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JORDAN COLUMNS MERIT REPLY

Frank Jordan's running commentary defending the Daily News coverage of the Jeffrey Prosser Carambola proposal merits some reply.
In his first column (presented as an op-ed piece but its usage of the third person implies an editorial), Jordan indicates that the only thing wrong with the now-infamous Daily News story of April 1 is its banner headline, "Prosser bails out the V.I."
"Too optimistic for our taste," Jordan wrote.
Other than that, Jordan praised the Daily News for its "stunning presentation of its scoop." He sides with Daily News executive editor Lowe Davis, who maintains there is a "brick wall" between the news pages of the paper and its owner.
This week, Jordan excoriates the V.I. Independent for its April 2 editorial on the subject.
He dredges up a 10-year-old event involving the publisher of the Independent and Avis that cannot compare to a multimillion dollar land-tax break deal.
He also says he doubts the governor could have gone this far without consulting union leaders on the deal, despite the fact that two of the chief union leaders — Tito Morales and Glen Smith — say their unions weren't consulted.
The real question here is this: was the Daily News April Fool's Day coverage a real "scoop" as Jordan and Lowe claim, or was it a propaganda ploy to persuade Virgin Islanders that the deal is good for them?
Let's examine the coverage.
1. The headline. Set in large 80-point type, with the kicker head, it covers most of the front page. Far from "optimistic," the headline is inaccurate: Prosser is not "bailing out" the V.I. at all; he is simply making a proposal that involves government employees being offered land in lieu of retroactive wages.
Two, the headline is misleading, leading readers to believe that Prosser has solved the government's financial crisis.
Three, the headline is sensational, telling readers that this is "an unprecedented alliance between big business and a government going broke…"
Unprecedented to what? If Prosser's Innovative Communications Corp. doesn't have anything to do with the news department, then who wrote these headlines and why?
2. The main story by Andy Gross is filled with inaccuracies and misleading statements. By wording the proposal as a done deal where ICC "bails the government out of a financial hole and builds $13 million in projects that will encourage tourism and investment," the article presents Prosser's offer as a very attractive one. The reality is that ICC is not putting any immediate cash to the government coffers, just offering to trade land in exchange for not paying taxes for 30 years.
The first rule in journalism is to create a fair and balanced story, by getting both sides of an issue. This story contains one paragraph mentioning there are critics to the proposal, but does not name the critics or cite their concerns. Any objective reporter would have got an opposing view.
The second rule in journalism is to name your sources. This story has no verifiable sources, and one anonymous source is quoted extolling Prosser's saintly qualities by saying he did this only to "help the community." Without reliable sources, the paper's coverage amounts to hearsay.
The third and most important rule in journalism is for the reporters and editors not to make the news. But when the paper's reporters called senators for a reaction to a proposal they have not seen or heard about, they crossed that line — they created the news.
3. The amount of coverage: Four pages devoted to a proposal attributed to anonymous sources is suspect at best. Two sidebars seem designed to convince readers that we need a new library and a new drag racing strip, two small components of Prosser's proposal.
4. The bias quotient. One sidebar, entitled "Prosser's story," presents Prosser as the territory's knight in shining armor, without telling people how he inherited money, how he made money from a 1-900 phone sex line, and why he broke with former partner Neil Prior. Instead, it is loaded with words such as "his initial $500 and aggressive business instincts have served Prosser well."
5. The unanswered questions. Although Jordan says the Daily News reporters "started flogging their non-Prosser sources" and nailing down facts, there is little to believe that much of this saturated coverage came from anyone but Prosser's boys. The likely scenario is that some high-level Prosser employee leaked the story to the Daily News, not that some enterprising reporter found it out on his or her own. A good reporter would have asked salient questions about the deal: "How much is he offering (offering — not paying) for Carambola and how much per acre would it be worth to the prospective employees? How much taxes would these employees be responsible for while ICC pays none for 30 years? Who would be responsible for the infrastructure of the property and who would maintain it? What about the unionized employees who live on St. Thomas and don't want land on St. Croix? None of these and many other questions were asked here.
Examining the coverage, Jordan and Lowe Davis's claim that the Daily News reporting team discovered this story on their own, without any influence from their owner, seems pretty flimsy.
Peter Shaughnessy

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