The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner headline says, “Out-of-state money is boosting Murkowski reelection effort.”

That’s true, but exceptionally misleading. Outside money has long been the main source of campaign funds in Alaska congressional races. Both Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Kelly Tshibaka are getting most of their money from Outside. The News-Miner should correct the headline to say, “Out-of-state money boosts Murkowski, Tshibaka campaigns.”

The News-Miner would also help readers by including links in its story to the campaign finance reports.

Murkowski’s reports can be found here.

Tshibaka’s reports can be found here.

Mistakes are inevitable. I don’t believe this one was deliberate. The best way to deal with mistakes is to admit them and correct them. Having worked for the News-Miner for 37 years, I have some understanding of how hard the situation is, especially because the staff today is too small to justify 7-day-a-week publication.

When the newspaper was entirely a printed product, there was great reluctance to ever publish corrections. Almost no one likes to admit screwups. We were far too defensive about admitting errors.

With the rise of electronic publishing, it has become easier to correct stories instantly. When I make factual mistakes on this blog I try to correct them. As far as my interpretation of events goes, readers are free to agree or disagree.

As far as the newspaper goes, everyone should recognize that it has to be a daily exercise in imperfection.

Alaska’s reporting model is broken

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has refused to participate in most of the debates with the others running for governor this year—Bill Walker, Les Gara and Charlie Pierce. The Pierce campaign, such as it is, doesn’t amount to much because of the harassment complaint against him.

Dunleavy skipped another debate Monday and the Anchorage Daily News dutifully reported on how Walker and Gara complained about Gov. No Show.

Dunleavy declines to participate because he doesn’t want to participate. He thinks it is to his advantage to use the machinery of state government as his main campaign tool.

The Daily News, quoted state employee and campaign spokesman Andrew Jensen repeating the obvious lie that Dunleavy is too busy to campaign the regular way.

Jensen, paid $90,000 by the state to praise Dunleavy as the state’s ideal governor, claims to be the unpaid “volunteer” mouthpiece for Dunleavy.

According to Jensen, we are supposed to believe that the “extreme demands” on Dunleavy’s time have kept him from taking part in debate after debate for months, even when he could have made every one either in person or electronically.

Reporters and the news organizations know the too-busy-to-debate claim is complete nonsense, but one tenet of the broken model of “both sides now” journalism in Alaska is that you never call a lie a lie.

Dunleavy is not the world’s busiest governor, no matter what Jensen claims.

Most of Alaska’s political reporters act as if they are forbidden to use any judgment and analytical skills to interpret what is going on around them. This is evidence of the broken reporting model.

On the day of the debate, Dunleavy used state facilities and state time to call his own press conference to talk about a non-existent bill to increase penalties on those responsible for drug overdose deaths. This was a campaign stunt, paid for by the state. The Legislature that may or may not ever see such a bill has not been elected.

It should have been reported as a campaign event. But the Alaska Beacon treated it as real news, posting an article that read like a Dunleavy campaign press release.

“Asked why the proposal is coming up now, instead of earlier in his term, Dunleavy said, ‘You continually address issues as they arise,’” the Beacon said.

This is flim-flam. The proposal is coming up now because of the election in three weeks.

The truth is that Duneavy called a press conference about a bill that doesn’t exist because he wants reporters to cover him not as a candidate but as the governor. The trick almost always works, as the Beacon coverage shows.

I still have high hopes for the Beacon, but it has to start trying to interpret our political situation and stop just writing down what people say and calling it good.

Sullivan has voted against every judge nominated by Biden

The Daily News has a good story on how Sens. Murkowski and Sullivan have voted on President Biden’s nominees for federal courts.

Sullivan has voted against every single nominee. Murkowski has voted for 64 of the 84 nominees. Sullivan regularly makes a big show of claiming to be open minded, but he isn’t.

The News quotes Sullivan as claiming he wants “a record and judicial philosophy that understands and emphasizes limits on federal judiciary and federal agency powers.”

No. The real Sullivan philosophy is simpler than that. He values judges nominated by Republican presidents. Did he ever vote against a Trump nominee? That detail is missing from the story. The Daily News says he and Murkowski voted for nearly all of Trump’s 230 nominees.