On Feb. 10, at a public forum in Aurora, Rep. Mike Coffman told the crowd (See video here.):

“I haven’t resolved the question about a pathway to citizenship for (adults) who’ve overstayed their visa or crossed the border illegally,” Coffman said.

Coffman also said that 1) he supports granting undocumented children, brought to America by their parents, a pathway to citizenship (through military service) and also that 2) he supports granting “legal status” (not necessarily citizenship) to undocumented adults.

Since then, a number of news outlets reported Coffman’s new positions on immigration, and they speculated that he’s modifying his views because he’s now vulnerable (or desperate) in his new district with a large Hispanic population.

But some journalists and bloggers are creating the false impression, or actually misreporting, that Coffman supports a path to citizenship for undocumented adults, when as far as I know, he does not.

Yesterday, for example Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reported, in an article with the misleading headline of “Mike Coffman Does a 180 on Immigration:

“[Coffman] came out in favor of establishing a pathway to citizenship for immigrants residing in the country illegally, and for their children.”

I’ve requested a correction from Isenstadt, but he didn’t immediately respond.

In a blog post last week, I spotlighted a misleading headline atop a blog post by Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard. It read, “Four Reasons why Rep. Mike Coffman, (R-Aurora), Saw the Light on the Dream Act.”

In fact, Coffman supports one of the DREAM Act’s two paths to citizenship (military enrollment) not the other path (high school or college graduation). So, he hasn’t seen much light on the DREAM Act. As of today, he’d vote against it, as he did in 2010.

I have to say that in a previous blog post, I also overstated Coffman’s new position on the Dream Act, and I tweeted that he flipped when he hadn’t. Long ago, I guess, I convinced my own self that he was sure to flip at some point, and when it looked like he did a 180, I rushed to my keyboard. But actually, he just modified his position, as explained above.

I corrected my blog post. I hope the bigger, badder journalists out there correct their stories or stop misleading us about, as AP put it, Coffman’s “change of heart” on immigration.

Correction Jan. 31, 2013. Michael Brown’s quote below was imprecise. The actual quote should read: On Denver radio station KHOW Jan. 16, Michael “Brownie” Brown, George W. Bush’s FEMA Director, told his talk-show listeners, “You hear these sob stories…. I don’t care whether they were two years old or they were 16 years old when their parents brought them across the border. They’re here illegally…. I really don’t have any sympathy.”

—————-

As civil-unions legislation hits the home stretch at the State Capitol, along with a bill granting in-state tuition to undocumented college students, let’s take a moment to encourage reporters to recall a jump-up-and-down-arms-waving op-ed that appeared in The Denver Post, just days after the election:

Rupublican thinkers Josh Penry and Rob Witwer wrote about the problem with the Colorado GOP:

Now, two short months later, most Republicans at the State Capitol are lining up against the ASSET bill, offering reduced tuition to undocumented college students.

The Post’s Lynn Bartels is calmly pointing out that even fewer Republican lawmakers appear to support a civil-unions bill this year than last year, because the GOP moderates were booted out by voters.

Rep. Cory Gardner is proudly telling the media how much he’d love to fill the GOP tent with women and Hispanics, without saying he’s against all abortion, some forms of birth control, as well as comprehensive immigration reform. Ditto for the rest of the CO GOP delegation, at least with respect to a path to citizenship.

Republicans are NOT jumping-up-and-down-arms-waving to denounce bills, introduced by fellow Republicans at the State Capitol, attacking abortion rights, including a bill banning all abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest.

On the radio, you have Michael “Brownie” Brown, W’s FEMA director with deep Republican connections, effectively thumbing his nose at Penry and Witwer by saying: “You hear these sob stories… I don’t care if they were two-years-old when they came. They’re illegal.. I have no sympathy.”

Secretary of State Scott Gessler may not see the irony that, just as ASSET is debated in Colorado, he’s scheduled to join a panel tomorrow at the Heritage Center with Kansas SOS Kris Kobach, who played a big part in creating the much-maligned anti-hispanic, anti-immigration law in Arizona. They’ll be talking about how to get tough on voting, but tough talk about immigration may pop up given the venue and the audience.

I could go on here, but why make a blog post long when a short one makes your point–and you have other stuff to do, like go on a walk with your 83-year-old mother in Commons Park, where you can relax and watch the GOP self-destruct?

In his 5280 Magazine article Jan. 3, taking on the difficult topic of “What’s Wrong with Colorado Republicans?” Fox 31 political reporter Eli Stokols writes:

Stokols: “What the GOP needs to realize is that the immigration issue offers Republicans themselves a sort of political amnesty, a chance to forge a solution that legitimately and thoroughly addresses questions of border security and citizenship without alienating Hispanics.”

And who’s his example of a Colorado Republican who’s leading the charge? Rep. Cory Gardner.

Stokols: “Only clear-headed Republicans such as Gardner are beginning to internalize this new reality.”

Stokols, who’s widely regarded as the leading political journalist on TV in Denver, quotes Gardner:

Gardner: “Republicans have always talked about having a big tent, but it doesn’t do any good if the tent doesn’t have any chairs in it. Bringing Latinos to the forefront, bringing women in is absolutely critical.”

That sounds good, but it’s hard to find anything about Gardner’s record that supports what he told Stokols, and you have to wonder why Stokols failed to point this out. (See Stokols’ response below.)

With respect to women, Gardner not only voted to redefine rape, but is a full-on supporter of the personhood amendment, which would ban abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest, as well as common forms of birth control.

In this video, Gardner says: “I have signed the personhood petition. I have taken the petitions to my church, and circulating into my church. And I have a legislative record that backs up my support for life.” Personhood initiative leader Kristi Brown (formerly Kristi Burton) called Gardner “one of our main supporters” during the 2008 initiative campaign.

Stokols should have asked Gardner why, with these views and others, Gardner’s own presence in the GOP tent wouldn’t scare away women.

Gardner’s position on immigration would send Hispanics fleeing from the GOP tent along with the female humans.

In the Colorado Legislature, even when illegal immigrants were routinely attacked by both parties, he took some of the cruelist positions against illegal immigrants, including a 2006 vote against allowing state funds to be used for undocumented children to receive preventative care, like immunizations.

More recently, in 2010, in his race against Rep. Betsy Markey, Gardner made it clear he opposes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, unless you’d call no path at all reasonable. As first reported by Huffington Post blogger Jesse Benn, and confirmed by me, Gardner wrote:

Gardner: Over the weekend, Markey told the Coloradoan newspaper she opposes amnesty but believes that immigration reform should include a path to citizenship.

The problem with Markey’s position is that “amnesty” and a “path to citizenship” is the same thing. Any proposal that allows people who are here illegally to cut to the front of the line is amnesty.

America is a nation of laws, and it is wrong for Congresswoman Markey to propose bending the rules for a group of people whose first act in this country was to break the law.

Congresswoman Markey is sending a clear message to millions of illegal immigrants that coming to America illegally carries no penalty. That is the wrong message.

Is that a sample of the friendly messages Gardner will be sending Hispanics?

Just this past June, he not only bashed Metro State University’s plan to reduce tuition for the children of illegal immigrants, he also again condemned the concept of helping any undocumented college student anywhere:

Gardner: And, of course, I oppose in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. I think it’s the wrong policy. It sets the wrong kind of message to people who are in the country illegally. And I think we’ve got to work on border security before anything else, and I think Metro State has it backwards.

Maybe Gardner has changed over the past two years–or over the past six months? You wouldn’t think so, from looking at his position on immigration on his congressional website:

Gardner: Our first line of defense against illegal immigration is the border, and it is the federal government’s job to make sure that it is secure. Americans are tired of watching the political establishment lack the will to enforce our nation’s laws when it comes to border security and immigration policy.

The solution to the problem isn’t for the Justice Department to file a taxpayer-funded lawsuit against the Governor of Arizona for responding to a law enforcement crisis. It isn’t giving amnesty to the 12-20 million illegal immigrants in this country, or giving those people benefits that will only encourage more illegal immigration.

The time has come to enforce the rule of law and end illegal immigration. To that end, I will support legislation that ensures employers only hire people who are here legally and that guest workers are here temporarily. The technology exists to accomplish this in a sensible way, and it is time that we implement that technology.

Where’s the Hispanic love here? If anything, Gardner’s putting himself in the teeny-weeny tent occupied by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who’s mad at Obama for, for among other things, standing up for basic civil rights for Hispanic-American citizens.

Gardner’s current position says nothing about the comprehensive immigration reform that Gardner told Stokols will pass this year. Nothing about a path to citizenship or the Dream Act. Nothing about families and the great history of immigration in America. It’s just a bunch of meaniness, some thinly disguised, some not.

So (deep breath), why didn’t Fox 31’s Stokols ask Gardner about some of this stuff, instead of just praising him as “clear-headed” and writing that he’s “beginning to internalize” the need for the GOP to change its ways.

Stokols: “Rep. Cory Gardner’s past votes on women’s issues and positions on immigration are well worth examining and do seem to mirror those espoused by Mitt Romney, Todd Akin and other prominent Republicans who have collectively alienated women and Latino voters from the GOP generally,” Stokols told me via email. “I could have chosen to point that out but did not, this being a piece focused on the state’s shifting political persuasion and the lessons to be learned from the 2012 election results. My recent conversations with Cory took place following that election and, his past votes and statements notwithstanding, he indeed seemed to have learned those lessons and to be newly ‘clear-headed’ about the challenges now facing his party. Whether his own votes and statements have contributed to or exacerbated those challenges is another issue, but a relevant one — and an issue that I’m sure Democrats will be exploring further as long as Gardner’s stock continues to rise.”

It’s fair enough to report that Gardner recognizes the need to diversify his party, but, still, Stokols’ long-form article on why such change needs to happen would have been better had he asked Gardner for a scrap of substance showing what change looks like for Gardner himself, given his record.

When a politician makes himself available to the press, and reporters, in turn, ask good questions, everyone benefits.

Case in point, GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s interviews with Denver TV stations.

He’s now sat down for one-on-one conversations with Channel’s 7, 9, and 31, and what’s left on the table? A trail of information that’s actually useful for voters on both sides of the aisle.

In his latest Denver TV interview, aired yesterday, Ryan was interviewed by New7’s Theresa Marchetta. Here’s a segment of her report:

“For women voters who are fiscally conservative.. but pro choice.. what do you say to those voters?” Marchetta asked.

9News’ Brandon Rittiman covered lots of ground with Ryan, including high ground like Ryan’s alleged 14er climbs. He pressed Ryan for specifics on the tax loopholes he and Romney say they’d close, for example, and got this response:

Ryan: “We’re actually saying, “Don’t lose tax revenue, but don’t have a massive tax increase, and restructure the tax code so that it is fairer, simpler, and more internationally competitive to create jobs.”

Fox 31’s Eli Stokols had a sharp conversation with Ryan as well, covering, among other things, the wind energy tax credit, the Ryan budget cuts, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

From the Fox 31 website:

The noted deficit hawk who is the author of the controversial House GOP budget plan blamed President Obama for adding to the country’s ballooning deficit because of the 2009 stimulus package and Obamacare, which was signed into law last year.

“It’s actually the economy that’s given us the deficit we have and the massive deficit spending and domestic spending we’ve seen under President Obama,” Ryan told FOX31. “Yes, the wars are a small part of it.”

Actually, the Iraq war, which Ryan voted to authorize, will cost the nation more than $3 trillion; and the Bush tax cuts, which Ryan also voted for when they first took effect in 2001, will ultimately cost the nation $3.2 trillion if extended again through 2021. The stimulus, by comparison, came at a price tag of $787 billion.

If you take time to listen to these interviews, you leave with solid information.

That’s how the process is supposed to work, if only reporters (and politicians) made it happen more often.

Channel 4 has jumped ahead of other Denver TV stations in fact-checking political ads so far this election cycle.

CBS4 has already aired segments analyzing 20 ads, over twice as many as 9News, its closest competitor among the four stations analyzing ads.

Sorry for the horse-race media criticism, but the numbers are worth pointing out, because Channel 4’s early analysis of the ads has undoubtedly been appreciated by regular people (none of whom read my blog), who’ve been trying to sort through all the political spots that have aired so early this election season.

“In the past, the ads didn’t start coming in nearly so soon or so often,” Denver Post Politics Editor Chuck Plunkett told me via email. “I’ve talked with national players who have visited Colorado this summer who couldn’t believe the number of ads that already were up and running.”

So it was a smart move for CBS4 to start dissecting the ads early, as part of its excellent “Reality Check” feature, led by “Political Specialist” Shaun Boyd. (Look for a post tomorrow with more on Boyd and Reality Check.)

“We’re committed to it,” said CBS4 News Director Tim Wieland. “We have a system in place that allows us to begin when the ads start rolling in. People are frustrated, and they want something that cuts through the BS. That’s the intent of this project.”

For its part, 9News is ramping up its ad-checking segments, called “Truth Tests,” with an idea that other media outlets may want to copy, straight up.

“Due to the sheer volume of political ads, 9NEWS has hired a team of three graduate students from the University of Denver to work as researchers for Truth Tests,” wrote 9News Political Reporter Brandon Rittiman, who’s the station’s primary Truth-Test reporter. “With the extra help, we hope to be able to tackle more ads than ever before this political season.”

9News, Denver’s NBC affiliate, will also work its newspaper partner, The Denver Post, according to Post Politics Editor Plunkett, with reporter Tim Hoover directing the coverage.

Channel 7’s “Truth Tracker” series is spearheaded by Producer/Presenter Marshall Zelinger, who’s scrutinized four ads so far and is scaling up the project now. Channel 7, Denver’s ABC affiliate, actually introduced the ad-checks to Denver TV viewers in the 1990’s, with reporter John Ferrugia’s “Truth Meter” series. It was later revived by Adam Schrager at 9News.

“I wanted to start a month earlier, because so many ads were rolling in,” Zelinger told me, adding that he plans to dedicate a significant amount of his time to Truth Tracker going forward, focusing on new ads and the ones airing the most.

For the first time, Fox 31, an independent station that’s become known as the local TV news leader in day-to-day political coverage, will produce a regular ad-check segment, called “Fact or Fiction,” anchored mostly by political reporter Eli Stokols. This might air once or twice weekly, Stokols emailed me, with a focus on “the most controversial ads and those airing the most frequently in Denver and around the state.”

Even though he’ll be fact-checking ads himself, Stokols is skeptical of his new endeavor, emailing me that, “especially now in this post-Citizens United world, [it] seems like a losing game of Whack-a-Mole — as soon as you finish checking one spot, it’s yesterday’s news and there are a dozen more popping up.”

“While campaigns are quick to cite such fact-checking spots in their effort to discredit opposition advertising, the campaigns we call out for blatant falsehoods don’t seem to care at all,” Stokols wrote. “And why should they? In a campaign that could see close to $1 billion in campaign spending, it’s inevitable that any TV ad, however false or misleading, will air hundreds of times, overwhelming any news outlet’s fact-check that might air a couple of times. Today’s campaign finance landscape enables political advertisements to have a reach that’s far wider than any fact-check — until, perhaps, the fact-check itself becomes part of a countering ad, just more noise in a never-ending echo chamber of allegations and attacks.”

Daily campaign-trail coverage and investigative journalism obviously had more of an impact than ad fact-checks in the last plagiarism-ridden election here, but political advertising can overwhelm all journalism, not just the stories fact-checking political ads. And the elucidation of facts can have an impact on the campaign trail, shaping the debate there, at press conferences and debates, for example, where they’re sometimes cited.

CBS4’s Boyd says in her normal reporting duties, covering events and such, she’ll often “turn a story and you don’t feel like you’ve influenced anyone.”

“Reality Check influences voters,” she told me. “I know that from the emails I receive.”

TV audiences pay attention to it.

“It’s the most popular thing we do in political coverage,” CBS4’s Wieland told me.

Maybe that’s because viewers don’t get enough day-to-day political journalism on local TV, like what you find in a newspaper, to get hooked on it. So the fact checking fills the void?

In any case, when you watch the ad-checks on TV, you can see why they work so well.

The ads themselves are usually already branded, if you will; they’re familiar to viewers. And the process of stopping and starting the ads, and analyzing segments with sharp graphics and simple analysis, is gripping, in its way.

The text-based fact-checking you’ve traditionally found in newspapers, without the video, doesn’t carry the same impact, at all.

The format for the fact-check segments at Denver TV stations varies a bit, but the basics are similar. Channel 7 provides a rating system with six options for the “facts” analyzed, including “misleading,” and “opinion.” 9News and CBS4 use a wider range of descriptions for the facts in question. And CBS4 concludes with a “Bottom Line” statement, which often offers a broader interpretation.

When Adam Schrager was at 9News, he actually taught people how to check ads themselves.

If you try it, you know how difficult it is to do. It’s hard to label the facts, found in a deliberately vague advertisement, as false or true, and partisans can almost always find something to get mad about.

But with an expanding sea of misinformation coming at us, the effort to shed nonpartisan light on political advertising is worth it. And the earlier the TV stations get started at it, like CBS4 did this election season, the better.

I can think of a couple reasons why Mitt Romney chose to take questions from local TV reporters and KOA radio hosts yesterday, while blowing off all those “print” journalists in Denver.

The most obvious reason is that Romney thinks local TV news is watched by the swing voters he needs to win. This approach would be in line with what he did when he came to Colorado the day before the GOP caucus. Then, his target was Republican caucus goers. So Romney blew off all real-life journalists, TV and print, and took loving questions only from friendly, conservative talk-radio hosts, whose listeners were likely to be heading out to caucuses. So Romney got to talk directly to his target audience.

An alternative explanation for Romney’s local TV tour yesterday is that he was scared pesky print reporters would ask him tough questions while mayhem-and-fluff loving local TV news journalists would have one eye on the incoming rainstorm and therefore be unable and/or uninterested in asking him substantive questions.

If this was Team Romney’s thinking, they got it wrong. Denver’s local TV news didn’t suck up and ask softballs. They asked real questions about real issues in Colorado, including the most obvious question, given the drama in the State Legislature, about his view on civil unions.

CBS4 reporter Shaun Boyd introduced her piece by saying, “As you can see, Romney seemed a bit flustered by the questions viewers posted on our Facebook page, trying to steer the conversation back to topics he was comfortable with.”

I would say Romney was less flustered and more irritated with Boyd’s news judgment after she posed questions about civil unions (answer: no), college-tuition reductions for undocumented high school graduates (no), and medical marijuana (no).

Sounding like Colorado GOP chair Ryan Call who recently said birth-control issues were “small issues,” Romney told Boyd:

Romney: “Aren’t there issues of significance that you’d like to talk about?

Boyd: This is a significant issue in Colorado.

Romney: The economy. The economy. The economy. Jobs. The need to put people back to work. The challenges of Iran. We have enormous issues that we face, but you want to talk about, go ahead.”

Boyd picked up where she had left off, telling Romney matter-of-factly, “Marijuana.”

And Romney said, “I oppose the legalization of marijuana….”

Boyd, along with her counterparts at Fox 31, 9News, and 7News, all asked Romney serious questions, perhaps the kind he wasn’t expecting from local TV reporters.

I’m hoping the tough questioning continues through the election season because it’s informative and it makes interesting television, as opposed to happy-talk questions like, “Hey, how’s your dog.”

But I guess in Romney’s case, that would be considered a hardball query as well.

In a 20-15  party-line vote last Friday, Democratic State Senators defeated a measure that would have given symbolic support to the so-called “Blunt” amendment, which would allow employers to opt out of offering health-insurance coverage for health services, including contraception, that employers find objectionable on religious or moral grounds.

Media coverage of the measure should have folded in more views from outside the state Capitol, given the potential political ramifications of the issue, so I’m reporting a wider range of views to fill in the media gap.

Addressing the issue after the vote Friday, Colorado Republican Party Chair Ryan Call told Jon Caldara that in the national debate about whether the Obama Administration should have allowed employers to opt out of offering certain types of health care, like contraception, Republicans should have focused on “making it, rather than about big issues, making it about small issues.”

“The big issue there,” Call told Caldara, “was the question of religious liberty, about the government telling, not only religious organizations but private employers and persons what kind of health-care insurance they have to pay for, even if it violates questions of moral conscience.”

Democrats, he said, “were able to, at least attempt, try to make it about those smaller issues, are we trying to ban contraceptives, which is not the issue.”

“Horsepucky,” was progressive political consultant Laura Chapin’s response to Call in a  in a US News opinion piece:

“Approximately 99 percent of reproductive age American women have used birth control—and something used by almost every woman in America isn’t a small issue, it’s huge,” she wrote, adding that “it’s obviously a big issue to Republicans.”

“It’s big enough that they threatened to shut down the entire U.S. government over it last spring,” Chapin continued. “It’s big enough that Republican governors like Mitch Daniels have made defunding Planned Parenthood a top priority, as has their presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Romney even wants to eliminate federal funding for Title X, which provides family planning funding for five million low-income Americans.”

Senate Democrats in contested elections voted for the measure, including Colorado Senators Evie Hudak, Mary Hodge, and Linda Newell.

Fox 31 reported Newell’s view that the measure, called Senate Memorial 3, would be hard for business to comply with. Fox 31 reported:

“The problem for the businesses is this just opens up all kinds of liability disclosure issues,” Newell said, noting that one of her two daughters was listening to Friday’s debate inside the Senate chamber. “She wants to know what we’re doing in the state of Colorado to protect her freedoms.

“Right to privacy goes out the window with this bill because now you have to disclose. And it puts my daughter’s future boss right in the middle of her private life. They’ll have to ask, Do you use birth control? Are you having sex?

“I want my daughters to have access to proven methods of preventing pregnancy. I want my daughters to have the ability to be healthy and free.”

Larry Crowder, a Republican who’s running to represent contested Senate District 35, told me he hadn’t followed the debate at the state Capitol, but he said: “In my opinion it should be up to that employer. I’m not really in favor of mandates.”

“Health care provided by the employer is a great thing,” Crowder said. “And it’s an added tool to attract employees.  If you’re going to start putting a mandate on employers, what would be in the health care, that would be between the employee and the employer.  As far as a mandate, I would not be comfortable with that.”

As far as the symbolic resolution goes, Crowder said, “We’ve got more important issues to talk about and decide in the state than a nonbinding resolution. We should not get into the hype right now about nonbinding resolutions for political purposes.”

He also said the question about employer mandates is “premature,” with the U.S. Supreme Court reviewing Obamacare.

Republican Senate District 19 candidate Lang Sias had a similar view, saying jobs should be the focus. His likely opponent is Sen. Hudak.

Senate District 28 Candidate John Lyons had been at work and hadn’t had time to follow events at the State Capitol when I talked to him Friday, but he said, as a general matter, that this is “all about free market and government interference.”

“It’s up to the insurance companies to decide what they want to do and what they want to cover,” he said. “If people had more choice and competition among insurance companies, this problem would be solved.”

“Being a Republican, I don’t believe it’s the government’s job to dictate what the insurance companies should offer and what they shouldn’t,” he said.

Lyons’ Republican primary opponent, Art Carlson, agreed, saying: “I believe it’s up to the companies. I just don’t think it’s up to the government to force companies to do something like that.”

From one side of The Denver Post yesterday, Political Editor Chuck Plunkett told me that The Post doesn’t like to “cry in public about having a rough time getting someone to talk to us.”

Then, from the darker side of The Post, Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard, wrote on The Post’s Spot blog, that he has a “hunch” that FOX 31’s Eli Stokols’ strategy of calling Mitt Romney out for avoiding the press in Colorado will pay off. Hubbard wrote:

Eli throws a bomb: I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a reporter publicly criticize a campaign for their media strategy/declining interview requests. Fox 31′s Eli Stokols didn’t hold back in his criticism of the Romney camp today. Just a hunch, but I bet his strategy pays off.

So I asked Hubbard, via email, why he didn’t use Stokols’ tactic, when he had Plunkett’s job.

I also asked whether Hubbard expected more journalists to be inspired by Stokols and call out hiding politicians more often, and whether he’d give it a try himself, on the commentary page. Hubbard replied:

It’s an interesting discussion, but my job (whether it was in the newsroom or in this position) is not to be a media critic. As the editorial page editor I certainly have more leeway to comment on media coverage, but I try to keep in mind that more of our readers care about news than how the sausage gets made.

I commented on Eli’s post yesterday because, in my nearly 20 years in the news biz, I couldn’t recall a reporter doing anything like it.  Eli has demonstrated through his strong work on the beat that he shouldn’t be ignored, so it’s probably a pretty safe bet on his part. Then again, a thin-skinned campaign or a cut-throat competitor, might very well use it against him.

The trouble is, the line between the news and how it’s made isn’t so clear. In the case of Romney ignoring Denver journalists, the two are one and the same. It’s a news story that Romney is ignoring the press in favor of conservative talk-radio hosts. (Or at least it deserves a mention in a news story.)

But my takeaway from Hubbard’s blog post is that he thinks the tactic could work. I’d love to see him try it. (And if it backfired, I’d love to see The Post blow up the retribution.)

Hubbard (or Plunkett) could create a little chart showing which candidates actually take questions from journalists when they pass through town.

It could be called the “Howard Beale Index.”

Each time the Howard Beale Index is updated, a short Eli-Stokols-type letter could be published.

If I’m a Post subscriber, and I am, I’d be proud of my newspaper for going after those candidates, and trying to hold them accountable publicly.

One of the many things professional journalism needs to do to survive is fight back.

For example, as I’ve discussed before, when politicians slam the “media” or “The Denver Post,” as having a liberal bias, reporters should ask them for the evidence, not act as if an insult has not been hurled at them.

And when political candidates like Mitt Romney slide into Colorado, take questions from friendly talk-show hosts, and slide away, journalists should call them out on it–so we are informed that a candidate is avoiding questions but also so we know that journalists are trying to do their jobs, to ask questions on our behalf.

You’d think most journalists would agree, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Otherwise you’d see more journalism, like the kind Fox 31’s Eli Stokols produced today, in the form of an “Open Letter to Team Romney.”

In the letter, Stokols wrote that Fox 31 had made numerous requests to interview Romney (Ding. Ding. A journalist doing his job.).

But, Stokols pointed out, Romney hadn’t held a “media availability since Florida,” giving Denver media the “silent treatment, “though Romney took “some questions from the media” in Colorado Springs.

You’d think someone campaigning to be leader of the free world could handle questions from local reporters, as, say, Rick Santorum did whenever we and our competitors approached him here over the past week.

Congratulations, though, on saving Gov. Romney the potential embarrassment that might have arisen from — gasp! — an unscripted moment.

That nightmarish scenario surely would have been worse than last night’s — going 0-for-3 because you couldn’t even salvage a win in a state you should have owned.

But, listen, if — if!!! — you make it back here this fall, we’ll still be here — and hoping to talk.

Asked via email if he’d ever called out another candidate who’s avoiding reporters, Stokols wrote:

No, I haven’t Not quite so directly anyway. We’re often pushing and prodding communications directors for sit-downs, for access, but I don’t normally try to call them out publicly — and, honestly, that’s not why I wrote this piece. I framed it as a letter to Romney, although I wrote it to simply make a point about his strategy, not to antagonize the campaign into agreeing to an interview down the road.

I was disappointed to read that Stokols wasn’t trying to “antagonize the campaign into agreeing to an interview,” because he had every right to do so, toward Romney or any other candidate who acts the same way.

In fact, I had already shot off an email to Denver Post Political Editor Chuck Plunkett, asking if The Post would join Stokols in calling on Romney to talk to reporters. I wrote Plunkett again, saying he could ignore my question because Stokols’ letter was meant as an analysis of Romney’s strategy.

Still, I asked for Plunkett’s thoughts on Stokols’ letter and for an explanation of why The Post hadn’t even reported that Romney wasn’t taking questions in Colorado. Plunkett wrote:

It is more often the case that politicians don’t make themselves available to the media when they swing through. Both sides of the divide love to ignore us, as they know risking a press avail risks having their answers made public, and most of them like to remain on script.

Here at The Post, we don’t like to complain to our readers — many of whom work demanding jobs — about difficulties we encounter in doing our jobs (though sometimes we do complain!). We’d rather not cry in public about having a rough time getting someone to talk to us.

We here at The Post routinely seek chances to do interviews with those we cover, including the president and presidential candidates when they are in Colorado. Sometimes we get to do the interview, other times we don’t.

It looks like Eli was being clever, and I enjoyed his post and its tongue-and-cheek approach to calling attention to the situation.

No one likes whiners, it’s true, but I think most Post readers buy the newspaper to be informed, and it’s pretty important to know when a political candidate isn’t taking questions from The Post, even if it’s routine for candidates to blow off journalists.

In any case, I was glad to read Plunkett’s assurance that The Post is fighting for access to candidates. You’d obviously expect this, but it’s good to read it anyway.

Unlike the Post, Stokols did report on the air, during Romney’s visit, that Romney was not answering questions from reporters in Denver.

Stokols added that Romney had just announced a press briefing for today, his first since Feb. 1, on the tarmac in Atlanta.

I asked Stokols if he planned to read his “Open Letter” on the air:

I doubt I go all Howard Beale and read this on the air, although I may tease it after my piece tonight and direct viewers to the website.

To which I say, dude, it’s time to go all Howard Beale. Do it for the sake of journalism and the electoral process. The stakes are high for both. And it’s a great letter.

Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll wrote last week that it’s a “cheap left-wing talking” point for Denver Rep. Joe Miklosi to point out that Rep. Mike Coffman called Social Security a “ponzi scheme.”

Carroll usually expresses himself as clearly as any columnist out there, but here he should have given us a few more details.

As it is, Carroll sounds like he’s using the “cheap left-wing-talking-point” line as a cheap right-wing talking point against Miklosi.

I mean, Carroll might have a point if Coffman had burped out the “ponzi-scheme” comment, and then said something like, “Excuse me. I didn’t mean it.”  Or even if Coffman said it just once.

But Coffman has embraced the ponzi-ssheme concept not once but twice with his trademark intellectual air of certainty, first calling it “obviously” a “ponzi scheme” and then confirming his view in a second interview.

What Coffman is saying here, unless you believe Bernie Madoff is innocent, is that Social Security is a big piece of fraud, designed by the Madoffs in Washington to rip us all off.

Actually, Social Security is a government program that’s completely above board and transparent, about as different from a ponzi scheme as you can imagine. It’s been tweaked a number of times during its existence, but it remains hugely successful. It will remain solvent for 25 more years with no changes at all, and minor changes will keep it going much longer. It’s no ponzi scheme, as explained here.

Now, to be fair to Coffman, he goes on to say in interviews that he wants to reform Social Security because unless changes are made, it won’t be there for the under-55 set.

But how does this square with his view that it’s a ponzi scheme? If it’s a ponzi scheme, you’d want to get rid of it and put the perpetrators in jail.

It’s a question someone should ask Coffman, why he wants to save a ponzi scheme, because his repeated use of the phrase seems to show that part of him must really hate the program or, in the bigger picture, government itself, because Social Security represents a successful effort by the federal government to collect taxes and design programs to improve our lives.

Coffman wants to have it both ways, allegedly believing in Social Security, yet calling it–and by implication government itself–criminal.

So, it’s not a left-wing talking point for Miklosi to highlight the fact that Coffman has repeatedly called Social Security a ponzi scheme.

It’s a legitimate statement about Coffman, and it should make columnists like Carroll wonder where Coffman really stands not just on Social Security but the basic functions of government.