Larry Conners Update

This was a while ago, but in case you missed it, Larry Conners lost a lawsuit.

Then he lost it again.

I predict he will lose many such lawsuits.

Larry Conners Claims KMOV is Keeping the White Man Down

So first Larry Conners claimed that President Obama was "jetting around" too much and "going on all these vacations."  Now Conners says in a complaint that he, Larry Conners, was discriminated against for being a white male:

Since his firing, his attorneys have filed a formal discrimination complaint with the Missouri Human Rights Commission alleging that his bosses terminated him in retaliation for a dispute he had with the station in 2010 regarding his salary. In that legal battle, Conners writes in the complaint, he had alleged that KMOV was unfairly paying him less than his co-prime anchor, Vickie Newton, "an African-American female; I claimed that I received less compensation than Newtown because of my race and gender."

Hmmm.

Update: Shockingly, a judge did not agree with Conners' claim that he was being discriminated against for being a middle-aged white guy (see update of the post):

"The arbitration process was confidential and private and we honored that," Pimentel says. "But in light of Mr. Conners' election not to, we believe it's appropriate to point out that after a full two days of arbitration, the arbiter found no merit whatsoever to Larry's claims and ruled in favor of KMOV on all counts."

Double hmmm.

Update #2: For clarity, I should note that Conners' current complaint is that KMOV discriminated against him because of age and "retaliation."  But in his complaint, he noted that he previously had formally complained about race and gender discrimination at KMOV (basically he thought he should get paid more), while conveniently forgetting to mention that the arbiter found his claim meritless. As in: without any merit.

Important Facts About the Larry Conners Fiasco (Mostly) Ignored By the Media

So, if you recall, back in September Larry Conners did a silly interview for KMOV where he asked President Obama if he takes too many vacation days. The interview was ridiculous because (1) it showed that Conners was completely out of touch with issues that actually matter and (2) Conners conveniently left out the fact that Obama had taken about 1/3 as many vacation days as Bush and 1/2 as many as Reagan at similar points in their presidencies.

More recently, Conners was fired after using his KMOV Facebook page to absurdly suggest, without a shred of evidence, that he was targeted by the IRS for his "tough interview" with Obama.  In his original post, Conners conveniently left out the fact that his tax issues with the IRS predated the interview, and later claimed he meant to say that the IRS cancelled his repayment plan after the interview.  He never updated his Facebook or Twitter accounts with the truth, though he did record a statement for KMOV.

Unfortunately, media reports during the Larry Conners Sympathy Tour have been leaving out a couple key facts that are telling about the amount of "integrity" of his actions.  First, Conners did not only use his KMOV facebook account to "ask questions" about the interview. He also used his KMOV "News 4" Twitter account to push the story to right-wing bloggers.  Here's how he described himself on Twitter before deleting his old account:

And here's a screenshot of him tweeting the story to right-wing bloggers (at the bottom of the tweet:):

You might recall the Daily Caller from their amazing display of "journalistic integrity" while reporting a completely invented story about a Democratic Senator visiting underage prostitutes in Haiti.  Instapundit is right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds, and Red Alert is a blog for "young conservatives." (Conners also tweeted the story to Breitbart.com and to one of their former employees. Yes, I have screen shots)

This completely undermines Conner's claim that he was innocently "asking questions."  He did not tweet the story to neutral or liberal outlets.  He was clearly trolling for publicity from far right wing blogs, and was happy to throw them red meat he knew would be used to claim that the President was targeting him.  This is not responsible journalism.

Now, to be fair to Conners, he has targeted his tweets at right wing blogs before, probably because he doesn't really put that much effort into pretending to be unbiased.  But given that he's done it before, and KMOV knows that he's done it before, he might very well be right that KMOV encourages him to engage in this type of trolling.  I don't really care to defend KMOV and wouldn't be surprised at all if they told him in the past to try to target right-wing blogs; however, I do think it's important not to pretend that Conners was engaging in responsible journalism. He was pushing a story he knew would be used to attack President Obama (while, by the way, further eroding people's trust in the government).

Second, and even more importantly, Conners could not even answer a question from Charles Jaco about what reason the IRS gave for canceling the payment plan.  You can watch the interview here (the relevant bit starts at 2:12):


Transcript of the relevant portion:

Jaco: Did they tell you why they cancelled the monthly plan?
Conners: I was paying everything on time and continued to do so...
Jaco: And they didn't tell you anything...?
Conners: I leave that to my tax attorney. I don't know what any of the background is, other than the fact that it was pulled from us....Charles, since 1980 I haven't even done my taxes. I leave that to folks who are a lot smarter than me.

In other words, Conners can't even answer when asked what reason the IRS gave for canceling his plan, because he hasn't done his taxes in 30 years! Conners was willing to suggest that the IRS was "hammering" him for political reasons without even being engaged enough to know what the IRS's stated reason was! This is the height of journalistic irresponsibility.  It's the equivalent of a journalist saying on air, "I got a parking ticket the other day.  I didn't actually look at it to see what it was for, but I'm positive it's retaliation from the Mayor!"

Finally, also in the Jaco interview, Conners says that KMOV "supposedly" sent him social media guidelines but he doesn't remember looking at them.  Hmmm, I wonder whose responsibility that is?

Obviously, journalists have a reason to be sympathetic to one of their own and to protect themselves from bosses who probably don't know much about journalism, even if "their own" in this case is a guy like Larry Conners who was perfectly willing to cross picket lines while fellow news employees were striking (especially ironic now that Conners is now citing collective bargaining).  However, given that this story has important implications for what it means to do quality journalism, they need to take care to report all of the relevant facts, even those that clearly undermine his claims. Conners engaged in epically irresponsible "journalism," and whether or not he deserved to be fired, no one should pretend for a second that he was acting with journalistic integrity.

KMOV Unsuprisingly Misrepresents McCaskill's Comments

KMOV, which enjoys running lazy hit pieces on defenseless food stamp recipients, claims they were "surprised" to find out that Senator Claire McCaskill disagreed with President Obama's position that unemployment benefits should be extended. What is not surprising, however, is that KMOV got the story completely wrong and failed to provide an accurate description of McCaskill's position. Here's what KMOV quoted McCaskill as saying:

MCCASKILL: I’m not for extending unemployment benefits any further. The payroll tax cut, I’m always for tax cuts for working folks, because I think that helps our consuming economy.

But, the Huffington Post's Arthur Delany, who unlike KMOV apparently knows enough about the issue to ask follow-up questions, found out that McCaskill actually agrees with the President's position:

Claire McCaskill actually DOES support keeping extended benefits, like Obama wants, her office says. She's against MORE weeks

Now I suppose it'd be easy to just claim that KMOV, being a TV news organization, is just too darn busy to understand the issues enough to accurately describe McCaskill's position, but on the other hand they have a long history of grinding an ideological axe, including:

The aforementioned hit pieces on food stamp recipients.

Ignoring rallies of 4,300+ union supporters while doting on the tea party.

Lazily attacking stimulus funds being used for important research.

Getting angry at Wash U students after they refused to pay $20,000 for abstinence lessons from Bristol Palin.

So I hope you'll forgive me for thinking that KMOV is now far beyond the point of deserving the benefit of the doubt.

Update: I called it correctly. KMOV got the story wrong:

McCaskill's office says additional context omitted from KMOV's report would show that she was responding to a question about giving the unemployed extra weeks of benefits. Her office said she supports preserving the existing extended benefits.

Also, they haven't issued a correction. Lame.

Is Child Labor Back in Missouri?

Senator Jane Cunningham's proposal to roll back Child Labor Laws in Missouri was widely mocked, both in Missouri and nationally. But after Cunningham dropped her bill under pressure from just about everybody, it seemed like Missouri Republicans had decided to pursue their quest to crush working families using other despicable methods.

Not so fast, though. It turns out the new budget just passed out of the Missouri House actually eliminates all of the people who investigate child labor and minimum wage complaints, effectively defunding any enforcement of the laws.

KMOV has the story:

The cuts would get rid of all the investigators who look into child labor and minimum wage complaints.

Lara Granich, director of Missouri Jobs for Justice has a hard time believing the cuts. "This puts workers terribly at risk of unscrupulous employers,” she says. “If a worker is being denied a fair wage, or children in dangerous condition, there's no one to do anything about them."

Click here to email your state senator and tell them to keep these enforcement mechanisms in place.

Activist Hub Radio 3/6/2011

This week Adam and I continued our on going discussion of the assault on workers in Wisconsin. We also critiqued the media coverage of the events in Wisconsin, looked at John Stewart's segment on the teachers/the Bush Tax Cut, and KMOV's reporting on the stimulus package. Due to technical difficulties part of the show was deleted, therefore our interview with Brian K. Massey will be in a separate post



Also we are on itunes so please subscribe Activist Hub Radio on Itunes.

KMOV Flop

While we're on the topic of KMOV's terrible "reporting," I just had to point out my absolute all-time favor KMOV flop. This one isn't quite as important as their smear jobs on food-stamp recipients or university research, but it's just really funny and demonstrates the complete and utter collapse of modern TV news.

On the KMOV blog, Mark Schnyder wrote a "get off my lawn" post whining about the fact that Wash U students didn't have time to speak to him on their way to class:

I was across the street from the Washington University campus Wednesday morning carrying out my morning assignment: attempting to get thoughtful comments from students at Wash U regarding the upcoming appearance of Bristol Palin on their campus. You wouldn't believe how many student were late for class. I approached about a dozen seperate groups of students to get their opinion and almost all of them said, "Sorry, I'm late for class." A couple of them agreed to walk and talk with me but all the while I'm thinking, "wow, your parents are paying good money for you to go to Washington University and about 95% of my sample is late for class." This can't be good.

I know the area Schnyder is talking about, and his post is remarkably petty and ridiculous. He was trying to interview students on a road that is a direct path between the dorms and many classrooms, some of which I've taught in. Most students travel that road to get to their morning classes and, as is not surprising at all, they have no interest in waking up early to get to class 20 minutes early. But, generally speaking, they get to class on time. In fact, I'm frequently quite amazed at how seriously Wash U students take their classes, compared to other places I've been at.

It seems obvious to me that what the students were saying was, "If I talk to you, I will be late for class." But Schyder apparently couldn't handle the thought that students wanted to get to class on time rather than talk to him. He ended his post with this:

I can take the rejection but it's hard to stomach the idea of so many of our future leaders missing class.

Actually, it's pretty obvious, you can't take the rejection.

KMOV Drops the Ball

Wasn't the first time. Won't be the last.

Here's what KMOV reported:

About 500 people in February 2009 held a tea party protest on the riverfront. The party wants to show that the movement is a political force with staying power. Today, that number was up to 10,000.

The implication is that the tea party grew from 500 to 10,000 people. Even if the 10,000 number was correct (which I don't think it was), the rally earlier today was one of three national tea party events being organized by a national group Tea Party Patriots, while the previous rally was only for St. Louis. They're comparing apples and oranges.

All of the other news stations seemed to notice that fact.

KMOV Is Confused

Mark Schnyder at KMOV is extremely confused. He can't seem to figure out how Congressman Carnahan feels about having his office firebombed. Schnyder wrote that he shockingly got "weird vibes" from Carnahan's staff the day after someone tried to burn their office down:

When I went by the building this morning I got a weird vibe. I saw a campaign worker coming out of the back of the office with big Bread Company to-go bags. I jokingly said, "Are you with Bread Company or the Carnahan campaign?" He said, "Bread Company," then tossed the bags in the dumpster and went to the front of the building, presumably back in the office. Weird.
(I talked to a reporter at another station who worked on this story who told me when she was there, she met a campaign worker outside the building who also denied being associated with the campaign. When she went inside to talk to a spokesperson, she saw that person who denied being with the campaign IN Carnahan's office.)

OK, so someone acted "weird," the day after arson was attempted. Big deal. And as for his story from "a reporter at another station," I sincerely hope he's not basing his claim that she was speaking to "a campaign worker" only on the fact that they saw the person inside the building later. There are millions of possible explanations for why someone who doesn't work for the campaign could be in the office.

This story is already fueling conspiracies by the usual wingnuts. Jim Durbin wrote that Carnahan's staff, "did take out a bunch of documents hidden in St Louis Bread Company bags to the dumpster. " Durbin also curiously sent someone over to take photos of the office to take photos. Hmmm, wonder if they were planning on doing any dumpster diving while they were there? Keep in mind that Durbin is the conspiracy theorist who claimed that ACORN is housed in Carnahan's office, a theory still believed by the tea party's other "expert" on this case, Jim Hoft. Yesterday, Hoft said that "inside sources" told him that it was a burglary. Later, his "inside sources" completely changed their story to arson, naturally without any explanation or correction from Hoft. Nice that Schynder is so willingly adding fuel to the conspiracy theorists' fire.

But Schnyder's later comments were even more strange:

Meantime, opponent Ed Martin wasted no time condemning the action on his campaign website. He agreed to an interview outside his headquarters, too...He says there are lots of things to disagree on as far as the campaigns are concerned, but he says there's no place for violence.
Weird how the Carnahan campaign couldn't or wouldn't put similar words together.

Huh? As one commenter put it:

What kind of "comment" were you looking for, anyway? "Well, it sucks that someone tried to burn our office down, and violence is wrong"? Duh!

Yup, it's pretty obvious to thinking humans that Carnahan and his staff are not happy about having someone try to burn down their campaign office. They did issue a statement after the event happened, and it's not clear what else Schynder expects from them. Does he want them to rush to judgment, like the tea party no doubt would, and start publicly blaming people even though the police investigation has thus far not been conclusive? Does he want them to cry on camera and say how scared they are for their lives, thus giving the arsonist satisfaction? Their office was firebombed. They feel like crap. Give them a break, dude.

KMOV Must Be So Proud

Here's the latest post from Adam Sharp, who KMOV disgracefully had on as a guest last month to discuss the St. Louis Tea Party "populist uprising":

You stay classy KMOV, and thanks for keeping the citizens of St. Louis so informed.

KMOV Jumps the Shark

Jumping the Shark: an idiom used to describe the moment of downturn for a previously successful enterprise.

We are at a point in history where the local media doesn't have the time or inclination to do basic research into the things they discuss. But that won't stop them from discussing it:

I wrote a couple days ago about how KMOV was openly entertaining tea party conspiracy theory that a Nazi who went to their rally was an "infiltrator" sent to make them look bad. I also posted evidence that a local white supremacist group has been advertising tea party events. But KMOV is not capable of doing research or asking questions, and they once again pass on the message to their viewers that the Nazi at the Tea Party rally was an "infiltrator." Other huge failures of John Knicely's coverage:

He claims as a fact that the tea party is a "grass roots, populist movement" and a "populist uprising," despite the fact that they were started by a Fox News associated local radio host and a professional lobbyist.

He accepted without question the claim that the tea party is "just as strong as ever," despite the fact that they only had 1/6 of the crowd of last year's tax day tea party.

He lets Gina Loudon say, without being questioned, "We know that violent episodes won't come from our people. We know they'll come from outside people."

He let Adam Sharp say, unchallenged, that the tea party welcomes people with different beliefs at their rallies, despite the fact that they freak out whenever any liberal protesters attend their events, including last Thursday in St. Charles.

Knicely said, "Whether you agree with them or not this movement... will certainly have a big impact on the elections in November." Yet there was no acknowledgment whatsoever of the fact that the tea party completely failed in the Prop A initiative.

Whether intentionally or not, KMOV is misinforming their viewers.

Update: check out the funny "St. Louis Activist Hub Lies" banner that was added to the video! I'm so flattered that the tea party is thinking of me.

KMOV Now Openly Entertaining Conspiracy Theories?

Check out the beginning of this KMOV story on the Tax Day Tea Party rally:


Reporter Matt Sczesny said:

The Tax Day Tea Party was loud and it was crowded, but there was little trouble out here, especially from so called "infiltrators" that organizers had feared would try to embarrass the tea party rally. In fact, organizers say, only two people showed up, one of them wearing a swastika.

Ummm, wow. Where to begin? Sczesny presents the story in a way that implies that the two people were "infiltrators." This is in reference to the tea party's belief that "leftist infiltrators" were going to crash their St. Louis rally, after some guy in Portland said he was starting a "Crash the Tea Party" group. Of course, there's no indication that the group exists in St. Louis, and the tea party didn't provide any evidence for the claim that the two people were "leftists." In fact, Adam Sharp's video makes it clear that the guy was a member of the white supremacist organization Council of Conservative Citizens. Funny that while Gateway Pundit was ranting about this, he forgot to mention that he's linked to race-baiting videos on the Council of Conservative Citizens stories in the past. Kudos to the tea party for asking a white supremacist to leave their rally, but it's ridiculous for them to claim without any evidence whatsoever that this was a "Democrat plant," and it's shameful that the news media is willing to pass on that spin.

One additional fail for KMOV: they say that "thousands" gathered for the tea party rally. Yeah, except that police estimated 500 -700 (props to the Beacons' Jo Mannies for getting a real estimate).

In brighter news, KSDK at least provided some relevant context for their story on the tea party:

A new CBS News/New York Times poll finds 18 percent of Americans now say they support the tea party movement.