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April 8, 2012

Full Disclosure

Dear Washingtonians:

Happy Passover and happy Easter.

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The bywords of the reporting trade are “disclosure” and “the public’s right to know.” That is, until it comes to the inner workings of the newsroom and the “private,” “personal” lives of the people who work there. See below.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Professional Ethics, The Washington Post, and Mike DeBonis, Part 2
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

In Wednesday’s issue of themail, I wrote that Washington Post reporter and blogger Mike DeBonis had for the past three years been dating Dena Iverson. During that time, DeBonis worked as the Washington City Paper’s Loose Lips columnist before moving to the Post in May 2010 as a reporter and blogger on local District politics. Iverson, meanwhile, worked as a senior press and communications person and a lead spokesman in a variety of positions in Mayor Fenty’s administration (as press secretary to Mayor Fenty, as spokesperson for DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and as communications director for the DC Department of Health). She also worked in Mayor Fenty’s reelection campaign in 2010, and most recently was the press and public relations director for Sekou Biddle’s 2012 campaign for an at-large seat on the city council.

Over the past few days, I’ve been asked whether this is just a titillating piece of gossip, or whether it has more serious implications. I’ve been asked whether I thought that DeBonis and/or the Post and the City Paper should have disclosed his dating relationship to their readers. For me, there are five central issues: what did the Post know about their relationship? When? What did it do to erect a fire wall to avoid a conflict of interest? Why didn’t the Post and the City Paper inform their readers about a conflict? And why did both publications allow DeBonis to cover issues and write stories despite obvious conflicts?

In a telephone conversation I had with DeBonis on Thursday, he maintained that who he dated was a personal matter that did not require disclosure. Usually, who a reporter dates isn’t anybody else’s business. Who a food critic dates doesn’t matter to me, unless the critic dates a chef or restaurateur and then reviews his restaurant. The chef’s competitors may also wonder how the food critic’s relationship affects reviews of them. In this case, the paper should have disclosed the relationship to its readers, so that they could judge for themselves whether they thought the relationship affected the reporter’s coverage. DeBonis and Iverson are both in the business of politics, and the readers should have been told of their connection.

Erik Wemple, who writes below, was the editor of the City Paper when DeBonis was its Loose Lips columnist, and he writes that public disclosure wasn’t necessary because he was aware of the relationship and managed DeBonis’ writing. Last week, when I wrote to DeBonis’ editor at the Post, he referred me to Eliezer Reyes, who described himself in a telephone conversation with me as DeBonis’ supervising editor. Reyes told me that DeBonis did “come to us and tell us” about his relationship with Iverson, and insisted that, “You should know that he [DeBonis] did nothing wrong.” He would not elaborate, but he repeatedly insisted that DeBonis did not write about the 2012 at-large councilmember race at all, and said that during the 2010 mayoral race, “Nikita Stewart covered Gray and Tim Craig covered Fenty,” and that “DeBonis did not cover Fenty at all.” Later that day, the Post’s public relations/communications office, informed of Reyes’ response, wrote that, “We have nothing further to add.”

In covering the District, the Washington Post frequently writes about ethics and conflicts of interest as they relate to public officials and employees of the District government. In those instances, neither Post nor City Paper reporters would accept such a response. If a city councilmember voted to give city grants to a girlfriend or boyfriend, and then said that the matter had been reviewed internally in his council office and found to have been proper, and therefore the dating relationship didn’t have to be disclosed to the public, no reporter would buy that story. Why should we accept it from a reporter?

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DeBonis
Erik Wemple, ewemple@gmail.com

One of [Dorothy’s] questions was “What did the City Paper know and when did it know it.” That’s a question that’s common in delving into scandal. But to suppose that there is anything scandalous about two young people with similar professional interests developing a relationship beyond the boundaries of their jobs is unfair to Mike DeBonis and Dena Iverson. Though I don’t know the details of the relationship, it’s clear that they met through their respective jobs relating to DC politics. Things apparently went from there. That’s a dog-bites-man story. People with proximate interests date one another: law students date law students; restaurant servers date chefs; reporters date flacks and bureaucrats. Happens all the time.

Mike DeBonis told me about this issue once he was pretty certain that it was something real. At a larger news organization, I, as editor, could have transferred DeBonis to the Johannesburg bureau. At City Paper, there was no choice. DeBonis is a beast of DC politics; he was not changing beats. So we managed our way around the problem, such as it was. When Mike had an inquiry to an agency where Dena worked, we routed our requests through other officials. We dealt with it on a daily basis, in other words.

It seems that you are committed to writing about this. That’s your prerogative. However, I think that any piece on this very normal set of circumstances needs to prove that this relationship somehow affected the work that Mike DeBonis did for the Washington City Paper. What stories were too kind to an agency for which Iverson worked? Or what story leveraged the DeBonis-Iverson relationship to the detriment of the city? Because talking about the relationship of these two people is fun gossip and all, but unless you can show that the written record proves something untoward, that’s all it is: Empty-calorie gossip. And if you can’t cite repeated instances in which this relationship somehow corrupted City Paper journalism, I wonder what the point of this exercise is.

[Erik Wemple was the Loose Lips columnist for The Washington City Paper. Later, during the period when Mike DeBonis was Loose Lips, Wemple edited The Washington City Paper. Then he was the editor of the TBD web site (http://www.tbd.com). Now he is a media critic for The Washington Post at “Erik Wemple: A Reported Opinion Blog on News Media,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple, and frequently writes on media ethics.] — Gary Imhoff]

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Mike DeBonis
Diana Winthrop, dianawinthrop@gmail.com

According to Ms. Brizill [themail, April 4], Mike DeBonis and his colleagues must disclose every personal relationship, because if there is no fire wall erected by DeBonis’s employer (The Washington Post) his articles and those of his colleagues are, according to Brizill, tainted. As a political reporter for some thirty years in which I covered Congress, my late husband worked for a number of Congressman and Senators, from Gary Hart to Tom Harkin, and as a couple we practiced our own ethics. As a journalist, honestly I was frustrated, but my husband for his and my protection (as well as the Senators who employed him) made sure our professional relationships were never tainted even though every time I broke a story I was routinely accused of obtaining help from my husband. DeBonis is one of the few knowledgeable and talented reporters covering the city. Brizill’s accusation is an attempt to find corruption where none exists. Actually for the years I have read Ms. Brizill, she has continually broad brushed all reporters as unclean and their facts as illegally obtained from their friends. While I have supported her efforts at uncovering corruption among public officials and agencies, her attempt to go after Mr. DeBonis sounds like it was just too quiet a day in DC and she needed to make deadline even if she had to make something up. I don’t even personally know Mr. DeBonis and I am not carrying water for the Washington Post, who I never have written for in all these years.

[Diana Winthrop reported and produced for ABC News and was a columnist on local affairs for The Common Denominator. — Gary Imhoff]

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The Election Results
Jim Abely, jamesabely@hotmail.com

Gary, you write [themail, April 4] that you think that the electorate supported the mayor’s endorsed candidates. I disagree. I think the incumbents won for multiple reasons, chiefly due to the advantages of incumbency. Early voting and name recognition favor incumbents. Of course, incumbents have advantages in fund raising; all those money orders help.

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Biddle vs. Orange — It’s Not Over Yet
Jack McKay, jack.mckay@verizon.net

As everyone knows, Vincent Orange leads Sekou Biddle for at-large councilmember by just 543 votes. But provisional and absentee ballots remain to be counted; could they change this outcome? The Board of Elections and Ethics reports that 3,347 absentee ballots were sent to Democrats before the primary election, and 1,553 had, at last count, been returned. If we suppose that a total of 2000 ballots were received by the deadline, this coming Friday the 13th, then, if 64 percent or more of those absentee votes go to Biddle, he will have overcome Orange’s lead and won the election.

How likely is that outcome? Scuttlebutt has it that most of these absentee ballots will have come from Ward 3 type voters, of the higher-income, west-of-the-Park sort. In Ward 3, Biddle won 71 percent of the at-large vote, and in Ward 2, 62 percent. If those neighborhoods are indeed the principal source of the absentee ballots, then it’s just possible that Biddle could end up with a larger vote total. On the other hand, Orange says that he’ll get absentee votes from senior citizens, nursing homes, and — really! — the DC Jail.

My guess is that it’s going to be really, really close. And if Vincent Orange prevails, it will be Peter Shapiro’s doing. His 5,616 votes — plus absentees — will surely have come mainly from Sekou Biddle’s total. Shapiro was asked to withdraw, I am told, because everyone knew that he didn’t have a chance, and his participation could only swing the outcome to Orange. But he wouldn’t, and here we are, wondering if the absentee ballots will change the election day outcome to what would have been the result if he hadn’t played the “spoiler.”

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DDOT and Greener Storm Water Infrastructure, Part III
David Jonas Bardin, davidbardin@aol.com

DDOT has begun to install green infrastructure to manage storm water. In principle, it favors others doing the same. The District Department of the Environment (DDOE) and DC Water also support green infrastructure. But all three agencies regulate and may inhibit installation of green infrastructure by one another or private developers, as I explained at http://www.dcwatch.com.columns/bardin.htm. DC has limited experience with green infrastructure in its public space and has not yet adopted general policies to guide its regulators.

DDOT has lead responsibility for permitting installation of facilities in DC’s public space — including green infrastructure such as rain gardens in place of sidewalk. But DDOT may say no — or put off a decision. DDOT faces legitimate, competing demands for use of the public space, including transportation demands (think of MetroBus shelters), public safety demands (think of security bollards), and public utility demands (think of underground lines). Technical and policy issues have to be thought through. DC has standards for concrete sidewalks, governing installation, maintenance, and replacement by DDOT and others. Not so for curbside rain gardens. Who would be responsible for maintenance of a privately installed rain garden? How would DC inspect and enforce compliance? If a utility has to access and replace facilities under a rain garden, what level of restoration obligations might it have afterwards? Where would it find competent contractors? To what extent does DDOT want to leverage its own limited resources for developing green infrastructure in the City-owned rights-of-way by welcoming developer proposals pick up some of the challenge? DDOT expects its Policy, Planning, and Sustainability Administration (PPSA) to develop green infrastructure policies that will guide permit decisions. Developers want PPSA to achieve clarity, leading to predictable and timely permit decisions.

Until recently, agency staffers were expected to work it out project-by-project in the absence of DC standards and policies for green infrastructure. But three agency heads, Directors Terry Bellamy (of DDOT), Christophe Tulou (of DDOE), and General Manager George Hawkins (of DC Water) met on April 4 to begin to address green infrastructure coordination issues. They reportedly resolved issues holding up two projects “without setting a precedent” and committed to regular meetings henceforth. Curbside rain gardens will be major tools for DC’s realization of its green infrastructure potentials for handling storm water flowing off streets and sidewalks. We may have to install thousands of new rain gardens to achieve a Sustainable DC. That challenges DC’s executive branch to achieve effective interagency coordination and clear policies soon.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

Waking Up in Eden, April 9
Sue Hemberger, Friends of the Tenley Library, smithhemb@aol.com

Please join us on Monday, April 9, at 7:00 p.m., for this year’s Henry Mitchell Memorial Lecture. Our lecturer will be Lucinda Fleeson, author of Waking Up in Eden: In Pursuit of an Impassioned Life on an Imperiled Island. It’s an event that should appeal not only to people with an interest in gardening, but also to naturalists and fans of memoirs. Here is Amazon’s description of the book: “Like so many of us, Lucinda Fleeson wanted to escape what had become a routine life. So, she quit her big-city job, sold her suburban house, and moved halfway across the world to the Hawaiian island of Kauai to work at the National Tropical Botanical Garden. Imagine a one-hundred-acre garden estate nestled amid ocean cliffs, rain forests, and secluded coves. Exotic and beautiful, yes, but as Fleeson awakens to this sensual world, exploring the island’s food, beaches, and history, she encounters an endangered paradise — the Hawaii we don’t see in the tourist brochures.

Native plants are dying at an astonishing rate — Hawaii is called the extinction capital of the world — and invasive species (plants, animals, and humans) have imperiled this Garden of Eden. Fleeson accompanies a plant hunter into the rain forest to find the last of a dying species, descends into limestone caves with a paleontologist who deconstructs island history through fossil life, and shadows a botanical pioneer who propagates rare seeds, hoping to reclaim the landscape. Her grown-up adventure is a reminder of the value of choosing passion over security, individuality over convention, and the pressing need to protect the earth. And as she witnesses the island’s plant renewal efforts, she sees her own life blossom again.

After the lecture, Ms. Fleeson will sign her book, copies of which will be available for purchase at the event (cash or check only). The Tenley-Friendship Library is located on the SW corner of the Wisconsin and Albemarle intersection, just across the street from the Tenleytown Metrorail Station. Fleeson’s lecture will begin at 7:00 p.m., and will take place in the large meeting room on the second floor.

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