In a post Saturday, I criticized the Associated Press 1) for mischaracterizing Rep. Betsey Markey’s public outreach after her vote on the health-care bill as “small-bore” and 2) for not contacting Rep. Markey’s office to discuss the topic of the article. AP declined comment last week, prior to publication of my post.

But in response to a crosspost of my piece on ColoradoPols, the AP stated Monday:

Mr Salzman:

Allow me to clarify a point in your posting.

Our reporter, Kristen Wyatt, tried to contact Mr. Marter several times to discuss U.S. Rep. Markey’s plans for explaining the health care bill to constituents.

Specifically, she called Mr. Marter twice in late March. The calls were not returned. Then she e-mailed him on March 25. When she got an out of office response to that e-mail, she contacted Anne Caprara in the congresswoman’s Washington office.

Ms. Cabrara told Kristen that details of any health care town halls would not be released because of security concerns.

Kristen approached the congresswoman at an unrelated March 27 appearance to talk about her vote. Markey’s comments were reflected in the story.

Mr. Marter’s assertion that The Associated Press failed to reach out to him or the congresswoman for comment are wrong.

Jim Clarke
Chief of Bureau
The Associated Press
Denver, Colo.

At the end of March, The Denver Post reported that a GOP donor sent Republican congressional candidate Cory Gardner a $1,000 check with a note, “You can thank Betsy Markey’s vote [for the health-care law] for this check.”

This anecdote was repeated in a subsequent Spot blog post and then the Washington Post, without the context that the donor, Fred Vierra, was a major GOP contributor, giving over $400,000 to GOP candidates nationwide since 1998, including big money to lots of big name Colorado Republicans. I wrote about this previously.

Unfortunately, this story of incomplete information gets even worse, but this time The Post should be congratulated for providing context, not omitting it, and for publishing the information that was absent previously, namely that Vierra was “regular contributor to Republicans,” even if the size and scope of his donations was still absent.

The Post revealed yesterday on its Spot blog that on Jan. 13, more than two months before Markey voted for the health-care law on March 21, Vierra had already given Cory Gardner $2,000, making him among Gardner’s top individual donors and bringing him close to the maximum an individual is allowed to give ($2,400 per election). 

Here’s why this is important, though it’s pretty clear in The Post piece:  When Vierra handed Gardner his $2,000 check on Jan. 13, Vierra could not have included a note, like he did later, saying how pissed he was at Markey for her health-care stance, because at that time she had only voted against the health-care bill. (She voted against an earlier version November 7, and she had made no indication that she would switch her vote.)

After Markey switched her position, and voted for the law, Vierra gave an additional $400 to Gardner, bringing his donation to the $2,400 maximum allowed. So how did he make a $1,000 donation without breaking the law? His wife, Roxanne Vierra, gave $600, as the Spot pointed out this afternoon.

The Spot reported that neither the Gardner campaign nor Vierra mentioned the previous $2,000 donation, when interviewed about it in March: “What Vierra didn’t say …• and neither did Gardner’s campaign …• was that the retired Cherry Hills Village resident had already donated $2,000 to Gardner.”

This information was not available on databases, like Vierra’s extensive donations, until last week when quarterly fundraising reports were posted. So there’s no way The Post could have known about the $2,000 unless told by someone.

Chris Hansen, Gardner’s campaign manager, told me yesterday morning before The Post’s piece was published, “We did not mislead anybody on anything. I think I should make that clear. I mean, we don’t need to.”

Asked if he told The Post about Vierra’s $2,000 donation in January, Hansen said, “Basically the conversation was a long conversation, with me reading off all the different notes. At a certain point it got kind of redundant. I probably have a pile of 30 or so. After that, she [The Post] asked for some numbers of people, and I gave them over to her. Truth be told, that was about a month ago. I don’t exactly remember the conversation. ”

“The reality is,” he said, “if you want to substitute Fred Vierra for any of our many other dozens of notes, the story would still have been there.”

And if Hansen makes these names available to journalists, reporters should, among other things, check their donor histories and ask them when they last gave to Gardner.

It’s basic journalism to seek the perspective of those you’re scrutinizing–and to check your facts.

But the Associated Press did neither of those things for a story last Friday titled, “Vulnerable Democrats are tiptoeing on health care.”

As a result at least one Democrat, Rep. Betsy Markey of Colorado, was presented in the article as tiptoeing when in reality, she may not have been tiptoeing at all, depending on your interpretation of the facts.

You’ll see what I mean when I provide information (below) that was omitted from the article.

The AP piece reported that Markey, Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), and Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-AZ) had not “made an in-person appearance before a large crowd on the topic [health care] since it was passed into law.”

The AP wrote of Markey, “During Congress’ two-week Easter break, she reserved any discussion of health care reform for conference calls, an op-ed piece, and an appearance at a small-town Rotary Club–all small bore outreach.”

“After the raucus, angry town halls of last summer, Markey steered clear of massive gatherings,” the AP reported.

But the AP never called Markey’s office to discuss the matter, according to Markey spokesman Ben Marter. If the AP had done so, here’s what it would have found out:

After the health care bill passed the House (March 21) and prior to the publication of AP’s article (April 8), Markey held two “tele-town hall meetings,” with 8,500 participants each, Marter told me, adding that these conference calls were publicized in “newspapers and announced on radio stations all across the district.”  

So a total of 17,000 people participated in Markey’s conference calls, many more than the average of 200-300 participants at Markey’s live town hall meetings over summer, according to Marter. In addition, he says, Markey met during her office hours with groups (up to 50 people each) in a setting that “allowed more people to see Betsey and ask a question.” 

These figures make AP’s characterization that Markey engaged in “small-bore” outreach look way off the mark.

Let’s just call it what it is, editorializing.

It’s up to us to decide whether to believe Markey’s office and size up her outreach and the reasons for using the conference calls and other outreach measures in the wake of last summer’s, as the AP put it, “raucus, angry” town hall meetings. (Some might have called them “unmanageable,” “disruptive,” or possibly “unproductive.”)

But the AP never put the facts on the table for us to evaluate.

I was hoping the AP would talk to me about this, because I’m a huge fan of the news service, and it seemed really strange that it wouldn’t have bothered to call Markey’s office to get her side of the story, especially because other Democrats in the article were apparently interviewed.

But Kristen Wyatt, the AP reporter who wrote the piece, could only apologize for not being allowed to talk to me.

Back on March 19, on KCOL radio in Ft. Collins, Cory Gardner told host Brad Jones that there’s a natural overlap between Gardner’s State House duties and his activities as a candidate for U.S. Congress:

 Brad Jones (at five minutes 15 seconds, March 18, hour 4) : One issue on the campaign trail even before the caucuses this week has been your ability to balance your duties down at the State Capitol with the very rigorous demands of being a candidate in one of the most high profile congressional races in the country.  How have you been able to strike that balance? And what kind of job do you think you’ve been able to be doing at that?
Cory Gardner: You know I’ve given up sleep. It’s over-rated.
Brad Jones: Laughs.
Cory Gardner: And so we’ve been working very hard representing the people of eastern Colorado. My house district is basically the entire eastern plains of Colorado already, which is all within the 4^th Congressional District. With the exception of a portion of Adams County, the rest of it is within the 4^th Congressional.  And so we’re able to work for the people of Colorado, for the people of House District 63, fighting for water, agriculture, rural Colorado, at the same time as we stand up and fight for this country.