'We didn't want my fingerprints all over it,' Bronson said of COVID-19 convocation

The news about the so-called Alaska COVID Alliance was not that Mayor Dave Bronson spoke, but that he hid his advance involvement from the public.

The Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media published news accounts Monday that failed to make this clear. They sanitized Bronson’s secret role and failed to dig into conflicting claims about it.

“The mayor said he chose not to publicize any involvement in the summit,” the Daily News said.

“Bronson’s participation was not announced ahead of time,” Alaska Public Media reported.

That political PR speak hides the truth and puts this on a par with choosing not to eat tomatoes or announcing whether the mayor will wear white socks.

Better to say, the mayor kept his role in planning the event secret.

What was his secret role?

Let’s take Bronson at his word. In a video from the event posted on the Alaska Republican blog, but muted on the Alaska COVID Alliance website, Bronson said, “For political reasons, we didn’t want my fingerprints all over it.”

He said his personal doctor “came to my staff” and suggested the group of critics should appear in Anchorage. Bronson helped organize the event, keeping his fingerprints off of it.

One member of the invited group of contrarians, a Texas eye doctor who promotes the use of hydroxychloroquine, credited Bronson and others who declined to reveal their names for making the Anchorage event a reality.

“This all came together in less than a week,” Dr. Richard Urso said, adding that the local organizers and Bronson did not want the public to know who they are.

Urso introduced Bronson as a “true patriot.”

“I don’t want to say this because maybe he doesn’t want me to say this, but he’s probably the reason we were able to make this happen,” Urso said about Bronson. “I’d say he’s helped organize a lot of what’s happening behind the scenes.”

So there you have one of the key participants saying Bronson was “probably the reason we were able to make this happen.”

But the Daily News and Alaska Public Media paraphrased him to say something far less definitive.

“The mayor played a role in making the summit happen, according to an introduction by presenter Dr. Richard Urso,” the Anchorage Daily News reported.

The mayor, according to Urso, “helped behind-the-scenes with the summit, but the mayor’s office said Bronson did not help plan the event,” Alaska Public Media reported.

Urso’s statement that Bronson was probably the key reason for the convocation is convincing. But Bronson’s public relations man would have Alaskans believe that Bronson had no role behind the scenes, which would make Urso a liar.

Both the Daily News and Alaska Public Media dutifully quoted Young, who is regularly called upon to clean up Bronson’s errors with soothing CYA sentiments.

“Bronson’s spokesperson Corey Allen Young wrote in an email to Alaska Public Media that Bronson was contacted by event organizers but did not want to be involved in the planning ‘because of his political office.’ Young said that no city funds or staff were used for the event,” Alaska Public Media said.

“Bronson spokesman Corey Allen Young said in an email that the mayor and his staff were ‘approached with the event opportunity’ but didn’t want to be involved with planning because of his political office. Bronson agreed to attend and speak, he said. No municipal employees were paid for their involvement and no municipal funds were used, Young said,” the Daily News said.

So here we have one of the major speakers saying Bronson was critical to the event, while the PR man says he was an innocent bystander who did nothing.

The news accounts treat these conflicting claims as equal, but they are not. The comments from Bronson’s PR man are designed to limit political damage to the mayor and have to be judged in that context.

“The mayor is amazing, he’s a fighter,” Urso told the audience. Then addressing his comments directly to the mayor, he made a joke about “Charles Bronson” and said, “Thank you so much for having us up here.”

The videos posted by the so-called alliance over the weekend, as I wrote Sunday, muted the first three minutes of Bronson’s remarks, which is when he said he didn’t want his fingerprints on the meeting.

All of Bronson’s remarks were removed from the site after I wrote that the audio had been silenced on part of his 10-minute speech. It appears that the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media did not check the website videos to see how Bronson’s speech was censored before it was erased. A video of the full Bronson speech remains on the Republican Party blog.

Alaska Public Media compiled the full text, a good service to the public.

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