A political action committee funnels $50,000 to a state legislative candidate. Is it a journalist’s job to reveal it?
Of course.
A local lawyer gives $50,000 to an old friend plagued with money problems. The friend happens to be mayor. Is that news?
Absolutely. Our mission, after all, is to share information with the public. Let readers decide what it all means.
Sounds good. But it’s not always so easy.
What if a Queen Creek couple donate $50,000 to the town, asking only that the money be used for youth programs and that the gifts remain anonymous? Do you run their names?
That was the dilemma Republic reporters and editors recently struggled with.
Reporter Edythe Jensen wasn’t poring over financial records when she learned of the family’s generosity. It was in a casual conversation with a source.
“I thought it was a good story,” she said, “of average people who are extremely generous.”
But journalists can’t take it on a town manager’s word that a benefactor has no ulterior motive, no hidden connection, no private agenda. The reporter’s credo: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.
Queen Creek officials, however, refused to reveal the identities of the donors. The Arizona Republic made a public-records request to obtain the names.
The generous, and anonymous, Queen Creek residents were insistent. They didn’t want their names mentioned.
“We’re not the story,” one of them told me. “We’re not special.”
Jensen’s checking satisfied editors that the couple’s generosity was sincere. They were not interested in favorable treatment down the road. But the issue of naming them divided reporters and editors and editors among themselves. Everybody involved agonized.
Deputy Managing Editor John D’Anna: “I saw clearly the public-record and public-right-to-know arguments. I just felt I needed a more compelling reason to put their names in the paper.”
East Valley bureau chief Paul Maryniak was equally torn. He didn’t want to expose the donors against their will.
“But I felt uncomfortable withholding the information,” he told me. “That’s not our job. Our responsibility is disclosing information.”
Ultimately, that argument carried the day. The story ran Friday, July 21, in The Republic’s Southeast Community editions.
Many readers were touched by the couple’s kindness. Others, like Chandler resident Jay Hawkins, were critical.
“The story could have been just as effective without the names,” he said.
The Queen Creek donors were unhappy as well, though they have not been harassed, so far, by fund-raisers.
On one point, however, they are surely wrong.
They were the story. They are special people.
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Richard de Uriarte is the reader advocate for The Arizona Republic. He can be reached at (602) 444-8912 or by email at reader.advocate@arizonarepublic.com.
