similarly, when Noreen Dunnells states that St. Cloud and Morrison County United Way are two separate organizations, Matt quotes this without the words “Noreen claims,” even though I brought him to United Way of America’s website where they are now listing Morrison County United Way as an shared area with St. Cloud…but he completely leave this information out of the story. He uses firm language to quote Noreen’s unsubstantiated claim but never mention the discrepancy this poses with the United Way of America’s webstite. He references my statement as if I provided him with no supporting evidence when the opposite was true.
What it really boils down to is this, the Record decides how it wants to influence its readership, then writes the story accordingly. While the need for documentation sounded reasonable, under careful scrutiny that claim doesn’t hold up.
Also noted, the original figures posted in the online story yesterday were in the ball park of 341,000.00 in 2006, down to 309,000,00 in 2007. I don’t claim that these figures are accurate but their close and now they’ve been replaced by figures that only show a spread of about 10 thousand. Why the change, who authorized it and once printed isn’t it proper to let the story stand and add a correction or put a strike through the incorrect data adding the correct data. Yet here we are with new figures no explanation and the old figures have disappeared….did they provide documentation or did they just make a “claim.”
I initially gave the folks at the Record the benefit of the doubt but the more I looked at documents available and the language they attributed to me in contrast to that of Steve Reger and Noreen Dunnells it was amply apparent that the Record was deliberately undermining the credibility of my assertion by not noting the documents available that supported my claims.
