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Virginia's Real Politics
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A media double standard?
Along with this spring’s budding dogwoods around Capitol Square came the first whispers of an eavesdropping scandal involving Ed Matricardi, then the executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia. At the time, it was alleged that Matricardi somehow obtained – surreptitiously, it was presumed then – the dial-up protocol to two confidential Democratic Party conference calls to discuss political and legal strategies on the Republican-drawn redistricting plan that is now on appeal before the Supreme Court of Virginia. Our top-notch Republican attorney general, Jerry Kilgore, did the right thing and immediately turned over to the State Police what he’d learned about the apparent wrongdoing. Under Virginia law, you can’t listen in on another person’s phone call – much less record its proceedings – without at least one legitimate party to the call knowing about it. An expectation of privacy must be upheld. The state police and the Richmond commonwealth’s attorney investigated the allegations. The city prosecutor filed and then dropped state charges against Matricardi so that federal authorities, who can institute stiffer penalties, could take the lead role. The state police asked the U.S. attorney’s office as well as the FBI to join the investigation. They did so on May 8. To date, no federal charges have been filed against Matricardi. A short time later, it also was alleged that a cell phone number belonging to former House Speaker Vance Wilkins’ chief of staff, Claudia Tucker, also was on the list of those dialed into at least one of the Democrats’ conference calls. To date, no charges have been filed against Tucker, either, state or federal. The Capitol Press Corps – composed of good, hard-working reporters – went after Matricardi and Tucker with hammer and tong. As they should have. They were doing their jobs. Where there were rumors of wrongdoing, they followed up on them. Where there were facts, they wrote and aired stories about them. And, boy, did they ever write and air stories, ab initio, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Every day in every paper and on every news broadcast, there were stories, from this angle and that, on GOP operatives and their spy-caper ways. But. What element of this whole big-eared affair have the media not pursued? And why? Rumors have swirled since about the same time those dogwoods started blooming that there also was a newspaper reporter listening in on the confidential Democratic Party tele-talks. While Matricardi and Tucker, and the state GOP generally, were being hammered by the press corps and pile-on Democrats, why were the media not similarly pursuing with a vengeance the rumors about one of their own? Finally, after months of insiders talking about there possibly being a newspaper reporter eavesdropping on a conference call, one newspaperman, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Tyler Whitley, mentioned it, although briefly, in a story. Whitley noted in a July 18 story that, according to sources, in federal investigators’ latest round of subpoenas, “authorities were investigating whether a newspaper reporter might have listened to one of the phone calls from an unsecure telephone on the seventh floor of the General Assembly Building, where legislators have offices.” Huh? Is that it? Apparently. Where are the investigative reporters? Why are they not pulling overtime – morning, noon, and night – looking for answers? Where are the glaring lights of the cameras on one of their own? Where are the endless speculative stories? Where’s the deafening drumbeat? What once was rumor – though a widely discussed one – that a newspaper reporter was on the line is now apparently an honest-to-goodness part of the investigation. Generally, it takes little more than a hunch to prompt a massive media assault. If their pursuit of a hunch turns into a Watergate-size uncovering, they’re looking for a Pulitzer Prize. If the open speculation turns into nothing, there’s rarely even an oops uttered. If true, that there was a reporter listening in on the private conference call, it obviously was unbeknownst to legitimately participating party officials, including many House and Senate Democrats. Or was it? Is it possible that at least one of them knew about the stealthy reporter? If it’s illegal for someone to eavesdrop on a private telephone call (if access to it is illegally obtained) – and especially to create a record of its proceedings – then shouldn’t the Democrats be raising Cain publicly about a reporter purportedly being on the line? If the Democrats are demanding investigations on how GOP operatives got a hold of the conference calls’ dial-in numbers and pass codes, shouldn’t they be demanding to know how a newspaper reporter got the same info? And what about the reporter’s allegedly using a state telephone in the possible commission of a crime? If it’s not illegal, what, at least, is the propriety of it? Really, now. Shouldn’t Democrats be demanding prosecution of the reporter to the law’s fullest extent, if the illegal eavesdropping allegations are true? If Larry Framme, the chair of the state Democratic Party, was outraged that Republicans were eavesdropping on his conference call – as he rightly should’ve been, by the way – then where’s the outrage that a reporter might have been all ears, too? These are just a few of the legal – and criminal? – questions. But what about questions of journalistic ethics? Is anybody asking them? Do newspaper reporters’ higher-ups condone eavesdropping? And, moreover, do reporters’ bosses condone using state telephones to do it, if, in fact, that’s what the reporter did? Yeah, we’re all tired of this whole mess. We want it to be over, Republicans and Democrats alike. But there seemingly are lots of questions still out there that the media are not asking. Why? If reporters are turning a blind eye toward one of their own, then it’s a black eye for them all. What is the rest of this story? Where’s Paul Harvey when we need him? The Bryant Archive |
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