One of the things I try to do as a media critic is keep track of what officials tell journalists they’re going to do. And if promises made to reporters aren’t reported on, I ask about them.

For example, there’s the dangling promise Scott McInnis made to The Denver Post about clearing up his name months ago, but tempting as it is, that’s not what I’m returning to now.

Today I’m writing about State Treasurer Walker Stapleton’s promise to 7News in January that he’d seek an opinion from Attorney General John Suthers about whether it’s ok for him to moonlight for his former company.

You recall Stapleton’s moonlighting job would add as much as a quarter-time-plus job to his life and bring in, at $250 per hour, up to a nifty $150,000 on the side, making The Denver Post wonder about a “conflict of time.”

I asked 7News content producer/presenter Marshall Zelinger whether Suthers had produced an opinion on Stapleton’s moonlighting. Zelinger emailed me that Stapleton spokesman Brett Johnson told him that Stapleton never asked for an official opinion from Suthers’ office.

Zelinger told me that he understood from Stapleton, during his Jan. interview with him, that he was going to seek an official opinion, and that’s why Zelinger stated in his piece that Stapleton had “asked the attorney general’s office to make sure it’s OK to moonlight afterhours.”

Zelinger contacted Suthers’ office and confirmed that Stapleton never sought an opinion.

However, in January, Politics Daily reported that Stapleton had talked about the issue with Suthers but did not ask for a formal ruling.

When it comes to redrawing Colorado’s congressional districts, there’s strategeric strategery, which you’d expect, and then there’s stratospheric subversion of rule of law.

Reporters covering the redistricting process should be sure not to confuse the two. And so far, they’ve done a good job.

The starting point for confusion at this point could come regarding the GOP bill, HR 1276, introduced last Friday to change a law passed by Democrats last year.

The temptation for a reporter might be to frame this year’s GOP bill (introduced by Sen. Ellen Roberts and Rep. J. Paul Brown) as a partisan response to the equally partisan law passed by Democrats last year. But the two are not equally partisan, if you know the history involved, which I’ll explain.

Last year’s Dem law, introduced by Sen. Weissmann, repealed a 2004 GOP law laying out prioritized criteria that courts should use to map out Colorado’s congressional districts, if the Legislature can’t agree on a congressional map.

But the 2004 Republican law was directly connected to what’s known as the 2003 “midnight gerrymander,” which, on balance, was not run-of-the-mill strategeric strategery but stratospheric subversion of rule of law and the spirit of fair elections.

So, to be fair, this year’s GOP bill (HR 1276) needs to be described as an outgrowth of the midnight gerrymander. Or at least this perspective should be offered, as it was in recent coverage in The Denver Post, the Colorado Statesman, and the Durango Herald.

Here’s the background, based on this and other reporting:

After the last census, when it was time to re-draw congressional districts, Republicans and Democrats in the state Legislature didn’t agree on new boundaries, and so District Judge John Coughlin selected one of several maps proposed in 2002. The map he selected was upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Then, in 2003, after an election had occurred, GOP state legislators passed yet another election-map law with new boundaries that could have given the GOP six safe congressional seats in Colorado and just one to the Dems.

This brazen effort became known as the “midnight gerrymander” because GOP legislators rammed their election-mapping bill through the state legislative process during the last three days of the session, bypassing committees and ignoring normal rules.

Ken Salazar was Colorado’s Attorney General at the time, and he declared the GOP legislation unconstitutional, but Gov. Bill Owens signed it anyway in May of 2003.

The Colorado Supreme Court threw the “midnight-gerrymander” law out in December of 2003, and restored the congressional map that had originally been approved.

After this major setback, Republicans in the state legislature passed a law in 2004 aimed at forcing the courts to create congressional maps that look essentially identical to those that would have been created by, yup, the midnight gerrymander! They did this by specifying that cities and counties be given top priority among criteria used by a judge to evaluate congressional maps.

So last year, the Dems repealed this law, leaving the courts to use essentially the same criteria that were in place before the midnight gerrymander. The status quo, pre-gerrymander, was returned, in which the courts are asked to follow federal law and weigh other non-prioritized criteria as needed.

This brings us to last Friday, when state Republicans introduced yet another bill (1276) to bring back mapping criteria that would result in midnight-gerrymader-looking congressional districts.

The bottom line for reporters is to be clear that while both Dems and Republicans are pushing for an advantageous congressional map, the cuurent strategery on GOP side has its roots in the midnight gerrymander.

And the story of that stratospheric subversion of rule of law, which could have given the GOP a 6-1 advantage in CO congressional seats, should be explained to public in redistricting coverage, because the gerrymander is sort of like the Big Bang of Colorado’s recent redistricting history, setting in motion the elements (laws, bills, map criteria) that are spinning around us today.

I never heard Sen. Michael Bennet mention the directional purpose of the anus, like that grandma did at the state Capitol Mon., but that didn’t stop Ken Buck from telling Bennet last year to shut up about social issues, like abortion.

The GOP, and allied pundits, liked to say that the election wasn’t about abortion.

How could it be, they said, with a pro-choice president, two freshly appointed pro-choice judges on the Supreme Court, and Roe vs. Wade the law of the land.

The election was about jobs, they said, jobs, jobs, jobs. And to talk about abortion, or run advertisements on social issues, was a distraction from the real issues facing America, an insulting and cynical way to win the votes of unaffiliated voters.

Fast forward to Washington DC, March 9, 2011. Abortion issues, including the crusade to cut Planned Parenthood funds, are at the center of negotiations that could lead to a shutdown of the federal government.

And lives are at stake. House Republicans have cut funding not only for Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion-related services, like cancer screenings, but also for international organizations, like the United Nations Population Fund, that provide women’s health services and family planning, excluding abortion, in the world’s most impoverished nations.

The Population Fund’s backers say the loss of funding would result in millions of unwanted pregnancies and tens of thousands of deaths of women and children.

So clearly abortion matters a lot, and it matters a lot to congressmen like Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO), who’s opposed to abortion even in the cases of rape and incest.

You recall Gardner also accused his pro-choice Democratic opponent, Betsy Markey, of distracting voters by discussing abortion issues during the last election.

Fortunately, the Ft. Collins Coloradoan pressed Gardner on the issues anyway, even though he didn’t want to talk about them.

And media outlets in Denver, despite Ken Buck’s wishes, did the same thing, and pressed Buck on them, particularly at the end of the campaign.

(I wrote a guest opinion in the Coloradoan today thanking the newspaper for asking Gardner about abortion anyway, and laying his views out there, even at a time when most people didn’t identify these issues as “top of mind” in polls.)

That’s what journalists are supposed to do, look at the big picture–because any person in his or her right mind, not to mention any professional reporter, knows that a U.S. Congressman will inevitably face votes on social issues, like abortion and gay marriage.

And that’s what’s come to pass today in the U.S. Congress.

As reported yesterday by Westword and the Denver Daily News, Reporters Without Borders makes a seemingly reasonable request of The Denver Post and its associated law firm, Righthaven: warn bloggers and activists before suing them for stealing your content.

Let me make a confession here: For years as an activist (now I’m a progressive journalist), I’d steal content (a song or an article or this or that) and use it under the assumption that I’d just take it down if I or my organization received a cease-and-desist letter. So I knew I was stealing stuff, but I didn’t care.

I know I’m not the only one who burgled in this manner.

Now let’s look at the current situation in the newspaper industry. Journalism is dying, especially big-city dailies. Politicians send reporters like Lynn Bartels at the Denver Post condolence gifts when their newspapers close, but they don’t do anything about it. In fact, few people care. The interest groups benefiting from journalism don’t seem to know who they are, and they are mostly silent.

So I don’t like a lot of what Righthaven is doing, and I don’t understand why the newspapers aren’t publicizing the lawsuits to educate the public, but I love to see newspapers fighting back aggressively.

That’s what this desperate situation calls for.

So here’s a legal strategy being tried by Righthaven that’s addressing what could turn out to be a central part of saving journalism: protection of online content. I admit that neither the revenue from online content, nor the strategy of suing to protect it, will likely work.

But it could be a part of saving journalism, and it’s worth it to try.

And sending “takedown” letters before suing will allow too many bad guys, like I myself was, to continue to be bad.

If you’re a political activist, whether PETA or Tea Party or whatever, you spend a lot of time thinking about how to get media attention.

I’ve done a lot of this myself, and even wrote a book about it (hint), and I can tell you that activists love to steal media attention that rightfully belongs to their opponents. It ain’t right, but you see it all the time.

One way to do this is for a small group of Tea Party activists to attend a big rally of labor supporters, rallying in support of their Wisconsin brethren.

The small Tea group shows up without a permit, creates a conflict, and gets major media attention for doing almost nothing but showing up, chanting, and playing the flute.

Reporters flock down to the mini-rally-within-the-big-rally to hear the music and experience the manufactured tension of dueling “crowds.”

You want journalists to check out these Tea protesters and report on their stunt, and I don’t use “stunt” pejoratively. It’s admirable that the Tea people get out there, and it’s news.

But it’s up to journalists to represent the entire event, both rallies, accurately, without giving undue attention to the smaller protest. Last week, as you recall, “over a thousand” pro-union folks rallied at the State Capitol, as well as a few hundred Tea Partiers, according to Fox 31 estimates.

The Denver Post put the labor side at 500, but did not estimate the number of counter protesters at all, creating, to some degree, a false balance between the two rallies, especially when the lead paragraph stated:

“Hundreds of union workers in Colorado took aim Tuesday at Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, rallying on the steps of the state Capitol as anti-union counterprotesters gathered nearby.”

Asked about this, Post Political Editor Curtis Hubbard wrote me:

Placing the union supporters at the front of the lead gives greater emphasis to their cause and is a signal that they’re the primary news of the story. Careful readers will note that, further down, we estimated the number of union supporters at “more than 500” but never provided a measure of the counter protest. That was an oversight, for which I take responsibility.

In retrospect, it would have been advisable to give a crowd guesstimate for the counter-demonstration, or at least note that it was “smaller,” though I think it’s fair to say that the structure of the story leaves readers with an appropriate impression of the respective scopes.

Hubbard is right that the structure of the Post’s article about the protests, which mostly featured the labor people and issues, gives the impression that the union rally was larger, even without a number for the Tea protesters. But that assumes you read the story, of course.

And the size of the photos also proportionately and fairly represented the event.

As Damon Cain, The Post’s Assistant Managing Editor for Design, pointed out to me in an email:

“On the Denver & The West cover, the dominant photo of the pro-union forces was roughly seven times larger than the photo representing the pro-Gov. Walker side of the issue. Another photo on the jump page increases the proportional difference to about nine to one, union. (I’m measuring in square points.)

Fair, I agree. The union event was about 10 times larger than the Flea protest.

But I thought the headlines in the print edition contributed to the false balance that Post created, to some extent, between the two rallies.

The major headlines on the front page of The Post’s Denver & The West printed section were “United by passion,” with a smaller headline reading, “Colo. Protesters clash over Wis. Governor’s effort to weaken unions.”

The “clash” was insignificant, rightly reported as such at the very end of the article, and didn’t deserve a headline. Similarly, a photo of a flute-playing Tea Partier should have run in the interior of the section.

Cain disagreed with me on the headlines:

Words matter. The main headline reads “United by passion.” At first blush, I read “united” and I’m thinking “union” and “united with the protests in Wisconsin,” especially in combo with the dominant image of pro union forces.

So, the two largest graphic elements in this display are the pro-union photo and the “united” headline. The impression is clear to me.

Yes, the drop headline (clearly, a subordinate element which played an inferior visual role, similar in effect to the role of the secondary photo compared to the dominant) addresses the clash of opposing viewpoints — as well it should.

I don’t see a “false balance,” Jason, only a fair representation of what transpired.

The front of Friday’s Denver & The West section (in The Denver Post) had a photo of Gov. Hickenlooper, looking serious, even though he had no tie on.

Next to Hick, the headline: “Execs Have Ideas for Hickenlooper.”

The summary of their advice wasn’t news, but there it was in a smaller headline, “Colorado must be business-friendly.”

Inside, covering a full page in the business section and including another photo of Hick (with tie on), eight businesspeople each offered a few hundred words of advice, like slash taxes and cut spending and regulations. One guy said the state should improve the quality of K-12 education and higher ed. A couple execs suggested campaigns to buy local. Another wrote that Colorado shouldn’t forget “quality of life” issues.

I finished the article wondering what labor leaders would tell Hick, and so I emailed one of the article’s authors, Post reporter Aldo Svaldi, and asked if something with labor leaders’ advice was in the works.

He replied:

I spoke to my editor Steve McMillan and he likes your idea. We have struggled in the past to get labor leaders to share their views, but Greg Griffin, who covers labor and employment issues, is working to open up the channels of communication. Steve agrees that we should do a story along the lines you suggest, and it is a timely topic given what is happening in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

That’s about as fair as you could hope for. Let’s hope labor leaders play along.

And, of course, others who think of Colorado’s economic health in a different way than “the business community,” like environmental leaders, would no doubt have advice for Hick as well.

UPDATE: Rosen just replied to me via email: “I get hundreds of e-mails a day and don’t have time for these kinds of distractions. I don’t have a contract with the Post and Dan Haley has already answered you on this. You’ve become a nuisance which is, no doubt, your purpose. We’re done.”

——————-

“As I’ve said before-.”

That’s your cue to stop reading Denver Post columnist Mike Rosen if you don’t want to re-read exact duplications of what he’s used in previous columns.

Rosen told his KOA radio audience Monday that he’s worked hard during 30 years of column-writing to perfect his arguments on certain topics (like always vote Republican!), and these perfect arguments need not be re-written or expressed in fresh ways. When he re-uses material, he said, he’ll write something like, as I’ve said before….

As to the legal issues involved, which I raised last week, Rosen said on the radio Monday that he didn’t sell the Rocky Mountain News “exclusive rights” to his columns. He said he sold “first-use” rights, but he didn’t quote from his contract.

“While writing for the Rocky, my column also ran in the Colorado Springs Gazette and Pueblo Chieftain with the Rocky’s knowledge,” Rosen emailed me.  “And my manuscript was marked Copyright Mike Rosen.”

Okay, so the question is this: What does Rosen’s Post contract say? Is he selling “first-use” rights to The Post? That’s probably the case, and if it is, he’s violating his Post contract by selling it previously published material.

In any case, at a time when The Post is rightfully up in arms about bloggers ripping off its material, it should be sure that it’s not violating copyright law on its own op-ed page.

Now it’s been almost three months since Scott McInnis told The Denver Post he’d clear his name within a couple of months. And we’ve heard nothing.

I’m sorry to harp on this, but I’m desperate to find out how he’s going to do it. It’s a puzzle in my brain that I can’t shake, even though it doesn’t matter, I know. But how is he going to clear his name?

Will Rolly Fischer be involved? Ali Hasan? Craig Silverman? Dick Wadhams? David Lane? Dan Maes?

An upstanding newspaper like The Post shouldn’t drop puzzlers like this into their readers brains (like mine) and leave us dangling and awake at night thinking about it. (Pathetic, I know, but the editors over there might not realize the impact they have on people.)

Post biz columnist Penny Parker, who wrote about McInnis’ promise to get the truth out there, emailed me last month, in response to my questions, that she thought McInnis’ plan was very much a story, not ancient history. This was a big relief to me.

Then she wrote, “Not sure if that story will go to me or to the political reporters at this point.”

Let’s hope it goes somewhere, and fast. My mind is boggled, and I need to move on.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike KHOW’s Peter Boyles, but you’ve got to admire the guts he has to smack down, however mindlessly, journalists who work for the same company he works for, Clear Channel.

KOA radio, which is one of the last radio stations in Denver that operates a news department with real reporters covering the events of the day, has an office on the same floor as Boyles’ KHOW and other Denver radio stations owned by Clear Channel.

This morning during the 5 a.m. hour, Boyles referred to news reporters at fellow Clear Channel stations in Denver, including KOA, as “alleged newspeople” because they don’t provide enough coverage of the birther folks, led by, ahh, Boyles, who believe Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen.

Boyles said:

They won’t because, number one, political correctness, number two, they don’t want to be in the lead on this story. There’s a great fear factor amongst these people…I’m telling you, this is such a hot-button issue that, like I say, I work on a floor full of alleged newspeople. They don’t talk about this. I’ve been in debates, sitting there, and they go, it’s not an issue…I can give you the reasons why it is an issue. They can’t give you any reasons why it is not an issue. I think the reason is, I’ve been on this story three years, these guys have never even looked at it.

You rarely see media types in town attacking others who work at the same company. At The Denver Post, for example, you don’t find too many columnists criticizing reporters in The Post’s newsroom. Ditto at 9Newsk. The Post’s Susanne Green waited until she resigned to open fire on The Denver Post, and she did it in the Huffington Post.

I’d like The Post to criticize itself or other MediaNews newspapers more often, but you don’t see it much.

Of course, Boyles’ sweeping and snotty comment about KOA news reporters, calling them “alleged newspeople,” is lousy media criticism, because he’s basically condemning them as professionals simply because he disagrees about their coverage of one issue. So Boyles would be better to drop the insults. His equally nonsensical attacks against The Post, which are part of his staple routine, should also be dropped.

But he gets credit for not being scared to level his criticism at co-workers so close to him, in fact, across the hall.

The Denver Post is missing one of the biggest media stories in Colorado. That is, its own apparent effort, through a Las Vegas law firm called Righthaven, to protect the copyright of Post and other newspaper articles and other online content.

Righthaven has now apparently filed 30 lawsuits in federal court in Colorado, including one yesterday. Righthavenlawsuits.com, which tracks Righthaven’s activities and news coverage, reports that “numerous” lawsuits have been filed over Denver Post material, but it’s not clear how many of the 30 cases in Colorado court touch on The Denver Post. Westword reported yesterday that Rocky Mountain Right has shut down its website for fear of being sued by Righthaven.

Righthaven buys the rights to Post articles and sues entities that use them online in alleged violation of federal copyright law. Righthaven typically sues for $150,000 plus the rights to the alleged offender’s domain name. Most of the firm’s approximately 235 lawsuits have been filed over alleged copyright violation of Las Vegas Review Journal content.

I’ve written before that MediaNews, The Post’s parent company, is right to try to stop bloggers and others from helping themselves to The Post’s online content, beyond what The Post authorizes in its fair-use guidelines. Righthaven’s approach is ugly, and I’d alter it if I were in charge, but I’m a reluctant supporter because stealing newspaper articles robs The Post of online ad revenue it needs to survive now, and will need even more in the future (if the newspaper doesn’t die).

And if The Post and other big-city dailies go under or continue to shrink, taking a huge chunk of the country’s serious journalism down with them, our democracy, imperfect as it already is, will pay the price.

But what’s baffled me, as I wrote here, is why The Post doesn’t report on the Righthaven copyright lawsuits. I understand that businesses hate to talk about topics even remotely related to litigation, but you’d think The Post would have the guts to figure out a way to do this, if only to warn members of our community who might get sued out-of-the-blue for violating copyright law that they didn’t know they were breaking.

As I see it, along with filing lawsuits, The Post should be educating the public about The Post’s fair use policy, and why it’s important to honor it. Running one little notice in the newspaper is obviously way inadequate. And by remaining silent on the Righthaven cases, especially as they propagate, The Post isn’t helping its own cause very much.

And it’s missing its journalistic responsibility to report on major media stories.

Last Month, I queried Post Editor Greg Moore about the Righthaven lawsuits.

I wrote Moore:

“I would think that part of the goal with the lawsuits is to educate bloggers and others about fair-use policy. A lot of people need educating about why it’s so important for newspapers to protect their content. It’s as important as any issue in journalism. Yet, I’ve seen no news about Righthaven in The Post, even though there’s a local hook. Why?”

Moore replied:

“As to Righthaven, there’s nothing to report. They are suing on our behalf those who infringe on our copyright. This is not about educating bloggers or anyone else. It is to restrain them from appropriating our content. We have been clear that we will protect our content and if anyone is unclear about why that’s important, there is probably nothing else the institution can say.”