In Update II to The Currency of the New Media I childed the S-R regarding Jonathon Brunt’s article was MIA on Sheriff Bamonte’s letters urging the Jo Savage death in the RPS parking garage be investigated as a manslaughter:

Manslaughter charges urged in RPS garage death

I sent an email to S-R Online Director Ryan Pitts:

Just thought I would make you aware that on your webpage under “ongoing coverage” on River Park Square crash, that the Jonathan Brunt’s August 24, 2007 story isn’t listed.  I couldn’t hit on it either using Google and using the search function on your webpage.  I eventually had to go to a pay site to get it .  .  .

Ryan promptly responded and Brunt’s article was found and the S-R links were restored:

The story shows up on the headline list for 8/24/2007, so I have no idea why Google doesn’t find it.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news/cover.asp?pubdate=8/24/2007

However, it was keyworded incorrectly, which is what kept it from also showing up on the River Park Square ongoing coverage page. That’s fixed now.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/sections/rpscrash/

Ryan

 I promptly replied and expressed my displeasure regarding my comment being censored in this discussion thread at S-R’s Blog “New is a Conversation.”

Ryan,

Thx.  I appreciate it.  I used several search words including Brunt, Bamonte, and Savage et al both on your internal search function and Googled externally using the same terms.  The only hits back to the S-R server were for the follow-up story re Knezovich’s agreeing with Kirkpatrik’s decision to kick the Savage investigation to the feds.   This story I’m guessing never went out on the AP wire as no links were found to other papers picking up the story even though it ran on S-R’s Page One above the fold here. The only external link I found was to a arhive[sic] subscription site. The site only gives a teaser excerpt and requires a fee for the entire story.  Here’s the link.  Don’t know if you can open it because it’s enabled by my IP and subscription.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-167966675.html

I’m sorry for my “snarky comment” that the “powers that be” have since pulled but S-R Associate Editor Gary Crooks opened the door with his rhetorical question to me.  Having been a career investigative bureaucrat for many years, sometimes a little prodding is necessary to further these investigations along.  That was my point re the lack of investigative zeal the S-R’s part that is inconsistent with my experience with newspapers and reporters.  This is also on point with the discussion Ast. City Editor David Wasson and I were having regarding the ability of the new/alternative media  to hold the MSM accountable for its news product. Because of the “family’s” connection to the Savage case there is an inherent conflict of interest.  If what Sheriff Bamonte and I believe to be the truth in the Savage death case there is a strong motivation not to have this investigation proceed to its logical conclusion.  There is the appearance of evil here whether it exists or not.

Generally if I’m not mistaken a follow-up story by now would be the journalistic norm instead of just waiting for the kettle to come to a boil.   As a point of comparison and relevance the “monkey story” is running today on S-R’s Page One in the right column.  I know Mr. Smith’s position is that when there is “new” news the S-R will report it.    On the other hand I believe it is a fundamental journalistic responsibility to the people to ask the probative questions so that we the people can hold our elected/appointed accountable.  By not asking these questions whether there is any animus or complicity on the part of the S-R owners does not lend any credibility to the S-R.  This is further compounded when my “ankle-biting” comments are summarily censored.

Again thanks for your assist.

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

Tim Connor and Larry Shook, award winning investigative journalists, whose collective works regarding the Cowles Co and the River Park Square bond fraud (RPS) are online at Camas Magazine, now have their entire works compiled in a downloadable PDF document. Researchers now can download this document and search it with normal search tools without relying on the Camas site’s limited search function:

The Ultimate Archive
In one 800-page searchable document, all Camas RPS stories are now available in a PDF format Details…

While on the subject of research tools, anyone doing serious work on these topics the Fancher Report is a must read. This extensive report on the Cowles Co media empire was done in the 70’s regarding its cross-ownership of media in the Spokane market. It was estimated that the Cowles directly or indirectly control 80% of the media in this market. As Larry Shook writes in his soon to be published book Girl from Hotsprings chronicling the events and circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Ms. Jo Savage in the RPS parking garage:

Voices from the Shadows

DECADES BEFORE THE CONTROVERSIAL River Park Square public/private partnership, Fancher described how the Cowles family helped orchestrate an elaborate scheme to use public money—federal and local—to redevelop downtown in a way that enhanced the value of the family’s real estate. Simultaneously, Fancher’s sources told him, the family was instrumental in changing local government to make it more responsive to Cowles business interests.

Fancher’s thesis might have been portraying garden variety, old-fashioned American graft, something right out of Lincoln Steffens’s 1904 muckraking classic, Shame of the Cities, except for one thing. At the heart of the graft was the very institution that was supposed to be the watchdog guarding against corruption—a newspaper. . .

Fancher’s sources described how Spokane’s mayors, city council members, city managers, and city staffers were little more than Cowles puppets. They explained how Cowles-led downtown property owners, via compliant city hall staff, were effectively able to tax the entire community—Washington’s second largest city—for their private benefit. . .

Fancher’s sources explained that the family handpicked candidates for public offices, supported them with favorable media coverage, and editorially attacked those who opposed the Cowles agenda. (Read about present-day editorial policies in “The Stench that Won’t Go Away.”) . . .

In a way, the Fancher Report foreshadowed the River Park Square fiasco. Still, outsiders who grappled with the financial scandal of the Cowles mall were shocked by the conditions they found in Spokane. “In thirty years of practicing securities law, I’ve never seen another city like Spokane,” said Gary Ceriani of Denver, lead bondholder attorney. “I especially don’t understand Betsy Cowles. In Denver, we have people who make a living [suing] people like her. In Spokane, everyone defers to her.”

“Spokane is the last company town in America,” said former Prudential Securities investment banker Mark Schwartz of Philadelphia. Schwartz, an attorney, filed complaints with both the IRS and SEC over River Park Square . . .

. . . . Because I consider it such a valuable historical artifact, and because the ethic of university theses is to permanently contribute to scholarship, I contacted Terry Fancher and requested permission to post it on this website. After confirming the document’s authenticity, Fancher graciously approved its publication here. —L.S. (July 14, 2006)

I recently referred to the Fancher Report in a recent debate regarding the new S-R Code of Ethics and was promptly censored. Larry Shook emailed me with this comment that the findings of the Fancher Report are still valid today:

Ron: In addition to reading the Fancher Report, which you linked in your e-mail, those interested in “enlightenment” about Cowles media control of Spokane might find the 7/20/04 article “The Parable of the Three Giants” at www.camasmagazine.com useful. Among other things, the story reports:

“After taking MBA and law degrees from Harvard, Fancher went to work at the Justice Department in the early 1980s. He recently told a Camas reporter that when the Cowles family found out he had been assigned to the KHQ case, they used political influence to get him pulled off. Fancher says IRS officials told him they were furious about the move.

Obviously, KHQ’s broadcast license has remained solidly intact.

Today, says Cherie Rodgers, Spokane’s fate is essentially unchanged from the time Fancher wrote his thesis.

One of Spokane’s top advertising executives concurs. Asking not to be identified, he says his research shows the Cowleses still dominate about 80 percent of Spokane’s media.

Tom Grant, the only other journalist in Spokane to vigorously investigate River Park Square, recently wrote about his experience in a letter to Camas. He noted the “broad effort by the region’s leading news family to cover up the truth.” He criticized mainstream media for avoiding “a critical examination on the issue. The main reason: the very news leaders who should have been reporting on the secret deal were the people behind the secret deal.”

Grant blames Cowles pressure for ending his career in Spokane.

“News in Spokane has been dominated by Cowles Publishing for nearly a century. During my decade of working in Spokane television, I discovered that … The Spokesman-Review sets the agenda for all news reporting in the city. Television news directors pulled it out to determine daily assignments at morning news meetings. The Associate Press relied on it almost exclusively for determining what stories to send out on the wire. In my personal experience, I have observed the local AP office reject stories that failed to match the mainstream view as reported in The Spokesman. The AP has routinely carried stories about the parking garage deal as reported by The Spokesman, but never passes along reports from Camas Magazine.

“Cowles Publishing controls news on three television stations: the NBC affiliate, the PAX affiliate and the Fox affiliate. It has even attempted to control the news on other stations. After I reported on the secret parking garage deal [for KXLY], Cowles Publishing hired a public relations firm to muzzle my reporting, and it was successful. Part of the pressure came from direct communications between the Cowles PR firm and our news management. Part of the pressure was applied to advertisers at the other stations….”

Ron the Cop

SCROLL FOR UPDATES

Here’s an interesting discussion thread at the Spokesman-Review’s “News is a Conversation Blog.” So far the comments have been allowed to stand a pleasant development.

Ron the Cop

Greetings from Reno

Posted by Steven A. Smith | 5 Mar 9:06 PM

Good evening,

I’m at the University of Nevada/Reno this week participating in the Reynolds School of Journalism annual Journalism Week.

As is almost always the case, I learn more at these events than I contribute.

There were a couple of highlights today.

Ken Paulson, editor of USA Today, delivered the keynote speech to an auditorium full of students worried about their future careers in journalism. He did a great job.

I sat with a couple of students today at lunch. One had done a study of our Jim West investigation and wanted to talk about the various ethical issues raised by our decisions. Another is working on a thesis examining contemporary Iraq coverage and its impact on readers.

The highlight of the day came this morning.

Fabrice Florin is the executive director of NewsTrust.net. In a provocative session, he described his website, a place where citizens can review, critique and rate news stories from mainstream publications.

That is an oversimplification of an effort to do nationally much of what we’ve been trying to do with our Transparent Newsroom initiative.

He is looking for local publications to partner with NewsTust to determine if their review and critique system can be effective on the local level. I’m interested.

If you have the time, check out the NewsTrust.net site and let me know what you think.

Thanks,
steve

There are 8 comments on this post. (XML Subscribe to comments on this post)

Good morning, Netizens…
Steve Smith asks:

He is looking for local publications to partner with NewsTust to determine if their review and critique system can be effective on the local level. I’m interested.

So am I, particularly with regard to how such a system might be implemented.

Then, going to http://www.newstrust.net, I spied the following list of objectives:

• we rate journalistic quality, not just popularity
• we invite professional journalists and editors to guide our citizen reviewers
• citizens using our tools can assess news quality as well as professionals
• our multiple-rating evaluations are more reliable than single ratings
• we track ratings for each publication in our source reputation database
• we feature stories from our most trusted sources in our daily listings
To discourage member fraud and gaming, we offer these preventive measures:
• reviewers are identified by their real names
• we rate our reviewers based on the quality of their work
• our reviewers’ ratings are weighted based on their own member level
• member levels are based on activity, experience, ratings and transparency
• our staff validates active reviewers for compliance with our terms of service

The first premise, that we rate journalistic quality, not just popularity, suggests at the outset that the quantity of page hits do not matter as much as we give them credence for. Do the quantity of page hits equate to a quality product? That raises an interesting question.

The author goes on to state, we invite professional journalists and editors to guide our citizen reviewers. Without possessing any real statistics, how much disposable time do the existing Spokesman-Review editors have to dedicate to assisting/guiding citizen reviewers? Granted the number of e-mail messages that such a guidance system would involve, not to mention the inglorious number of staff meetings that would evolve, could the Spokesman-Review accomplish such a task given its existing editorial staff? Please show me the hands of volunteers who have the disposable time to steer such a project. Does Carla still have a cuss pot?

(Rubbing my mandibles together with great glee, and a brief nod in the general direction of Ryan Pitts with whom I have had several recent discussions about this very issue, we descend with trepidation into preventative measures).

I believe that Ryan and I both are of the opinion that future Blogs or any other online features need to require members being identified by their real names. Of course, this may set off a proverbial firestorm the likes of which we haven’t seen since the last great conflict, but I submit change is nearly always a good thing. I also foresee that the highly-touted number of page hits for each respective Blog perhaps will drop once the anonymity that exists goes away. The question which I believe the Editors must ask themselves is, what do we gain/lose by taking such action? In particular, do we gain quality? Then a positively question fraught with fearsome implications arises, how do we judge the quality of any given Blog? Do we even have a criteria for that? If so, I’ve never read it.

Of course, establishing a system where member levels, perhaps even permissions, are granted based upon activity, experience, ratings and transparency all require the same personnel resources as many other of the changes. How will we quantify and qualify experience, for example? Quantifying activity is easily enough performed, by using a relatively-simple system of message counters, but most of the others appear to mandate the time and resources of Editors and/or staff members, and I ponder whether the existing resources exist for these set of tasks.

Then, if the Spokesman-Review can send Doug Clark to Turkey it should be a relatively uncomplicated task to set up such a system, right?

As much as some of the changes are positive and good for the overall quality of the product of news, implementing it reminds me somewhat of elephants mating. It always takes place at high places accompanied by great bellowing and smashing of plant life, and the outcome, while somewhat predictable, can take a longer time than one might expect.

—
Dave
I am not Steve Smith (Used with permission)

Posted by Dave Laird | 6 Mar 4:38 AM

Mr. Laird,

I recently wrote along the same lines that the mainstream media is experiencing a major paradigm shift in its business model. We are witnessing a communications reformation as great or greater than that of Martin Luther’s time brought about by the new/alternative media:

. . . The currency of the new media is the validity, reliability, and predictability of the information provided in one’s own daily life. The sources that best meet those needs will attract readers and grow Those sources which lack credibility and/or don’t correct misinformation quickly will die.

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

Posted by Det Ron Wright (Retired) | 6 Mar 9:26 AM

Good afternoon, Netizens…

Det. Ron Wright states:

I recently wrote along the same lines that the mainstream media is experiencing a major paradigm shift in its business model. We are witnessing a communications reformation as great or greater than that of Martin Luther’s time brought about by the new/alternative media:
. . . The currency of the new media is the validity, reliability, and predictability of the information provided in one’s own daily life. The sources that best meet those needs will attract readers and grow Those sources which lack credibility and/or don’t correct misinformation quickly will die.
My first question which has arisen in an audit class in creative journalism frequently over the last few sessions, is how does the new media impact journalism at its most-technical levels? Decades ago I spent a great deal of time learning how to compose using a remarkable number of different disciplines, ranging from news format to creative writing and beyond. Although I have always had a gift for composition, I had to unlearn a great number of journalistic bad habits in order to become fairly competent as a writer. While some of the issues I have with the new media very closely parallel your criteria listed above, inwardly I cringe whenever I encounter people who, for whatever reasons, cannot compose well-designed paragraphs, sentences or that cannot use most refinements of the Kings English correctly. It truly bothers me when reading a document, regardless of its origin, when it is poorly-composed or has other glaring errors. I often encounter that in the alternative news, although it seldom seems to detract from the information, itself.
I did notice that you did mention, as a course of your discussion, the volatility of the new media, in that in our generation, we have brought new meaning to the hackneyed old phrase, “breaking news”. There is hardly a day goes by but what I do not check a list of news sites which typically carry the latest news updates. In most cases, because of the nature of these sites, I can learn about breaking news stories long before they hit the “local radar” of Spokane-centric news. Unfortunately, many times I discover information obtained from these sites prove erroneous over time, and that initial information garnered from the sites are inaccurate, misleading and often invalid once the true nature of the story is known. Are we to trade accuracy and validity when the news is a breaking story? Knowing from experience that the news from a given site is often volatile, in many cases hours ahead of mainstream news sources, how do we go about citing the source as accurate or credible?
However, I concur with your concept that we are seeing a huge change being made in the mainstream news media. Some of the old standards of news reporting are passing away, while new ideas and concepts are becoming the norm rather than the exception. I can hardly wait to see how this impacts local stories in Spokane, as we both participate in its change.

—
Dave

Posted by Dave Laird | 7 Mar 4:56 PM

Dear Mr. Laird,

Yes the new/alternative media or Blogos is in its infancy. Consider it as a vast neural distributive network like SETI albeit with smart nodes. Yes initial reports can be sketchy and error prone. But remember it was the cell phone photos/videos that hit the blogs that brought instant reporting on the tsunami in Indonesia. Also it was citizen journalists both military and self supported embeds that reported the shift of Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders from AQ that has led to the success of the surge.

The Blogos does have a self-correcting or self-righting ability. The best advice is to survey many sites and triangulate the info. This will give the most accurate and reliable view of reality. With the free wheeling debate and thought nothing that is wrong stands for long.

The old media needs to recognize the phenomenal expertise that exists within the blogos and the almost infinite paralleling processing power for fact checking. There is room for both the old and new media in cross-supportive relationships. After all the blogos is for the most part a free resource that reporters can force leverage their scarce resources.

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

Posted by Det Ron Wright (Retired) | 7 Mar 8:44 PM

Ron and Dave, interesting points. I enjoy your insights, and am hopeful that the credibility gap plaguing mainstream media outlets can be reversed before too long.
Although this might seem a bit off topic, one of the issues you’ve touched on happens to be one I’m having a tough time sorting out right now: the feeling that truth can always/only be found in the blogosphere because of the ability to compare and contrast information/conclusions from a diverse range of sources.
I suspect that those who suggest this are typically referring to national and certain types of international issues, because there’s no shortage of people weighing in on whatever Congress, the Pentagon, the White House, etc. might or might not be up to.
But there’s another layer of news and information that tends to affect people in a daily and more direct way: local and regional issues, which is where “mainstream” news organizations such as The SR devote their greatest attention.
The Inland Northwest has a lot of great independent bloggers. But how many are actually digging into issues of substantial regional significance and presenting information that adds to or brings greater understanding that would otherwise be lacking?
I haven’t seen, for example, many bloggers exploring why Spokane city and county leaders keep cutting taxes by millions and millions of dollars for developers (including a subsidiary of the company that owns The SR) but then tell Joe and Jane Average the government treasury is too bare to pay for things such as jail operations and new emergency radio equipment so now taxes need to be increased?
Or, why was it so important as a matter of good public policy to fire the region’s chief health and environmental regulator without having a backup plan in place, which means we’ve now gone for a year or more without one?
Those are just two examples and there’s legitimate answers and points of view on all sides of them. I mention them only for illustrative purposes because my primary point is that both of those have been examined in SR news stories and vetted (at least partially) on our letters to the editor pages and in some SR-sponsored blogs.
Sorry to seem like I’m rambling here, but if one of the key litmus tests for determining the reliability of a news organization is the ability to compare its information against an abundance of competing and alternative information sources covering the same issues, then no organization covering local or regional issues — mainstream or otherwise — will ever pass muster in a small- to mid-sized market such as Spokane because local issues are unlikely to ever draw the kind of broad, insightful scrutiny from as diverse a range of news and information sources that national issues receive from around the globe on practically an hourly basis.
Which, I guess brings us back to the original dilemma.

Posted by David Wasson, assistant city editor | 8 Mar 2:01 PM

Mr. Wasson,

Do you jest:-) If not, I’m ROTFLMAO! How long have you worked for the S-R? Mr. Smith will perhaps clue you in when he gets back to town.

Honestly it was the bum’s rush given to Dr. Thorburn by the Regional Health Board that got me digging deeper into the very questions you are raising. It’s obvious to me the key resides with the public health building sitting dead center in Kendall Yards.

Dr. Thorburn is a consummate professional in her field. Other in her professions have black-balled this town because of the politics. I’d be willing to wager she would not bend in the wind regarding ensuring the public was not short changed if the building needed to be relocated. This was the pivotal reason for her departure and not her lack of tact with the politcos. She was a potential roadblock in this development project.

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

Posted by Det. Ron Wright (Retired) | 8 Mar 2:49 PM

Ron, too funny — and, please, call me Dave (well, maybe Dave W to avoid any confusion).
Perhaps the Thorburn example was too much of a softball, even just for illustrative purposes.
But you actually help establish the underlying point.
That assertion was examined by The SR, giving those involved the opportunity to provide their answers (and in some cases non-answers), while giving readers the ability to evaluate the responses and decide who to believe or disbelieve, particularly when they head to the polls (actually now just the mailbox).
Yet if, as some suggest, the only way news and information sources can achieve credibility in the 21st century is if consumers/readers have an abundance of separate sources all covering the same topic, none of the coverage would pass the test because just two (at best) independent news- and information-gathering sources put noticeable effort into covering this issue with any degree of depth.
Personally, I thrive on competition and spent several years in one of the most competitive media markets in the nation. And, yes, readers in those kinds of markets have broad choices of news organizations to choose from and decide for themselves which have credibility and which lack it. (As an aside, they also have to deal with insanely congested freeways and a dumpster load of other urban ills that Spokanites will thankfully never understand.)
But my concern is that it seems news organizations serving regions such as the Inland Northwest risk being assigned less credibility in the digital age simply because the population base is too small to support large enough pools of competing news organizations to satisfy the information appetites of those who have become accustomed to the hundreds of choices available when it comes to coverage of national affairs.

Posted by David Wasson, assistant city editor | 8 Mar 5:32 PM

Dave W.

You are a breath of fresh air. Sounds like you’re from where that I just left. I took my pension and fled the state.

Here’s the fundamental issue here that I summarized in a comment regarding the S-R and the new code of ethics that is under development. This is a comment I posted in response to “Sam” over at HBO.

The second concern goes to the heart of a Code of Ethics re a major regional newspaper of record. The question is how to restore editorial integrity that separates the business interests of the owners from the newsroom floor. Historically there is a bright line between editorial content and the business side of a paper. In our unique circumstance a similar bright line needs to be drawn between editorial control and the owners of the paper to have any credibility with the readers.[…]

Even the Washington News Council recommended that the S-R separate itself from the Cowles Co attorney, Duane Swinton of Witherspoon & Kelley because of inherent conflicts of interests. This was recently evident in the withholding of more RPS documents from public disclosure. Witherspoon & Kelley were objecting to this release on behalf of the owners of the Cowles Co.

[…]

Because of the significant amount of property that the Cowles Co owns or controls in Downtown Spokane and along the Spokane River to the Idaho border, there inherently is a conflict of interest regarding its involvement in development projects and reporting by the S-R. [See the Fancher Report]

I’m presently surprised it’s still up and wasn’t given the axe:-) I might add that Mr. Duane Swinton was the front man funneling money into to Preston & Gates to set up the Foundation that would hold title to the now infamous parking garage. I would say more but I’m treading on thin ice here as it is re the “thought police”:-)

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

Posted by Det. Ron Wright (Retired) | 8 Mar 6:09 PM

UPDATE I:

This thread remains intact and has continued on with these additional commets

Good morning, Ron…

Det. Ron Wright writes:

Honestly it was the bum’s rush given to Dr. Thorburn by the Regional Health Board that got me digging deeper into the very questions you are raising. It’s obvious to me the key resides with the public health building sitting dead center in Kendall Yards.
Dr. Thorburn is a consummate professional in her field. Other in her professions have black-balled this town because of the politics. I’d be willing to wager she would not bend in the wind regarding ensuring the public was not short changed if the building needed to be relocated. This was the pivotal reason for her departure and not her lack of tact with the politcos. She was a potential roadblock in this development project.

Now THAT is fascinating, as conspiracy theories go. Is there any proof of this that could be found on the public record?

Like you, I had no issues whatsoever with Dr. Kim Thornburn’s acumen nor her professionalism. I found nearly all her statements on pandemics to be both cogent, scientifically sound and surprising, given we tend to be a backwater town when it comes to such things. Despite having met her several times, including during a heated press conference, I never noticed any of the issues which the Health Board felt so important.

I have been quite fortunate in my time in life to have met and befriended some true or near-geniuses, and nearly all of them were what I would term “natty dressers”. I vaguely remember that Buckminster Fuller often showed up for various public appearances dressed in some pretty incongruous haberdashery including one time, when speaking at a U.C. Berkley science symposium he donned a beanie with a propeller. I saw nothing of the sort in how Kim Thornburn chose to attire herself.

Of course, the one facet of this story is that Mayor Mary Verner was a member of the board that fired Kim Thornburn. Given the manner in which my public comments regarding the snow emergency were received by Mayor Verner, I cannot help but wonder how she would receive any questions today about the Health Board being unable to replace Dr. Thornburn. Do you think that might be a sore spot with Mayor Verner? 😉

—
Dave

Posted by Dave Laird | 9 Mar 12:05 PM

Mr. Laird,

I just have a moment or two. Regarding Dr. Thorburn, no nothing in the public records. This is yet another deal in the works out of public view. I’ve personally spoken with both Cherie Rodgers and Dr. Thorburn and the consensus is the public health building is what was in play by the “usual suspects.”

Mind you Mayor Verner chaired the Regional Health Board that fired Dr. Thorburn. But if you listened to the Mark Fuhrman Show, Verner said she was having second thoughts about Dr. Thorburn. You may have noticed that even though Dr. Thorburn initially was favorable to Dennis Hession, she was on Mayor Verner’s list of endorsers. That’ telling in my mind that they compared notes and made amends.

I think Mayor Verner was led down the garden path by the “usual suspects” re the cover story that Dr. Thorburn was difficult to work with to facilitate the play in the works on Kendall Yards. I tried to “clue in” the S-R reporters but non seemed willing to pick up the bit and run with it.

I’ll write more later.

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

Posted by Det. Ron Wright (Retired) | 9 Mar 1:16 PM

Mr. Laird,

As I promised yesterday here’s some more re citizen journalism, bloggers, and the Blogosphere re hyper focused local news and national coverage.

You may have taken “the heat” on the snow removal not from any misunderstanding of your comments here but from a thread started by Garyc regarding the S-R’s editorial at S=R’s “A Matter of Opinion.” Here’s an example of the immediacy re the Blogos on a developing local news story. I sent an email to Mayor Verner on this thread and received this reply that she gave me permission to post.

Also awhile back I posted at S-R HBO this fascinating aside regarding the Joseph Duncan Case on how it was a group of bloggers that linked him to a previous unsolved child murder in Riverside County, CA.

Here’s another example of the expertise of the Blogos on a developing story that the MSM has so far ignored regarding on the significance of the recent “disappearance” of Moqtada al Sadr. Here’s another point regarding the fact/error checking ability of the Blogos. Many reporters from journalism schools lack any credible experience with our modern military. They can be easily misled and report enemy propaganda as the truth and achieve what the enemy can’t on the battlefield by undermining the political will to fight. There is a group of bloggers that this was apparent to that created Media Mythbusters consortium. This is similar in concept to Snopes.com re Urban Myths/Legends to put a stop to the MSM endlessly recycling false reports as fact.

Muck-Raking BS Using Amateur ‘Experts’Mar 8th, 2008 by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

From The Strata-Sphere:

The liberal media and pundits are so technically illiterate it is sometimes scary. And this complete illiteracy leads them to wild-eyed fake accusations based on the ‘testimony’ of ‘experts’ who are not experts and cannot hold a candle to some of us professionals in the telecommunications business. While I would not even consider myself a security guru (though I deal with it on a daily basis) I can tell you without hesitation the latest ‘expert’ to arise in the NSA-FISA wars is clearly not.

[…]
Read More

A similar discussion took place at News is a Conversation last year on citizen journalists and bloggers. This was split into two threads re Mr. Smith’s trip to a conference in Boston. Here’s the first one where I first mentioned using hyper focused new media in an experiment on a local issue of significance. This carried on to a second post. This was the source of my amusement and snarky ROTFLMAO remark above to Mr. Wasson from the S-R’s censoring of comments that reflect the emperor wears no clothes:-)

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

Posted by Det. Ron Wright (Retired) | 10 Mar 10:12 AM

UPDATE II: 

OK Gary Crooks open the door with this question and I responded.  As suspected my comment was pulled shortly after it was posted.

 Ron the Cop

If a tree falls in a forest there is now a medium to report it even if the MSM deems it not newsworthy.

Show me the local version of this. That is, a site that reports (not comments on) local news.Thanks.

Posted by garyc  |  11 Mar 10:44 AM

Garyc,

OK I’ll bite:-)

Even though Mr. Smith believes this to be from the realm of little green men and conspiracy theorists, I would invite folks to read and decide the credibility, reliability, and objectivity for themselves of the collective work of award winning journalists Tim Connor and Larry Shook at:

http://www.camasmagazine.com/

Some how I believe this post won’t survive the day:-)

Further from their investigative work re the death of Ms. Jo Savage in my opinion and that too of former Sheriff Tony Bamonte this death should be aggressively investigated and prosecuted as negligent homicide – a first degree manslaughter in WA.

I have yet to see any real investigative zeal displayed by the S-R on this case to compel the governmental investigative agencies do give it the due diligence it deserves. Yes, I believe this case is now being reviewed by the US Attorney’s Office in Seattle now that US Attorney McDevitt has recused himself along with RPS fraud case unless the FBI chose to handle Chief Kirkpartick’s referral locally.

Did I miss something. In this previous S-R report by Jim Camden, McDevitt was quoted as saying:

He expected to hear within a few weeks who would be assigned to the case, and would make that public. If the investigating attorney wants to take anything before a grand jury, there’s usually one in session in Spokane, he said.

I don’t recall any follow-up report that the RPS fraud case was reassigned to the US Attorney’s Office in Seattle. There’s really no mention in the two S-R reports on Sheriff Bamonte’s letters regarding investigating the Savage death as a manslaughter:

Story attributed to “Staff Reports”

Sheriff supports passing case to FBI

and Jonathon Brunt’s story of August 24, 2007. BTW this story does not show up in a Google search either inside/outside the S-R and is not listed in the S-R list of RPS Crash Investigation stories:

Manslaughter charges urged in RPS garage death: Former sheriff says city bypassed rules to favor ‘financial interests’.

The reassignment can be inferred in very tangential mention in a later story by Jim Camden that has some factual errors BTW:

Parking garage claims settled

I have personally spoken with Sheriff Knezovich who has great respect for Sheriff Bamonte and is closely watching the outcome of the federal investigation. Sheriff Knezovich was not in the loop when the decision was made to refer the Savage case to the feds. Sheriff Knezovich still retains jurisdiction as the chief law enforcement officer of Spokane County to do his own criminal investigation under the WA criminal code if he chooses or ask the Washington State Patrol to investigate independent of anything the feds choose to do or not do.

How about giving the US Attorney’s Office a call for a status report on the RPS fraud and the Jo Savage cases instead of just watching the kettle come to a boil?

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

Posted by Det. Ron Wright (Retired)  |  11 Mar 1:00 PM

 

To All:

FYI – DFO of S-R’s HBO Blog copied the thread from the S-R’s Daily Briefing Blog on yesterday’s Spokesman-Review’s Code of Ethics Meeting.  Green Libertarian asked a question re a previous comment of mine.  I had quoted the Fancher Report that said the US DOJ had concluded the Cowles Co (Owners of the Spokesman Review) controlled 80% of the media in the Spokane Region.  Green Libertarian was interested in the DOJ’s methodology to arrive at this finding.  I provided an excerpt and cited the relevant pages in this comment.  You can see the S-R server’s time stamp.  When I checked this morning, this comment was no where to be found.

This was the exact point I made at the meeting re censorship in the S-R Blogs.  I leave it for you to decide if this was censorship.

Ron the Cop
Friends of Mark Fuhrman

GL,

Good point GL. You asked for my source and that’s where I got the figure. I’m actually going to do some research on this in the near future and will report back.

As for the DOJ methodology cited at that time re the license renewal of KHQ et al it was based on Cowles’ media controlled, “. . . 79.7% of the total dollars on daily advertising dissemination in Spokane.” (See pages 14 & 15 of the Fancher Report). I suppose an argument can be made that cable/DSS TV has diluted this percentage somewhat. These pages are worth a read though re a potential structural economic antitrust argument can be made re the Cowles’ Co media holdings.

Here’s my tally. This is street talk for now. I haven’t independently confirmed this.

Cowles Co own/control or are involved in news production:

Spokesman-Review
Spokane Journal of Business
KHQ TV and perhaps KHQ 590 AM or its successor
Fox-28 News Production
New media relationship with Mapleton Communications to produce news spots

RBT

Posted by rocketsbrain  |  20 Feb 11:45 PM
*****

For context here’s the entire thread.  Including my last comment to GL that my previous comment was removed without notice.

*****

Parting Shot — 2/20/08

Christopher Anderson/Spokesman-Review

A small group listens as (left to right) Doug Floyd, Gordon Jackson and Carla Savalli talk about the Spokesman-Review ethics at the Spokane Wash. downtown library today. HBOer Rocket’s Brain Trust attended and is mentioned in Thuy Nguyen’s Daily Briefing blog coverage here.

Posted by DFO  |  20 Feb 5:56 PM

There are 8 comments on this post.  (XML Subscribe to comments on this post)

“There was a bit of a discussion detour about River Park Square, mostly related to conflict of interest and what they said was coverage or lack of coverage about the Cowles company’s business ventures, to which Jackson referred to the ‘Conflict of interest’ section.”

I wonder who mentioned RPS!??! I’m shocked, SHOCKED i say!

Posted by Sam  |  20 Feb 6:16 PM

Sam,

Actually I was on my best behavior and never used the words “RPS” except near the very end. Really! I’ll have to check my audio tape:-)

I did mention the death of Jo Savage. I said I believed this was a negligent homicide and should be investigated/prosecuted as such. I inferred the S-R could have done more to encourage local law enforcement to do their job.

The heart of the matter is that there is a very unique situation in Spokane. One is that the Cowles Co own/control over 80% of the media in this market. There is an inherent conflict of interest that is difficult for any Code of Ethics to address.

I recorded the meeting and will post on my blog as a MP3 if the audio quality is any good.

Here’s a paraphrase of my comment.

RBT

The second concern goes to the heart of a Code of Ethics re a major regional newspaper of record. The question is how to restore editorial integrity that separates the business interests of the owners from the newsroom floor. Historically there is a bright line between editorial content and the business side of a paper. In our unique circumstance a similar bright line needs to be drawn between editorial control and the owners of the paper to have any credibility with the readers.[…]

Even the Washington News Council recommended that the S-R separate itself from the Cowles Co attorney, Duane Swinton of Witherspoon & Kelley because of inherent conflicts of interests. This was recently evident in the withholding of more RPS documents from public disclosure. Witherspoon & Kelley were objecting to this release on behalf of the owners of the Cowles Co.

[…]

Because of the significant amount of property that the Cowles Co owns or controls in Downtown Spokane and along the Spokane River to the Idaho border, there inherently is a conflict of interest regarding its involvement in development projects and reporting by the S-R.

Posted by rocketsbrain  |  20 Feb 6:47 PM

The code is a bit over-restrictive IMHO. But thats just me – I’m not a fan of business over-regulating and micro-managing things through policy and procedure. But in this day and age you almost need that to protect yourself as a business from unemployment claims.

Posted by Digger  |  20 Feb 7:29 PM

One is that the Cowles Co own/control over 80% of the media in this market.
-RBT

How do you arrive at this 80% figure?

Posted by green libertarian  |  20 Feb 7:34 PM

GL,

It’s contained in the Fancher Report:

Fancher cited a U.S. Department of Justice study finding that the Cowleses controlled 80 percent of Spokane’s media. That, said the agency, was “repugnant to antitrust principles, inconsistent with the Communications Act’s goal of providing for the expression of diverse views, and, therefore, inimical to rather than promotive of the public interest.” Despite this view, Justice ultimately took no action to limit Cowles cross-ownership of media or revoke their license to KHQ-TV. In a sense, the Cowleses outgunned the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

And this estimate was before the recent announcement of the new venture between the S-R and Mapleton Communications LLC the new owners of Radio Spokane that include KGA1510.

RBT

Posted by rocketsbrain  |  20 Feb 8:22 PM

Rocketsbrain,
Do you think it’s worth mentioning that the “Fancher Report” appeared more than 30 years ago — before the explosion of cable or the presence of The Inlander and at a time when (if I’m not mistaken in my time frame) there was still a KHQ radio station? Also, what investigation have you undertaken to evaluate the credibility of the Fancher report?

Posted by Doug Floyd  |  20 Feb 9:12 PM

RBT, interesting, if historical, info. I know very well about the Cowles business and property interests.

I would still like to know the methodology for the Justice Dept. to be claiming, at that time, that the Cowles control(ed) 80% of the media. The figure seems a bit high to me, and so I’d like to know their rationale.

Posted by green libertarian  |  20 Feb 9:18 PM

GL,

I answered your question but my comment was pulled.

RBT

Posted by rocketsbrain  |  21 Feb 6:38 AM

Dick Adams writes in today’s S-R LTE regarding Boeing’s loss of the Air Force’s tanker contract. Boeing may have become to complacent and lost the contract to a better plane and deal. Boeing thought it could convert it’s slow selling 767 for military use but Northrop in the AF’s mind put together a better deal. Spook 86 of In From the Cold has this assessment too. Time will tell however the AF really needs a new tanker before the old birds start following from the sky.

Ron the Cop

*****

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Letters to the editor

Subsidies softened Boeing

The state of Washington politicians for years have given corporate welfare to the Boeing Co. They assumed tanker aircraft would be awarded to Boeing, aiding the company’s complacency. Boeing, rather than upgrading the 767, decided to make this model into a tanker. The politicians and our Gov. Gregoire continued to give away taxpayer revenue to Boeing.

Losing the Boeing contract to build tankers should not be all that surprising. All the citizens need to look at is our spendthrift Gov. Gregoire’s reckless tax-and-spend habits. The voters might ask her why Washington state is ranked in the top 10 highest taxed of the 48 contiguous states. Giving money to Boeing is one reason. It’s time to tell Gregoire where the buck stops!

Dick Adams
Spokane

*****

How Northrop, EADS Upset Boeing for Tankers

By August Cole, Andy Pasztor and Daniel Michaels

The upset choice of Airbus planes as the U.S. military’s newest aerial-refueling tankers represents nearly six years of planning and investment, but perhaps just as important was the relationship between a pair of executives at Europe’s biggest aerospace company and its U.S. partner who needed wins of their own.

Scott Seymour, then head of Northrop Grumman Corp.’s aircraft systems unit, and Ralph Crosby Jr., the top U.S. executive for Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., parlayed their long association and knowledge of the Pentagon’s bureaucracy into a $40-billion victory.

On Friday, the U.S. Air Force announced the surprise …

Excerpt Only – Unfortunately subscription only

*****

From Spook 86:

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Tankers and Politics

Once upon a time, announcement of a DoD contract meant that someone won, and someone lost.

Now, it merely signals the next round of political jockeying and protests in the defense procurement game.

Consider last Friday’s award of a $35 billion contract for new tanker aircraft to Northrop-Grumman and its European partner, EADS. By accepting their proposal, the Pentagon rejected a rival bid from Boeing, which offered a refueling variant of its 767 jetliner.

But the matter is far from settled. With so much money—and thousands of jobs—at stake, Boeing will almost certainly protest the Pentagon’s decision. And the aerospace giant is mobilizing its allies on Capitol Hill, who are already demanding investigations.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one of the first out of the gate, saying the Air Force decision “raised serious questions.”

After that, the rhetoric only intensified. Les Blumenthal of the McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau quotes Washington Senator Patty Murray (“the contract “puts our war-fighting ability in the hands of a foreign government”) and Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas (the Air Force used an “Alice in Wonderland” approach in awarding the contract to a French company with no experience in making tankers). Can you guess where Boeing planned to build those 767 tankers?

Obviously, Boeing and its supporters aren’t going down without a fight.

But it’s also appropriate to ask how much of a fight they’re willing to put up. Under Pentagon acquisition rules, losing firms are allowed to file a protest, a process that can last up to a year. Boeing has every right to question the Air Force’s decision, and demand a fair review of the process.

Unfortunately, haggling over the tanker deal could last well beyond the protest period. Factor in political considerations—including the obligatory hearings, briefings and legislative maneuvering—and the fight over the new tanker might drag on for years.

Fact is the competition apparently won by the Northrop-Grumman/EADS team came four years after the Pentagon’s first effort to acquire new tankers. In 2003, the Air Force announced plans to lease 100 767 tankers from Boeing, a proposal that also attracted Congressional attention.

With Arizona Senator John McCain in the lead, House and Senate leaders pounced on the proposed lease, noting that it would be more expensive than buying new aircraft. The deal was subsequently derailed by revelations that the Air Force’s former top procurement civilian, Darlene Druyun, had been recruited by Boeing during lease negotiations. She later served a nine-month prison sentence on corruption charges..

In hindsight, McCain’s criticism of the original tanker deal was certainly valid. And, it could also be argued that re-opening of the contract resulted in a better deal for the Air Force and the taxpayer, through the acquisition of a larger aircraft (the KC-30) with greater fuel off-load and transport capabilities.

But the process also delayed acquisition of badly-needed refueling planes, designed to replace aircraft purchased during the Eisenhower administration. We’ve written extensively about problems with aging KC-135Es, assigned mostly to Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard units. Some of those aircraft are no longer flyable and their replacements won’t enter the USAF inventory for another 5-6 years.

Sadly, that forecast is decidedly optimistic. It took almost five years to untangle the last tanker mess, and it could take even longer this time around. In an election year, with thousands of jobs at stake and all that money on the table, Congressional efforts to scuttle the new tanker contract are inevitable. We can expect endless hearings on the issue, along with legislative amendments and, of course, various earmarks.

After all, if Ted Kennedy can fund a jet engine the Air Force doesn’t want (to the tune of $1 billion), we can easily envision Pat Roberts, Patty Murray, Nancy Pelosi and their friends setting aside money for a “next-generation tanker aircraft,” while working to defund the Northrop-Grumman aircraft. Boeing has already indicated that it can build a larger tanker—based on the 777 airframe—and its Congressional supporters will quickly rally to that cause.

Will that result in a better refueling platform for the Air Force? That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, those KC-135Es aren’t getting any younger, and our current tanker “shortfall” will only grow worse over time. In a rational world, the Pentagon and Congress would be working together to get new tankers into the inventory as soon as possible. But in the realm of politically-charged defense acquisitions, operational needs often take a back seat to jobs, jobs, jobs and defense dollars for the folks back home.

That’s why we won’t be surprised if the “new” tanker deal comes undone, and we’re still arguing over a KC-135 replacement in 2012. After all, if Congress could thwart the original tanker lease plan—and more recently, force re-bidding of the CSAR-X contract– then spoiling the Northrop-Grumman/EADS program should be a piece of cake.

Washington CEO Magazine has this take on Spokane.  I posted this comment.

Ron the Cop

Mr.Corliss,

I agree with this caveat. I’m not against quasi private/governmental redevelopment projects when the true costs and risks are fully disclosed, understood and equitably shared. With RPS the risks were not disclosed and in fact material facts were concealed from the public and the institutional bond investors. The public had to make the initial bond investors whole who were defrauded and successfully sued. The public took on most of the risk and got left holding the empty bag while the principals walked away with the pot. Had the public paid up front, the true costs would have been much less and the same beneficial effects would have occurred.

Ron the Cop
Friends of Mark Fuhrman

Spokane – Good news, bad numbers

By: Bryan Corliss

There are a lot of good things happening in Spokane, and it all starts with River Park Square. Whatever you think about the way that infamous parking garage was financed, there’s no denying that River Park Square worked. It brought new life to a mostly moribund downtown district, and with its shops, restaurants, bars and cinema, gave Spokane residents a reason to be downtown.

With that new life came new investment. The once-abandoned Davenport Hotel is now the renovated heart of a new arts district, which includes theaters, galleries and nightlife.

Speaking of investments, Spokane is home to a couple aggressively expanding Northwest  banks: Sterling Savings and AmericanWest. There’s more money in Spokane these days – FDIC figures show that Spokane County bank deposits have more than doubled over the past decade – a growth rate that’s slightly faster than the growth for the state as a whole.

Read More 

 A comment to editors of the Spokesman-Review and the facilitator working on the new code of ethics.

Dear Mr. Floyd, Ms. Savalli and Dr. Jackson,

As I said at the recent meeting the $64 question is whether the S-R will abide by its Code of Ethics once affirmed.  The onus is upon the S-R to demonstrate to its readers that it will follow the code and that this is not just some PR exercise.  The readers are not dumb as you think.  The readers will ultimately decide the credibility of the S-R as a trusted/reliable  source of news, commentary, and thought of the day.

The traditional media no longer holds the preeminent position of the  du jour source of the news.  See the article below. We are experiencing a major communication reformation as great or greater than that of Martin Luther’s time (Hugh Hewitt’s Blog and Glenn Reynolds’ An Army of Davids).  The new media does not require large capital investments e.g, printing presses and transmission networks of the traditional or mainstream media.  The new medium of expression is essentially free for all to participate.  The currency of the new media is the validity, reliability, and predictability of the information provided in one’s own daily life.  The sources that best meet those needs will attract readers and grow  Those sources which lack credibility and/or don’t correct misinformation quickly will die.

As I said this new virtual medium functions as the “new town square.”  As so presciently stated in this article from the new media:

. . . we lived in Thomas Jefferson’s America, noted for its unlimited and uninhibited free expression, lively debates in which ideas were attacked and defended, and a free people who thought for themselves rather than having “the truth” as seen by elites imposed upon them.

IMHO we are witnessing the effect of this fundamental shift with the low ratings this past weekend of the Oscars.  The people are no longer enamoured  or in awe of the elitist aristocracy.  As I concluded at the meeting, continue to censor civil thoughts and expression as you choose but the business paradigm is rapidly changing – adapt or you will die.

Det. Ron Wright (Retired)
Friends of Mark Fuhrman Blog

*****
HT PJM – Link to full article

[BOLDED TEXT – My Emphasis]

The Power of New Media on the Presidency

February 27, 2008 12:01 AM

From clicks to votes.

Old Media only looks alive and influential, argues Steve Boriss. In fact, New Media has played a decisive role in this presidential election.

[…]

Ironically, the progress made by New Media as a political force can be measured in terms of how far back in time it has taken us. There have been better times in history for citizens seeking information on political candidates than the last few decades, when we have endured a monolithic, center-left, establishment-loving mainstream media. Once, America was served by an abundance of news outlets providing different opinions to different groups of the like-minded. That’s what French historian Alexis de Tocqueville saw in the early 1800’s when he marveled at how our “Newspapers make associations, and associations make newspapers.” Before that, we lived in Thomas Jefferson’s America, noted for its unlimited and uninhibited free expression, lively debates in which ideas were attacked and defended, and a free people who thought for themselves rather than having “the truth” as seen by elites imposed upon them. 



[…]

A New Two-Party System — But the most striking impact of New Media in this cycle has been the emergence of a new two-party system. It will no longer just be Democrats vs. Republicans, but also the Political Class vs. the People. The Political Class includes Old Media, powerful incumbents on both sides of the aisle, political operatives, lobbyists, and all others who suck-off the teat of the federal government. The People are the New Media-fueled citizens who are now listening to that multitude of voices competing in a freewheeling marketplace of ideas. What is shocking is that in this cycle, the Political Class actually lost.

[…]

But, all is not lost for those who fear our fragmented future of ideologies and identities — those who prefer unity and an occasional reach-across-the-aisle. New Media may break us into pieces, but it will also unite all of us, from far-left to far-right, against a common enemy — the Political Class. So, New Media will not just take us back to the old days before Old Media. It is also a new revolution that will take us back to the old, but timeless, ideas of America’s oldest revolution.





Steve Boriss blogs at The Future of News. He works for Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Associate Director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) and teaches a class called “The Future of News.”

Cross-posted at Rocket’s Brain Trust

An Army of Davids Strikes – Spokane, WA

UDPATE – SCROLL FOR UPDATES

To All Good Citizens of Spokane:

“All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing” [Link]

As many of you now know the Mark Fuhrman Radio Show was axed by KGA1510 AM (Citadel Broadcasting) in Spokane, WA. While many including the Spokesman-Review (Owned by the Cowles family) have brushed this off as just business a matter, the Mark Fuhrman Show was an important independent voice in the Spokane media market dominated by the Cowles family. Mapleton Communications LLC is purchasing KGA and other Citadel owned stations in Spokane. Apparently Fuhrman’s independent voice was a factor in this sale. After reading the below information, you decide in what manner of “business” this was.

I have information from a reliable source that the Fuhrman Show was in play from the very first contact by Mapleton representatives with Citadel about purchasing KGA. IMHO this was a “hit” plain an simple by a criminal enterprise to cover its ongoing robbery of the citizens of Spokane. This criminal enterprise has so thoroughly and systemically corrupted the political and governmental bodies in Spokane to a level I’ve never witnessed before in my entire thirty-five year law enforcement career.

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton of Media Mythbusters has been kind enough to host at the MMB blog these key informational pieces:

Censorship – All the News Fit to Print (if we like it…)

Timeline for the River Park Square Scandal

BREAKING – Mark Fuhrman’s Radio Show Axed!

There is past pattern and practice re the squelching of investigator reporters in Spokane who have cut to close to the bone of the River Park Square fraud (RPS). The Cowles family was the principal RPS developer. I have documented my suspicions based on my education, training, and experience in a demand letter to Mapleton Communications LLC:

. . . to commission a formal due diligence analysis to determine whether or not there is any involvement in this sales transaction by the Cowles media, Cowles Family Trusts of Spokane, its agents or subsidiary interests either overtly or covertly. Similarly I hereby request that you provide me with a copy of this analysis prior to closing of this transaction. The reason for this request is that Cowles cross ownership of media in Spokane appears to already violate the regulatory scheme, and perhaps the letter, of FCC regulation of the public airways that it holds in trust for the public. Not only would such a violation be serious in of itself, evidence suggests that violation could be part of a much broader ongoing criminal enterprise. For this reason I am now researching the filing of a complaint with the FCC.

There is evidence to suggest that the Cowles family is also using its ownership of the Spokesman-Review to control and censor the free flow of information to misinform the people who would if so informed hold their elected and appointed governmental officials accountable:

Coincidently there is a move to systematically censor comments in the Spokesman-Review blogs re the cancellation of the Fuhrman Show that provided links to useful alternative sources of information such as Camas Magazine. In fact S-R [Editor] Steve Smith responded to a post re the squelching of Tom Grant with such wanton and reckless disregard for the facts that some termed libelous[*]. When challenged by Tom Grant, Smith had to issue an online apology in the S-R Blogs. On one hand Mr. Smith’s careless shooting from the hip would call into question his fitness to be the editor of a major metropolitan newspaper or perhaps on the other hand and more sinister a calculated hit to misinform the readers as to the credibility of Tom Grant to sway public opinion away from what Camas Magazine [www.camasmagazine.com] has amassed in their archives as the product of Kooks, Nutsos, Conspiracy Theorist, or from the realm of little green men. Mr. Smith has regularly referred to the award winning independent investigative journalists Larry Shook and Tim Conner of Camas Magazine as being such.

* As a sidenote Prof. Glenn Reynolds a Univ of TN law professor (AKA Instapundit – the granddaddy of all bloggers) has a new law review article re blog libel:

Libel in the Blogosphere: Some Preliminary Thoughts

This self-censoring is no new phenomena as this practice goes back decades as an entrenched “No Surprises” policy regarding references to the Cowles family in the S-R’s newsroom as reported by Larry Shook in “Spokane’s Toothless Watchdog” (Seattle Weekly, April 13th, 1983. Archived at Camas Magazine under “Past as Prologue”):

The Cowles media, over the years, have practiced what Spaniards under Franco called autocensura, self-censorship. More than one Cowles reporter has been heard to say that inside the paper one simply learns what can and cannot be written about without actually being told. Bob Jebb, a former editorial writer at the Spokesman-Review, now living in New Hampshire, says he found it very difficult to write about any local issues because of the sway various financial interests seemed to have over the paper. He says Cowles and former managing editor Jim Bracken “used to try to discourage me from writing about just about anything. But they would never say you can’t write something. They would just discourage me. Or I would write an editorial they didn’t like and they would say, ‘We can’t use it…’” Jebb eventually resigned in protest.

Reporters, too, talk about a “no-surprise” policy whereby any story containing reference to the Cowles family businesses must be seen by the publisher before appearing in print. One Chronicle editor is quick to point out that this policy is fairly common within the industry–but in a town where the publisher controls nearly one-third of all downtown real estate, as Cowles does, it may take on a slightly different significance.

Read and decide as to the journalistic integrity and professionalism of Tim Conner and Larry Shook in this damning investigative piece in the archives of Camas Magazine, “Inside Job.” This report on its face alone should have led to federal indictments of the players a long time ago:

Three years ago the River Park Square developer and allies in city government confronted a multimillion dollar collateral shortfall. The money was found at city hall and carefully removed. Almost without a trace.

Mind you Connor and Shook have challenged on many occasion the Spokesman-Review to refute any of the information and documentation that they have amassed in their seven year investigation of the RPS fraud. Editor Mr. Smith will not respond or refute the evidence Connor and Shook have gathered. Mr. Smith broadly waves them off and dismisses them out of hand as Kooks, Nutsos, or Conspiracy Theorists. More telling is that none of the parties involved that have been fronted by Connor and Shook have sued for libel.

I for one will not wear as I walk the streets of Spokane a sign on my back that says “Rob Me!” IMHO the RPS fraud is nothing more than a street robbery perpetrated by a clever group of thugs.

Good people of Spokane its time for us to collectively rise up and storm the Bastille to restore the heart and soul of Spokane and to restore a government that WE THE PEOPLE empower to govern.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE – An Army of Davids Strikes

RBT

Update:
Larry Shook of Camas Magazine sent along this additional follow-up. Also there is a Mark Fuhrman fan site in the works that should be online shortly at:

www.friendsofmark.org

*****

Thanks for sharing this with me. It’s worth noting that while Steve Smith, the current editor of The Spokesman-Review, dismisses as empty conspiracy theory charges that his employers used their newspaper to suppress evidence of fraud in their River Park Square project, that is exactly the danger that some of the paper’s own reporters complained of, albeit perhaps implicitly. In any case, the mountainous evidence produced as part of the RPS securities fraud case and IRS investigation removes any doubt that the essential character of the RPS deal was fraudulent. Similarly, the evidence shows clearly that the Cowles family’s use of its media was an integral part of that fraud. I believe the fraud rises to the level of criminality because of the abundant evidence showing that the developer and city officials INTENDED to violate the law. That aside, consider the following brief excerpt from “All In The Family,” the Camas story that took first place in the media reporting category in the national Alternative Newsweekly Awards in 2002:

Reporters understood their stories were sent “upstairs” for more than spell-checking.

Spokesman-Review readers learned from Alison Boggs’s story the next morning only the barest facts. The city council had given its final approval to the $100 million downtown redevelopment project, even though “the garage’s parking revenues could be put at risk because of parking validation programs.”

In other words, the city council ordered the Coopers and Lybrand study (at a cost of $80,000), then ignored its serious warnings. Spokesman-Review editors ignored them, too, against the recommendation of a veteran reporter.

Rewriting River Park Square

Four years later, Camden brought this up at Chris Peck’s public roundtable discussion. The reporter was agitated enough that EWU journalism professor William Stimson, one of the invited guests, thought Camden “had something he wanted to get off his chest.”

Reporter Oliver Staley had something he wanted to get off his chest, too. Another guest asked publisher Stacey Cowles if River Park Square stories had received special editing treatment from him or his sister. No, said Cowles; he only checked the stories for spelling. (At least one Spokesman-Review reporter found Cowles’s statement insulting. It was generally assumed, said the reporter, that the policy of sending River Park Square stories “upstairs” involved more than spell-checking.)

On the spot Staley registered his disagreement with Cowles’s offhand assurance. The young city hall reporter then said a River Park Square story of his had been rewritten over his objections.

When asked recently about this incident Staley explained that the story in question was fairly innocuous. It merely pointed out that the Spokane Nordstrom store would not have many of the lavish features of the Seattle flagship. Staley’s recollection was that Nordstrom itself wanted this understood so as not to falsely raise expectations in Spokane.

“I feel that if we were writing about a new Bon Marche,” said Staley, “I don’t think the story would have raised any eyebrows. But it did raise eyebrows, and I was given an opportunity to either rewrite it or not run it. I said, ‘I think we should run it, but I’m not going to rewrite it.’ It was rewritten.”

Staley wouldn’t tell me who rewrote it. (Chris Peck subsequently told me the story was rewritten by a business editor.)

Why was it rewritten?

To satisfy concerns of River Park Square’s “landlord,” said Staley. Was that a reference to Betsy Cowles?

“That’s how it was related to me,” said Staley. “My understanding is it was read by both Stacey and Betsy, and both Stacey and Betsy had concerns about it… I was not in a room with Stacey and Betsy. There was a sort of a shuttle diplomacy kind of a thing, where my stories would be taken upstairs and discussed and brought back.”

Were stories involving the Cowleses handled differently from other stories?

“Oh, clearly,” he said. “They’re the only sources who pre-approve the story.”

According to Staley, the attitude toward reporting on River Park Square has since changed at the Spokesman-Review. Until 2000, he says, there had been a “top-down philosophy that… this is not a story that we are going to aggressively report.”

Staley says he isn’t exactly sure why the newspaper decided to begin reporting more thoroughly on River Park Square. Whatever the reason, by the time he and Camden began working the story, the mall deal was set in concrete.

Staley says Spokesman-Review reporters have long “chafed” about the problem posed by their owners’ involvement in River Park Square. “As you can appreciate, it’s not something you’re really enthusiastic about. It’s a real uphill battle in terms of morale. It’s kind of hard to muster the enthusiasm to wade into a situation that’s a real conflict of interest.”

It’s worth reading “All In The Family” in its entirety (www.camasmagazine.com ) in order to fully appreciate the nature of S-R editor Steve Smith’s protestations. Best, Larry

Update II:
I posted a link to this piece in the S-R’s editorial blog, “A Matter of Opinion.” As you can see this comment was immediately killed. I sent a protest to S-R OP-ED Editor Doug Floyd who also moderates this blog. S-R Editor Mr. Smith responded.

Read and decide if someone is protesting a little much:-)

RBT

*****

*The Mark Fuhrman Show?*

I see in today’s paper there was an OP-ED letter lamenting on the demise of
the Mark Fuhrman Show and wondering if he will reappear on another local
station. I was going to post a note in the lively Fuhrman discussion
thread< http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/opinion/archive/?postID=3145>a
few days ago but the comments are now closed.

I just updated my blog with this piece that on the significance of the loss
of the Furhamn Show. It has new link to a Fuhrman fan site that is in the
works.

RBT

Subject: Mr. Floyd – Blatant Censorship at A Matter of Opinion yet again!

Mr. Floyd,

I appreciate your reply of the other day. I just posted the following
self-explanatory comment in the Friday loose thread at A Matter of Opinion
This is a screen print with your server’s time stamp on it that goes back to
this thread however my comment disappeared within minutes of its posting.

Unless I’m mistaken this is blatant censorship. There wasn’t anything
objectionable here except that Mr. Smith may not favor the contents of my
link over. How about letting the readers decide for themselves? This
selective censorship in the S-R Blogs is becoming very annoying. Filter or
kill what you wish but as I’ve said before this is not Russia, China, Iran,
or Saudia Arabia the last time I checked.

If you’re going to host blogs then it should be incumbent you to follow the
generally accepted blog customs re killing comments. Further if your going
to kill comments you should announce to the readers that you have done so.
To not disclose the killing of comments misinforms your readers.

I’ve been tolerant. I don’t flame. I’m generally very civil although my
credibility has been challenged many times by Mr. Smith however I haven’t
complained.

In a free society critical debate of issues of the day is what sets us apart
from ideologies that have failed e.g ., our current war with Islamofascism
which is still stuck in the 7th Century after disapproving/squelching of
criticism of those in power.

There is an interesting legal issue developing here re this selective
censorship. If this continues I may come out of character as RBT and
challenge the S-R Editorial staff from my real persona re your involvement
in something you may not be aware.

RBT

On Dec 2, 2007 3:14 PM, Steve Smith < SteveS@spokesman.com> wrote:

RBT,

This will be my last communication with you re: your postings. In a free society, you are free to express your opinions where you want and where you can without government interference. You have numerous resources at your command. As you have noted, the blogosphere is bigger, in your view more accurate, and more activist than our newspaper or anyone other element of the so-called MSM. You are free to accesss the Internet. You are free to publish pamphlets, post bulletins on phone polls, write The Inlander, the CDA Press and talk on the radio.

But newspapers are not absolute open forums. We have many rules regarding content we publish. We reject letters to the editor for any number of reasons. We reject advertising that fails to meet standards. We are in charge of the content we publish or post. That isn’t censorship, that is editorial control. You may mount a legal challenge. You will lose.

Our blogs exist at our pleasure. We have opened our doors for unprecedented examination of our internal workings and processes. But we have banned some posters for inappropriate postings. We have banned you from certain topics because there is nothing new. We will await events. You should, too.

We have told you we will not let you use our blogs to post your looney tooney conspiracy theories. We won’t let you use our blogs to call our owners criminals, our journalists criminals or worse. We won’t let you link to Camas. We won’t let you make vague threats or recruit fellow travelers to take some unspecified but “you’ll-regret-it-Spokesman-Review” investigation. We have also told fellow posters of the restrictions we have placed on you.

RBT, you know the rules. Follow them and post on the many other topics here or go away. Keep this nonsense up and we’ll simply ban you altgether.

As to going public under your real name, do it. We know who you are. Most folks on Hucks know. Go for it. Your credibility isn;t tied to your name, but to your actions.

If you want to challenge us legally for anything we’re involved in, just do it. No more vague threats and hinted at actions. Put up or, with all due respect, shut up.

If you don’t like this decision, blame me. No need to write the others, this is now my call and I have made it. Take it public. Mail your buddies. Use your blog. Call The Inlander, The Washington News Council, the WSU journalism department. Call President Bush. Call whoever you want. You will get the attention and respect you deserve.

So, RBT, please take off your tin hat long enough to understand what I’m telling you. Got it? Good.

steve

Mr. Smith,

I don’t know if you’re responding to my post to Mr. Floyd. Your call but my opinion still stands – this is censorship. You ask me to put up. I will address that in the near future.

Instead of attacking me as some “loon” how about for once addressing where the folks at Camas are in error or have their facts wrong. Seems to me this is what the paper of record in Spokane owes and is obligated to its readers.

My read of their stuff is that they are not conspiracy theorists. Trust me I’ve dealt with a number of conspiracy theorist professionally.

RBT

*****

Larry Smith of Camas Magazine had this oberservation:

Thanks, Ron. Again, I personally consider Smith’s rhetoric too tedious and transparent to bother with. He writes:

“But newspapers are not absolute open forums. We have many rules regarding content we publish. We reject letters to the editor for any number of reasons. We reject advertising that fails to meet standards. We are in charge of the content we publish or post. That isn’t censorship, that is editorial control. You may mount a legal challenge. You will lose.”

It seems to me that he makes an interesting assertion here. Namely, that newspaper’s are above the law. Fraud is illegal. “Editorial control” for the purpose of furthering fraud must necessarily be illegal, too. Again, I believe the evidence is overwhelming that the River Park Square transaction turned on multiple commissions of fraud. The bondholders cited 91 instances of securities fraud, and the city agreed with them by paying $45 million to purchase their claim. As I have also said, I believe an abundance of evidence exists on the Camas site showing that The Spokesman-Review’s “editorial control” had the effect of furthering the River Park Square fraud. Again, I believe that the Camas editorial package “Inside Job,” all by itself, proves that point. Smith can rale all he wants about the outrage of accusing his paper of suborning fraud, but until he, his employers and colleagues face and refute the evidence that that’s exactly what happened, his protests are empty.

If I’m right, that the evidence shows that The Spokesman-Review was used in the commission of a massive public fraud, that the paper is an integral part of systemic public corruption in Spokane, I doubt that a legal challenge based on that evidence would “lose,” as Smith so confidently predicts.If the legal challenge is ever brought, and the evidence is found true, but the law is not enforced, the real loser will be American democracy itself. Even Smith should be able to comprehend what an unspeakably tragic event that would be. Meanwhile, his stance seems to be that he has no journalistic duty to look at the evidence himself. He seems to be saying that that’s the job of others. And he seems to be gambling that they won’t do their job. I guess he’s just playing the odds, which is what gamblers do. Best wishes, Larry Shook

STAY TUNED – The gloves are about to come off:-)

Cross-posted from Rocket’s Brain Trust

To the Citizens of Spokane – Time to take a stand!

Shades of the Incinerator Project?

This S-R article caught my attention and the ongoing irony.

In case you missed it, I’ve included it at the bottom. This is perhaps the latest installment of or as Larry Shook reported in “Sewer Wars” in the Valley. Or as I have noted the Spokane Valley is the new “Chinatown.” This is the period genre movie of the water wars of the City of Los Angeles at the turn of the century. Except in the Valley it’s all about the effluent discharged in the Spokane River and who’s going to pay for the sewer infrastructure mandated now by the EPA. Coincidently the players own a lot of property between Spokane and the stateline. Further one only need review the migration of the players’ attorneys as being City Attorney of Spokane Valley e.g., Stan Schwartz of Whitherspoon & Kelly.

This article even mentioned the public/private incinerator! Some believe this incinerator project was another public/private project that was subverted to enrich a few unfairly at taxpayer expense. I’m not adverse at all re quasi governmental/private joint ventures. But when as the IRS re the RPS bonds that the,”Casino was rigged,” I’m not. The public took all the risks and when it went sour the players left the table with the pot leaving the public holding and empty bag like the victims in a classic pigeon drop con game. Where are the “usual suspects” in this deal? BTW I’ve scanned Larry Shook’s article and am hosting it on my server at:

http://www.rocketsbrain.com/files/Sewer_Wars.JPG
http://www.rocketsbrain.com/files/Sewer_Wars_2.JPG
http://www.rocketsbrain.com/files/Sewer_Wars_3.JPG
http://www.rocketsbrain.com/files/Sewer_Wars_4.JPG

This article caused me to take some time to collect my thoughts re RPS et al and its meaning and impact to the citizens of Spokane. Further I’m going to start the email group that I’ve had on hold at YahooGroups.

As you know IMHO Mark Fuhrman was “taken out” because he was cutting close to the bone on the River Park Square on his KGA Radio Show just like Tom Grant was previously. After all Mark brought us all together, was instrumental in Ozzie’s election, probably caused Hession to lose the mayoral election e.g, the Ormsby loan, provided a forum for Mary Verner to address the public, S-R Steve Smith showed his “true colors” re the S-R’s objectivity, and most importantly provided a forum for Mayor Talbot, Tom Grant, Cherie Rodgers, Tim Connor, and Larry Shook to unveil the River Park Square fraud. IMHO this is an ongoing street robbery of the citizens of Spokane by a group of street thugs albeit it clever ones who were aided by dirty attorneys that suborned their illegal acts. This fraud alone approaches $100M and is costing $1.5M dollars annually.

This is all well documented at Tim Conner’s and Larry Shook’s website:

www.camasmagazine.com

And don’t miss the soon to be published book re the adventures of Cherie Rodgers as documented by Larry Shook at:

Girl from Hot Springs

regarding the tragic death of Jo Savage in “Death by Parking.” Sheriff Bamonte and I believe that the Savage death was no less than a negligent homicide and should be investigated and prosecuted as a First Degree Manslaughter.

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton and I have created a companion Mark Fuhrman fan website to continue Mark’s hard hitting work on RPS. As many of you know it’s my opinion the S-R by its self-censorship and selective filtering, blocking, and censorship of important info re RPS et al is being used as an instrumentality of the the ongoing criminal enterprise to conceal its illegal activity from the public who otherwise informed would hold their elected and appointed officials accountable for their criminal acts. Perhaps we can bring back Mark in this virtual world via Net Radio and/or podcast interviews link from this site.

I will begin to post relevant material at this fan site in the very near future. Please pass the word on the email group and the fan site to your friends. Fortunately for us the demographics of Spokane are changing. The new comers will soon realize as I have that the systemic level of political/governmental corruption in this town is the worst I’ve seen in my 35 law enforcement career. IMHO this is an self perpetuating ongoing criminal enterprise. It acts collectively as some river parasite on the citizens of Spokane sucking its life blood and soul. The effect is it has stunted the real growth of Spokane through restraint of trade. It gains and unfair competitive advantage with its illegal acts over other businesses already here or other businesses seeking to relocate here and chose not to.

The newcomers don’t suffer from this accepted culture of victimization in Spokane by these robber barons and will tolerate it no more. With the advent of the “new media” e.g., the Net/Blogosphere, we now have a mechanism to build a ad hoc network of concerned citizens to restore a “normal” political/governmental/business environment in Spokane. There is a head of steam building and the rabble are gathering their shovels and pitchforks to storm the Bastille to restore a civil society.

Please spread the word. You are no longer alone. WE ARE THE PEOPLE. United WE THE PEOPLE can restore our government we empower and hold those accountable who have violated our trust.

RBT
AKA “Ron the Cop” a regular of The Mark Fuhrman Show

*****

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Firms to compete for sewage contract
Facility will be in Spokane but process wastewater for Spokane Valley

John Craig
Staff writer
January 17, 2008

Two international corporations will lay out proposals March 14 for making Spokane Valley’s sewage among the cleanest in the nation.

Spokane County officials will receive offers from Denver-based CH2M HILL and Paris-based Veolia Water for designing, building and operating a state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant to process Spokane Valley wastewater.

Although 85 to 90 percent of the new plant’s flow will come from the city of Spokane Valley, the 8 million-gallon- per-day plant will be located in the city of Spokane – at the former stockyard property near Freya Street and Boone Avenue – and owned by Spokane County.

[…]

Read More Here [Not for commercial distribution – check with copyright holder]

Cross-posted from Media Mythbusters

Into The Fray – The Cowles Dynasty and the Media

Oct 30th, 2007 by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Cross-posted at NoisyRoom.net:

Currently, I am looking into pulling together a timeline for media incidents concerning the Cowles’ Family Dynasty in Washington state. Larry Shook of Camas Magazine is the go-to source on this subject. As he points out, the Cowles have ruled the Spokane area with an iron financial fist for better than a century and along with marking their territory, they allegedly control the media. Below, you will find an excerpt from Larry Shook’s upcoming book, ‘The Girl From Hotsprings.’ Who says local politics are boring? You’ve got all the ingredients for a great story here: an all-powerful family, disappearing informants, money changing hands and one guy who is out to tell the truth no matter the cost. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Larry Shook – let the games begin:

Excerpted from
The Girl From Hotsprings,
Copyright 2008 by Larry ShookThe excerpt below is taken from the first chapter of my forthcoming book, The Girl From Hotsprings, which will be published in 2008, Copyright Larry Shook. I read a portion of the material below on the Mark Fuhrman radio show on Friday, 10/26/07.

The context of this excerpt is that in December 2003 I was trying to get in touch with former Spokane, Washington City Councilman Chris Anderson. The evidence suggests that Mr. Anderson was run out of town by the powerful Cowles family, a media dynasty that has controlled Spokane’s media for more than a century. (See “Newspaper Monopoly Town,” www.girlfromhotsprings.com.) For an account of Mr. Anderson’s disappearance, see “Missing Man” at www.camasmagazine.com. Mr. Anderson’s sin appears to have been his opposition to the massive public subsidy of the Cowles family’s River Park Square shopping mall. I had been told that a man named Mike Matheson was Anderson’s best friend; if anyone could persuade Anderson to talk to me it would be Matheson. But as soon as I told Matheson the reason for my visit to his house, he grew agitated. I feared he was about to evict me. The story picks up there.

At the mention of River Park Square, Matheson relaxed. He said he had heard of our work. At that point, a lot of people had.

“As you know, Chris Anderson was the only city councilman who opposed River Park Square,” I said. “All the public knows about him is what the newspaper reported.”

Matheson and I kicked around the subject of River Park Square: How the controversy surrounding it had engulfed Spokane for years, even making national headlines—The Wall Street Journal ran a front page story about it; Time and Forbes magazines blasted it as “corporate welfare.” How the Cowles family, The Family, the mall’s owner, had used its newspaper to front for the development (“Cowles Clan’s Many Interests,” read one of the Journal’s heads); how, as Matheson and I both understood, The Family also used its newspaper to drive Chris Anderson from town.

“I wish I could help you, but I can’t,” said Matheson.

Reporters learn to take such answers with a grain of salt. You want to gently give sources a chance to think things over. Many people, you learn, do have this still small voice inside them that they listen to. And every now and then—often enough to make patience worthwhile—that little voice changes their minds about helping reporters. Most people, in my experience, are willing to aid and abet the truth—so long as they can duck its backscatter. I don’t mean that as cynically as it sounds. The world is imperfect, impure. It can take people hostage. Spokane, in its own special way, was the most impure place I had ever seen. I wasn’t alone in thinking that the River Park Square scandal revealed the extent to which the Cowles family holds Spokane hostage. An entire American city held hostage by its newspaper, of all things.

Still, Chris Anderson obviously had a powerful conscience. And he was clearly a fighter. And Mike Matheson didn’t strike me as a shrinking violet.

“Did Chris ever talk to you about River Park Square?” I asked him.

He studied me for a moment, then nodded his head.

“Chris comes to me and he says, ‘Mike, I’ve opened a can of worms, and it’s really bad.’”

Right. I knew that. In fact, I probably knew things about the can of worms Anderson had kicked over that Anderson himself didn’t know.

This was because of all of the reporting we had done. We had many hours of tape-recorded interviews with people who would go on the record. We probably had as many or more hours of off-the-record interviews. The latter gave us a glimpse of the submerged part of the massive iceberg known as River Park Square that Spokane’s ship of state had been steamed into. That’s right; it was deliberate. Spokane’s public officials had steered their constituents right into that iceberg, and now the passengers of Spokane were expected to save themselves by putting up as much of their municipal funds as necessary to bail themselves out. Literally. In the secret insidious details of River Park Square was the proviso that the city would lay off policemen, firemen, raid the park budget, close libraries if necessary, all to pay for the expansion of the Cowles shopping mall.

And then there were all the documents we had acquired. Sheaves and reams of them, documents by the cord, it seemed. Documents that were never supposed to see the light of day.

Like the “divide and conquer” memo River Park Square developer Betsy Cowles had written on March 9, 1995. That memo had become an exhibit in the federal securities fraud trial that our reporting helped trigger. I say that, because our reporting was cited as evidence in the complaint filed by four of the nation’s leading financial institutions.

In this particular memo, written to her project manager (a man named Bob Robideaux), Cowles laid out a strategy strongly suggesting that she intended to commit several kinds of fraud. She planned to leverage some $100 million in public funds to redevelop her family’s shopping mall, and the paper trail showed that she didn’t mind coloring outside the lines to get the money.

Betsy Cowles is a lawyer, and the evidence suggests that she knew full well, or should have known, that she would be defrauding bond purchasers, the U.S. Treasury, and the taxpayers of Spokane. For non-newspaper owners this would typically be a delicate situation. Provable intent to violate law in such circumstances is one thing that can trigger a criminal indictment quicker than you can say federal grand jury. And in most parts of the country, an elected official trying to stop criminal fraud would be a hero. Cowles’s memo to Robideaux, however, suggests that the recalcitrant Councilman Anderson was no hero to her.

“The only way we are going to get all of this done,” Cowles wrote Robideaux, “is to divide and conquer as much as possible.”

Her target for division and conquest: none other than the elected government of Spokane, Washington, second-largest city in the state.

Cowles picked out one councilman, a realtor, for an early “informational meeting,” but whatever information she wanted to share with that councilman she didn’t want spread around. “I think I want to hold off on meeting with the other council members at this point,” she wrote “because I don’t think we are ready for too much information to leak too quickly. But I do think they should be on our hit list. When the time is right and depending on our message, for efficiency sake we might divide up the list. You take half and I take half (we can draw straws as to who gets to talk to Chris A.!).”

A hit list? Talk to Chris A? About what? It’s interesting to speculate what an aggressive federal prosecutor—a Ken Starr, say, or a Patrick Fitzgerald—would do with questions like that.

A cornerstone of Cowles’s River Park Square financial strategy called for the sale of $31.45 million of bonds backed by the municipality of Spokane. The bond proceeds would go to Cowles real estate companies. The problem with Cowles’s concern about too much information about her project “leaking” out is that it flew in the face of federal securities law. Federal securities law requires full disclosure of all known material facts about risks associated with purchasing securities. Get cute in withholding information like that and you could get slapped with a securities fraud suit quicker than you can say Securities Exchange Commission.

Elsewhere in the divide and conquer memo, Cowles touched on other important secrets of her deal suggestive of an organized criminal conspiracy involving her family’s various companies and various public officials. Among the secrets: the way a downtown street had been vacated that the city would lease back from the Cowleses at an exorbitant rate; the details of how more than $45 million of city parking meter revenues would be used to secure the bonds; the hidden subsidy of a $23 million federal loan to build a new Nordstrom department store; the secret refusal of the Cowles family to honor federal guidelines and put up collateral for that loan.

While this single memo was a drop in the bucket of evidence that Cowles had engineered a stunning fraud, it did go to the heart of what the IRS would later call a “scheme.” A scheme that used “smoke and mirrors…. to hide the true nature of the transaction.” A scheme concocted by a developer (that would be Ms. Cowles) who “had, and continues to have, a particular relationship with the City of Spokane… such that it was in a position to control or influence its activities.” A scheme in which “the casino was rigged… in order to unjustly enrich and profit the developer.”

But it didn’t matter. Cowles, the City of Spokane, and virtually everyone else associated with River Park Square were sued for securities fraud in the spring of 2001. The IRS, also citing our reporting, was investigating whether the RPS bonds violated federal tax code.

When investors in the Cowles garage sued, and the IRS launched its investigation, the drama surrounding the Cowles mall changed. Fraud is a loaded word. In the everyday sense it means deception. In the legal sense it means someone’s legally protected rights were violated in a way for which there is a legal remedy. A legal remedy is a socially codified mechanism for restoring victim losses and giving perpetrators consequences meant to dissuade or prevent future perpetration. Convicted perps—Martha Stewart, Andy Fastow, Ken Lay—are paraded before the media in a ceremonial perp walk, their hands conspicuously cuffed. Their public humiliation is meant to reinforce what Piaget called “externalized morality.” This is the same reason cops give us speeding tickets. It’s an object lesson: no one is above the law. And yet no one was talking to Chris Anderson, perhaps the only eyewitness who might talk about what critics would call the “heist” that city officials had helped the Cowles family bring off in broad daylight.

By the time I rang Mike Matheson’s doorbell I had a mountain of documentation suggesting that Betsy Cowles had, at the very least, perpetrated the kind of fraud that represents intentional deception. But it’s socially unacceptable to say that sort of thing in Spokane because of her wealth and power.

Betsy Cowles is a daughter of American publishing royalty. Her father, grandfather and great grandfather had been directors of Associated Press, the most powerful news organization in history. And they commanded a media empire that gave them virtual suzerainty over a sizeable chunk of the American west. And her widowed mother re-married to the great Punch Sulzberger, former publisher of The New York Times, the nation’s newspaper of record, perhaps the most influential single publication in history. (Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, of course, was also the man who risked jail to bring the world the secrets of the Vietnam War contained in The Pentagon Papers.) But neither he nor anyone else at The New York Times was lifting a finger to expose the secrets of what his new wife’s family had done in their remote barony. Because of her connections, Betsy Cowles would never be held to account for what she did in Spokane, said the town’s smart money. Not even for a woman’s death in which Betsy’s actions, those of her uncle Jim, and those of certain city officials would eventually implicate them all. That’s what the smart money said. That’s what the smart money had told me again and again. So far the smart money had been right.

And that is the subtext of the story that made me yearn to talk to Chris Anderson.

It looked to me as though Anderson had fought a brave and lonely fight. I have a warm place in my heart for people like that. The world takes people hostage, yes. But not everyone. Some people learn to free themselves, and they set a powerful example, and I wondered if Chris Anderson was one of these. It also seemed that Chris Anderson had been an eyewitness to an astonishing financial crime that wound up, as a famous retired sheriff would eventually charge, being a crime against a person, too.

A reporter’s business is documentation. I already had enough documentation to have helped launch a securities fraud suit and an IRS investigation. But there is no documentation like the tape-recorded account of an eyewitness. I desperately needed an eyewitness.

Let me be clear about something here. The story I am about to tell you is complicated. It’s also important. It’s also flat-out fascinating as an exhibit of human nature and the vulnerability of democracy in America (and everywhere else, for that matter) to corrupt media.

In Spokane, the corruption had taken the form of a kind of simony. Simony, recall, is the sale of ecclesiastical pardons. According to the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, “Simony is usually defined as ‘a deliberate intention of buying or selling for a temporal price such things as are spiritual… While this definition only speaks of purchase and sale, any exchange of spiritual for temporal things is simoniacal… The various temporal advantages which may be offered for a spiritual favour are… usually divided in three classes. These are: (1) the munus a manu (material advantage), which comprises money, all movable and immovable property, and all rights appreciable in pecuniary value; (2) the munus a lingua (oral advantage) which includes oral commendation, public expressions of approval, moral support in high places; (3) the munus ab obsequio (homage) which consists in subserviency, the rendering of undue services, etc.”

By the time I called on Mike Matheson, I had overwhelming evidence, much of it already published by my colleagues and me, that Betsy Cowles’s River Park Square mall was a textbook example of media simony. Those who facilitated her deception, including a man who would become the U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington, were rewarded with favorable press in her family’s newspaper. Those who opposed it, including an elected mayor, were subjected to vicious editorial attack. Ironically, the simony that helped drive the Cowles mall even corrupted a prestigious Catholic university.

If I ever confuse you or bore you or cause you to distrust me by not documenting the outrageous things I’m about to tell you, then I have failed. It means I wasn’t equal to my task. But if this story makes sense to you and you ever once feel like a mere armchair observer, then you, gentle reader, are the one who has failed.

So when I say I needed an eyewitness I mean you needed an eyewitness. Because, under the law, I work for you. The First Amendment—by my lights the grandest canon ever sprung from the suffering breast of humanity—is about much more than looking for semen stains on ladies’ dresses.

The other day a radio talk show host asked me, tongue in cheek, I suppose, if I ever felt like I was in the middle of a Robert Ludlum novel. The question surprised me; I chuckled and said the thought had crossed my mind. But that wasn’t true. Ludlum wrote fairy tales. Never once from the moment I started reporting on Betsy Cowles’s shopping mall did I feel like I was in the middle of a fairy tale.

If what I have written so far and what I am about to write is not true—if I have made up or adulterated documentation for my reporting for the malicious purpose of harming people—then I have a problem. It’s called libel. In this case it will be a very big problem. Because it will mean that I have libeled some very wealthy, very prominent, very powerful, very litigious people.

If I write the truth, on the other hand, my problem is different. It will mean that there is an American family, and an American city, that is beyond the law because of the ensorcellment power of The Family’s media. And that is a problem we all share. If you think not, if you think Spokane’s problem doesn’t affect you, I suggest you keep thinking. Keep thinking until you come to this question: how likely is it that Spokane and the Cowles family are unique in the human experience?

The book continues from there. Other excerpts can be read at www.girlfromhotsprings.com.

Not quite done here for today folks. Following is a very interesting exchange that I was forwarded this morning from Rocket’s Brain Trust. It is from Larry Shook concerning events with the Cowles’ Dynasty and the money trail left behind. This definitely caught my eye this morning and will be worked into the timeline. I believe this is for the Mark Fuhrman show. RPS stands for ‘River Park Square.’

Subject: Follow the money

Rebecca:

If you and Mark–or your listeners–are interested in being informed monitors of the never ending soap opera-like RPS drama, you might want to watch the sub-plots unfolding around a couple of issues.

The first issue has to do with my public charge that RPS evidence suggests that the Cowles family uses its media, particularly its daily newspaper, as an instrument of fraud in an on-going criminal enterprise to misappropriate public money for its own business interests. As I told you when I first appeared on your show last August, because I’m wrapping up more than seven years of research in completing my book on the RPS episode, I’m prepared to speak plainly, when asked, about my conclusions. In the book itself I’ll speak as plainly as I know how.
The second issue concerns the so-called “audit” of Spokesman-Review coverage of RPS done by the Washington News Council. As Tim Connor’s audit of that audit points out, the News Council’s work, instead of answering all the important questions, posed significant new ones. As Tim reported, the News Council simply made up important facts that go to the heart of the RPS scandal. One concerns the huge law firm, Preston Gates and Ellis. (And, yes, the Gates in this firm is Bill Gates, Sr., father of the world’s richest man.) (And, yes, Preston Gates and Ellis is the same blueblood Seattle law firm that got entangled in the Jack Abramoff scandal.) After Betsy Cowles, Preston Gates and Ellis (particularly Spokane attorney Mike Ormsby and Eastern Washington U.S Attorney Jim McDevitt) would probably be considered the top suspects in the RPS securities fraud case. This was because the firm represented the seller of the RPS bonds in ways that entailed several alleged commissions of federal securities fraud. (The seller of the RPS bonds was the Spokane Downtown Foundation. Both bond purchasers and the IRS cited evidence that this supposedly independent non-profit organization was itself nothing but a fraud, a storefront created by the Cowles family for no other purpose than to peddle the RPS bonds. See “Fraudville, USA,” and “The Casino Was Rigged” at www.camasmagazine.com) In purchasing the bondholders’ lawsuit—a suit that alleged the fraud that constitutes the heart of darkness in the RPS deal—the City of Spokane essentially admitted the fraud and confessed to its role in it. Again, misters Ormsby and McDevitt were key players in Preston’s RPS activities.

Spokesman-Review editor Steve Smith promised to lay to rest charges that his paper effectively suborned fraud with its RPS coverage by commissioning an “independent audit.” His auditor: the Washington News Council. One of the News Council’s key members: Preston Gates and Ellis. Another of its key members, the international PR giant, Hill and Knowlton, the firm the Cowles family turns to for public relations counsel from Rockey Hill and Knowlton. The facts made up in the Smith/News Council audit: 1) The IRS “reversed” itself and ruled that the RPS bonds that funneled millions of dollars of excess profits into Cowles real estate companies didn’t violate IRS code after all. 2) The IRS left the tax-exempt status of the bonds intact. 3) Cowles double-duty real estate/First Amendment attorney Duane Swinton didn’t have a conflict of interest. Those three assertions are wrong, concocted out of whole cloth, and illustrate the highly contagious nature of the RPS fraud. (See “All In The Family,” www.camasmagazine.com.)

The facts are, 1) the IRS didn’t reverse itself, according to the IRS itself; 2) not only were the bonds ruled taxable, Preston Gates and Ellis itself paid the taxes, effectively under the table in an arrangement that makes the sum a secret–yes, one more secret added to the RPS “Official Secrets” folder; and 3) the Washington State Bar Association finds evidence of Swinton’s conflict of interest so compelling that it has agreed to investigate it as a result of a bar complaint filed by Tim Connor.

I believe the RPS perps are playing the public–and this includes law enforcement and government regulators at all levels–for suckers who are too dumb to understand the RPS shell game, and too scared of the Cowles family to take them on over it. Like all shell games, this one is complicated only until you understand how it’s done. Tim Connor’s report on the News Council audit (see “The Verdict” at www.camasmagazine.com) helps expose what looks like a new level of cover-up in the RPS “scheme.” Scheme was the IRS’s word.

All of this raises a new follow-the-money opportunity for citizen observers and government investigators. Was Preston Gates and Ellis money laundered into the Washington News Council to fund its dubious audit of the Cowles newspaper? And is Preston money being laundered into the campaign of Spokane Mayor Dennis Hession right now in the form of the $10,000 loan from Preston lawyer, and erstwhile RPS fraud defendant Ormsby, as a way of saying, “Thank you, Your Honor, for keeping the RPS fraud good and buried”? Is this loan a reminder to the mayor to, “Remember the slogan, Your Honor–we have to put River Park Square behind us”?

At the very least, as retired economic crimes detective Ron Wright points out, these are important questions for criminal investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice to explore. Of course, Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick could ask the Criminal Investigation Division of the Washington State Patrol to launch such a probe right now, but that’s another matter.
By helping your listeners understand and follow these sub-plots you can continue to shine a light into the RPS mineshaft. Thanks for your interest and efforts.

Sincerely, Larry Shook