July 30, 2013 12:12 PM UTC

Again, What The Hell Is Wrong With The Pueblo Chieftain?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Independent's John Tomasic reports, also noted by our friend Jason Salzman yesterday:

In the storm of passions that erupted this spring in Colorado around proposed state gun-control laws, The Pueblo Chieftain made little attempt to hide its opposition and blasted Pueblo Democratic Senator Angela Giron for supporting the measures…

On Sunday, activist group ProgressNow Colorado reported that Stafford and at least two other Chieftain newsroom executives — Assistant Publisher Jane Rawlings and Production Director Dave Dammann — signed petitions to have Giron recalled. The group says the signatures amount to a breach of professional ethics.

“Presented with clear evidence of an unethical conflict of interest, ProgressNow today called on The Pueblo Chieftain to disclose to its readers that several members of upper management at the paper signed the recall petition against Sen. Angela Giron,” the group wrote in a release.

Stafford and Dammann didn’t return messages seeking comment Monday.

Giron special-election campaign manager Jennie Peek-Dunstone said the news about The Chieftain comes as little surprise.

“We certainly have been aware there’s a problem there. We think it’s important to have an unbiased paper. These revelations call into question again the nature of the [Chieftain’s] coverage… We’ll leave that question for others to answer. The Senator is focusing on knocking on doors and talking to voters.”

We've written about the Pueblo Chieftain's troubles with basic accuracy in both newsroom reporting as well as opinion coverage a number of times over the years. During the 2011 off-year election cycle, Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz joined with Denver to fight off a lawsuit from Secretary of State Scott Gessler, a move the Chieftain opposed to the point of grossly misreporting the big success Ortiz enjoyed turning out so-called "inactive" voters. This year, the Chieftain totally botched reporting of the court battle over gun safety bills passed this year, inventing details and attributing motives regarding the new magazine limit bill seemingly out of whole cloth.

As for upper management at the Chieftain having signed the recall petition against Sen. Angela Giron, and family members having donated to the recall campaign as well as her Republican opponent? Tomasic turns to an expert:

Fred Brown, longtime Denver Post politics reporter and Vice chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics committee, wrote the Society’s position paper on questions surrounding journalist political involvement. He thinks public disclosure in this case would have been a baseline requirement.

“Anybody associated with the news room, with objective reporting, signing a petition like that? That should be forbidden,” he said. “You don’t get involved… If you’re going to sign something like that, you’ve got to tell somebody, everybody.” [Pols emphasis]

As of this writing, we're not aware that the Chieftain has told anybody, or even responded to questions.

Wouldn't you say this paper's 50,000 readers deserve better?