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October 16, 2006 07:22 PM UTC

Salzman Slams Crummy Journalism

  • 6 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

You may have missed this over the weekend because it’s hard to find online at the Rocky Mountain News, but columnist Jason Salzman slammed Denver Post reporter Karen Crummy for the way she pursued a story about Bill Ritter’s record with plea bargains. We’ve long heard complaints from politicos who are scared of Crummy – and for good reason, apparently:

‘I’d rather not talk to you,” Denver Post reporter Karen Crummy told me Wednesday when I called to discuss her Oct. 1 story headlined, “Ritter helped immigrants stay.”

That’s awfully hypocritical, coming from a reporter, I told her.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

Anything she says “can be taken certain ways,” Crummy told me, and referred me to her editors.

If I were Crummy, I wouldn’t want to defend the article either, because I’d be ashamed of it. But I’d talk about it anyway. It’s part of her job.

Crummy’s front-page piece focused on 152 plea bargains negotiated between Bill Ritter’s district attorney’s office and immigrants, allowing them to “plead guilty to trespassing on agricultural land instead of the crimes they were actually accused of” and, at least in some cases, avoid deportation.

Crummy’s tactics in reporting the article make all journalists look bad.

If you’re a reporter, you want to be straightforward with the people you interview, so that they can respond directly to the issues involved – and you can report their answers in the proper context.

But in reporting the Ritter piece, Crummy apparently played “gotcha” journalism, and the article suffered for it.

Crummy interviewed two sources quoted in the article without telling them what she was working on – and later printed their comments accurately but without proper context.

Comments

6 thoughts on “Salzman Slams Crummy Journalism

  1. Every time I see an article by Crummy, I figure it is just more political punditry. At least they give her a byline, so you know what to expect.

    I can’t help but wonder if there are other stories for which we aren’t given this warning.

    Really, this sort of hackery should be run in Op/Ed, where it belongs. It is truly shameful tha she solicits opinions and quotes wihout giving context to the interviewees. Maybe she’s trying to get the credentials to work for Faux News.

  2. sounds like Salzman talked to her about as long as she talked to her interviewees.  At least he was honest about why he called, which is more than she can say.
    Lying to get a story is just shameful.

  3. Jason Salzman has been a joke since he began writing his column in the Rocky every other Saturday.

    He is a self-proclaimed liberal and a blatantly obvious left-winger who pretends to understand journalism.

    Saturday’s column was the most partisan he’s written yet, and that’s saying a lot because, I think, most of his columns are partisan. I guess the reason the editors put it into the paper is because he defended Ritter’s indefensible softness on illegal immigration.

    Chances are that the Salzman column only made more people mad at Ritter—people who hadn’t been following the story and weren’t aware of Ritter’s assistance to illegals until they read the Salzman diatribe.

    I read Crummy’s article, which was well done and very professionally reported. She had a scoop and reported the facts with no opinion, which may be a first for the Post.

    Salzman complains that Crummy didn’t tell sources what she was working on.

    Gimme a break. If she’d told Silverman and other sources what she was working on, they would have lied to her and run to Ritter, hoping he could stop the story. When a reporter is working on a controversial story, she has to work smart to get information and confirmation of information provided by others.

    That Silverman and another source backtracked after the story was published shows what would have happened if Crummy had told those sources what she was working on when she was reporting the story.

    Crummy worked smart, which is why Salzman and his friends in the Democratic party are unhappy.

    If this had been an expose of BWB, you wouldn’t have heard a peep of complaint about the reporting out of the Ritter camp, just as you haven’t from the BWB folks.

    Since the story broke, the Ritter camp has focused on discrediting it rather than on admitting that it was wrong to protect illegal immigrants charged with crimes. They are playing the Slick Willlie game, and it may make a lot of voters mad.

    It certainly is making me reconsider my plan to vote against BWB.

    Salzman is chairman of some Media tracking center, and he’s certainly undermined its credibility with his total lack of objectivity and his ingenuous demands that Crummy not do her job.

    Meanwhile, it appears the Ritter Administration is getting off to a sour start with reporters on the Denver Post, and, probably, the rest of the state’s media.

    Reporters don’t suffer hypocrits kindly—not even lefty hypocrits.

    1. Controversial is one thing. Lying to people so they say what you want them to say is another matter – and it’s not journalism. 

      And I’ll believe you’re voting for anyone *other* than BWB when hell freezes over.

  4. she’s lazy. absolutely refuses to do her own research.  and she’s only looking for the front page stories.

    I won’t miss her when the DP finally fires her.

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