News-Miner should be up-front with its readers about who is writing its editorials

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner is free to take whatever editorial position it likes.

But at a minimum the newspaper should reveal who is writing its editorials, especially those that do more than endorse the pleasures of summer days or condemn littering.

On Sunday, the newspaper anonymously attacked the Supreme Court decision on the Dunleavy recall with a Paul Jenkins-like screed that was long on snark and short on fact.

The News-Miner editorial reads like a warmed-over version of an editorial published online by Jenkins on his website, featuring the same phrases and mistakes.

The News-Miner falsely claims that Justice Craig Stowers, now retired, wrote a dissenting opinion declaring the recall invalid. The newspaper said, he “strongly dissented, saying the court’s action was an overreach and a breach of the Alaska Constitution.”

Jenkins, on his website, said Stowers “dissented from the ridiculous decision. He said the court’s action was an overreach and a breach of the Alaska Constitution.”

Jenkins and the News-Miner failed to mention that Stowers dissented only on two of the recall grounds. Jenkins and the News-Miner misled readers by not mentioning that he agreed with the other four justices on two other grounds for recall.

The court was unanimous that it was legit to hold a recall based on Dunleavy’s refusal to follow the Constitution in appointing a judge and the governor’s decision to spend state money on partisan ads.

For decades, the News-Miner had an editorial page editor who was responsible for the page and wrote nearly every editorial. The editorial page editor had a big influence on the direction and content of the page.

The newspaper no longer has that position, one of many it eliminated because of the decline in paid circulation and advertising. I worked at the News-Miner for 37 years and I know all the arguments about the editorial column and how it is supposed to be the voice of the institution.

(The newspaper has reprinted my blog posts from time to time with my permission. I no longer charge the newspaper anything for reprinting columns, recognizing the financial difficulties that all newspapers face. The paper is not interested in blog posts that are controversial, but it is free to pick and choose.)

The editorial “we” is supposed to be more powerful than the editorial “me” on editorial pages, but the former is really a newspaper con job, sort of like the Great and Powerful Oz saying, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

Given the change in circumstances and the lack of an editorial page editor, the News-Miner should be open with its readers and reveal who is writing its right-wing editorials. That’s not too much to ask. They are not being written by a committee.

The News-Miner should give its readers an accurate editorial on the Supreme Court decision, not one twisted beyond recognition. The court was unanimous in declaring the recall could proceed and the court ruled 4-1 that two grounds that dealt with separation of powers were also OK.

A year ago, Jenkins wrote: “Dunleavy, it should be noted, did not release his ‘austerity budget’ until Feb. 13, 2019, and his veto of $444 million from the already-trimmed operating budget approved by the Legislature, which caused big-government advocates to melt down, did not occur until months later, at the end of June. It appears somebody was engineering the recall effort before Dunleavy’s budget cut and vetoes—planning it even before he had done much of anything.”

The “ink on his oath of office barely was dry” when the recall website name was registered, Jenkins wrote in the Anchorage Daily News on June 14, 2020.

This is a favorite theme of Jenkins, the same guy who concluded that Dunleavy is a master of Alaska politics and could even be an “accidental genius.” Jenkins also was the guy who falsely claimed that Dunleavy ran for office in 2018 promising “cut, cut, cut.”

On Sunday, the News-Miner editorial said: “Barely two months after Gov. Mike Dunleavy assumed office on Dec. 3, 2018, the Recall Dunleavy website was registered—on Feb. 2, 2019. That was about two weeks before his ‘austerity budget,’ with $444 million in vetoes, set off political fireworks.”

The recall didn’t really take off until the summer. To suggest there was a grand master plan on Feb. 2, 2019 is absurd.

Still, anyone who was paying attention on Feb. 2, 2019 could have seen what was coming.

Ih January 2019, Dunleavy had already abandoned the happy talk of his campaign and said he wanted a balanced budget immediately, echoing the wisdom of temporaries Donna Arduin and Tuckerman Babcock.

Arduin said the theme of the administration would be to “do less with less.” Babcock said Dunleavy wanted to cut the budget by $1.5 billion, something Dunleavy never hinted at as a candidate. “It’s going to be a very painful budget,” Babcock said in December 2018.

Arduin and Babcock turned out to be the prime examples of state employees who did less with more.

The News-Miner has often changed its editorial position over the years, depending upon the identity of the editorial page editor and the level of involvement from the management at any given time.

The newspaper owes its readers, as it asks for financial support and struggles to survive, an explanation of the change in tone since two years ago, when it featured a front-page editorial under the headline: “OVERRIDE: Legislature must save Alaska.”

“Alaska faces a bleak future if Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s vetoes become law. The Legislature must flex its authority as a coequal branch of government and save the state by overriding the vetoes and standing by the reasonable budget it approved and sent to the governor.”

Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673.