Journalists may be doing 17 things at once, but if they’re going to write a story quoting not one, not two, but three opponents of bills in the state legislature, you’d think they would at least quote one proponent of the proposed legislation.

But in a Feb. 26 article in the Denver Business Journal, three opponents of health-insurance-related bills in the Colorado Legislature were quoted–while proponents didn’t get a paraphrase much less a quote.

I asked Bob Mook, who wrote the piece, about his strategy in reporting the article.

“The story was about how the insurance industry was reacting to the legislation,” he told me, adding that he had “space constraints” and that the views of Democratic legislators or consumer groups “would convolute the piece.” He also pointed out that he described the bills in question (HB 1166, 1168, 1234, 1266, and SB 76), explaining what they would do.

“In general,” he said, “I’m finding that the he-said-she-said model of reporting has sort of fallen out of favor.”

To a degree, I’m with Mook about he-said-she-said style. With all the dubious information out there, people are looking to newspapers to tell them the facts, if the facts are clear or mostly clear. Who wants to read a newspaper full of regurgitated quotes with factually inaccuracies embedded in them?

For example, reporters shouldn’t give us the he-said-she-said routine when oil industry spokespeople claim that Colorado’s oil-and-gas regulations have driven rigs out of the state. Reporters should state that this is almost certainly false, rather than offer competing claims that are not supported by the facts. (I wrote in more detail about the limits of he-said-she-said reporting here.)

But in Mook’s story, the facts are reasonabley in dispute about the impacts of the health insurance bills. And so readers need basic reporting of different points of view, including views from folks who support regulation of insurance companies. With none offered, and none planned, Business Journal readers are left with the impression that business in general is opposed health insurance regulation, especially when opponents in the article say the cumuluative effect of the bills could be bad for business.

I told Mook that some businesses favor health insurance regulation.

“I’d like to meet some people who actually believe that, especially within the insurance industry” he said. “I’d like to talk to people who thought that was true.”

I called Kjersten Forseth, State Director of Change that Works, and asked her about businesses that support health insurance reform.

She told me her organization has held multiple events featuring small businesspeople concerned about the health care situation and favoring reform.

She said: “We’ve gotton Bob [Mook] on the phone, and he says, ‘We don’t cover those kinds of things.’ How is he going to become educated on these issues if he doesn’t attend our events? If Bob wants to take a true business stance, he needs to pay attention to the costs of health care insurance on small business.”

Mook, who is leaving the Business Journal at the end of the week to become Editorial Manager at the Colorado Health Foundation, said, “We [the Denver Business Journal] have the view of a business publication, and we’re pro-business. And you know, what’s good for the bottom line is good for our readers.”

That’s excatly why he should offer a variety of views when the facts are in despute–as they are on the health insurance bills in the State Legislature.

“Things are changing, especially with niche-oriented publications” Mook told me. “It’s not the traditional AP style anymore, where you try to be as comprehensive as you can. It was a business piece written for businesspeople. I didn’t see it as partisan at all. The thesis was, insurance industry insiders have concerns about this legislation. Here are their concerns.”

To his credit, Bob Enyart clarified on his show yesterday that his 12-year-old son did not collect signatures to place an initiative on the November ballot that would define human life as beginning when a human egg is fertilized. He also said that children are not allowed collect signatures for an initiative, under Colorado law.

On his show last week, at one point, Enyart said his son collected 20 signatures.

In an interview yesterday, Enyart promised me he’d explain to his listeners that it’s illegal for children to collect signatures.

It appears that the recording of last week’s show, Blue in Faith, on which Enyart made his controversial statements about his son collecting signatures, has been removed from his show’s website.

It’s illegal for children to collect signatures for ballot initiatives in Colorado.

That’s why my jaw dropped when I heard radio talk show host Bob Enyart, during a live broadcast Thursday, say, “So, my son today got 20 signatures so far. My son, he’s 12.”

Enyart has been imploring his listeners to gather 20,000 signatures needed to place an initiative on the Colorado ballot that would define human life as beginning when a human sperm enters a human egg and a zygote forms.  Nothing wrong with a talk show host imploring people to do things, but they should be clear about what’s legal.

Backers of the initiative initially failed to turn in the required 76,000 valid signatures, but they’ve been given two weeks to collect more signatures. A similar initiative lost in 2008 by at 3 to 1 margin.

On his talk radio show, “Bob Enyart Live,” during a program titled “Blue in Faith” on March 4, Enyart and his co-host had a discussion about gathering petitions for the ballot initiative. The show airs weekdays on KLTT 670 AM in Denver and at other times elsewhere.

On Thursday’s show, Enyart encouraged his listeners to collect signatures at churches and public events. He said, “We got 15 days to get 20,000 signatures. We have 10 teams. Each time has to get 2,000 signatures.”

Later in the segment , Enyart says that his 12-year-old son got signatures, which…-if it were true…-is a violation of Colorado’s rules for collecting signatures, according to the website of the Colorado Secretary of State, which states that in order to circulate an initiative petition, you must be “at least eighteen years old at the time that the petition is circulated.”

In a discussion with his co-host, Enyart said his 12-year-old son was being “supervised,” but the Secretary of State’s rules do not state that a supervised a child would be allowed to collect signatures on an initiative position.

Prompted by his co-host, Enyart later stated about that “actually, he’s [his son] like the PR guy.”

But still, a reasonable listener could conclude that Enyart’s 12-year-old son was illegally gathering signatures for the initiative…-especially because Enyart was so gushing about the benefits of kids being involved in signature gathering.

“They [kids] love this,” Enyart said on the air. “They love it.”

[His 12-year old is way different than mine, I’m afraid to say.]

This exchange followed:

Enyart’s co-host: When you’re out there with them [kids], it really gives you hope for the future.

Enyart: Yeah. Hope for the future. And here are kids learning to be bold for the Lord-
Co-host: Amen!
Enyart:  and for the innocent. Isn’t that what we want of our children? Instead of having mom and dad just sit on the couch and watch, I don’t know, the cooking channel-.

Enyart’s statements, while not incriminating, are certainly confusing. So I called him to find out about his son’s role.

“He’s not a registered voter,” Enyart told me. “But he enjoys going to the store or a church with his mom or dad and saying to people, …Did you sign the personhood petition?’ And then however many signatures we get, he thinks that he got em. Our three youngest boys are 8, 10, and 12. So it’s like, you know, going deep sea fishing with dad.  Whatever dad catches, he thinks he caught.”

[Again, my kids differ. My own 12-year-old would undoubtedly catch more fish than I would.]

I suggested that Enyart clarify on the air that 1) it’s illegal under Colorado law for children to collect signatures for ballot initiatives and 2) his son was not, in fact, collecting signatures for the initiative.

He readily agreed, saying, “Yeah, I think that’s good advice. I could do that today. We do the show live each day. Yeah, that’s very good.”

Here’s partial transcript of Enyart’s March 4 show, which begins after Enyart and his co-host were discussing whether the crowd going to see Mary Poppins at the DCPA would be a good target for signature gathering:

Bob Enyart

So, my son today got 20 signatures so far.

Co-host

Wow.

Enyart:

My son, he’s 12.

Co-host:

So he got them while you were supervising…-or your wife…-was supervising him, of course.

Enyart:                 

Well, he was being supervised. So, actually, he’s like the PR guy.

Co-host:              

He’s standing there with a sign?

Enyart:                 

He doesn’t say, “Will you sign the pro-life petition?” He says, “Have you signed the pro-life petition? And then he says, “Oh, look we need three more signatures so we can turn the page.”

Co-host:              

Yeah, yeah, my daughter Nicole does that. I’ll tell you what the little kids-

Enyart:                 

They love this. They love it.

Co-host:

When you’re out there with them, it really gives you hope for the future.

Enyart:

Yeah. Hope for the future. And here are kids learning to be bold for the Lord-

Co-host:

Amen!

Enyart:

and for the innocent. Isn’t that what we want of our children? Instead of having mom and dad just sit on the couch and watch, I don’t know, the cooking channel. Nothing wrong with the cooking channel that I know of.

Co-host:

No, but if you’re sitting there watching the Food Network while the world around you is on fire and collapsing and you don’t do anything-I’m not saying you can’t watch Diners, Drive-ins and Dives once in a while. I’m just saying, get out there and do something for the Lord-

Enyart

Is that a good show, really?

Co-host

Well, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives is good if you can stand the guy’s tattoos and earrings. You have to get past that-.

Enyart

I gave up on all that when they had Trading Spaces. You remember that show?

Co-host

That’s the HGTV. Home Owned Gay Television. Have you ever tried to watch that? -They have house hunters. Every third couple, let’s just say they got married in Vermont. I’ll leave it at that.

Note:  During the year, I’ll be asking former Denver journalists what they’ve been up to since disappearing from the Denver journalism scene…-and what they think of the state of Colorado journalism these days. I previously queried Bob Ewegen.

Jim Spencer, the former columnist for The Denver Post, was kind enough to answer my questions via email yesterday. Spencer came to The Post to write a metro column in 2003. He was laid off in June 2007.

Jason,

Here are my e-interview answers

1.       I hoped to work the rest of my professional life as a columnist at the Denver Post. But Denver Post Editor Greg Moore laid me off in June 2007. I tried hard to get another job in journalism. I was invited to St. Louis to interview for the editorial page editor’s job and to the Indianapolis Star to discuss a political editor’s job, but did not receive offers from either paper. Meanwhile, to keep publishing columns, I started my own website, SpencerSpeaks.com, with technical help from two non-journalist friends, Chris Dunn and Sharon Steadman. I convinced the publishers of Colorado Confidential to pay me a monthly stipend to co-publish my columns on their website. I covered the news in Colorado in much the same way I had while at the Post. Public officials granted me access and information as a working journalist. I guest-hosted on AM760 talk radio, appeared monthly on John Andrews radio show on Backbone Radio and occasionally appeared on PBS talk shows as a guest commentator. But the pay in online journalism could not support me or my wife, and it came with no benefits. So I eventually applied for and got a job as communications director of the University of Colorado School of Medicine. I worked for wonderful people, especially Dean Dick Krugman, who did important work and included me as a strategic adviser, not just as a flack.  It was arguably the best PR job I could have conceived. But I missed journalism. The relationship between journalists and people with power differs remarkably from the relationship between institutional advocates and those same powerbrokers. In my view, independent journalists possess a leverage against abuses of power that serves the public’s interest better than any form of marketing or advocacy. So I continued to look for work in journalism. In October 2009, I found an opportunity at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where I now work as a general assignment writer. I have written about medical research using animals, middle class people on food stamps, overcrowded homeless shelters and attempts to end a health care program for the poor. I recently returned from Haiti and have published the first two parts of three-part series. Your readers can read  those stories and view accompanying videos and photos at

 http://www.startribune.com/world/84858637.html?elr=KArksUUULPQL7PQLanchO7DiU

http://www.startribune.com/world/85276687.html?elr=KArksDyycyUtyycyUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

2.       As for the state of journalism in Colorado, I believe it suffers significantly from the closure of the Rocky Mountain News and the shrinking of the Denver Post staff. So-called new media pays for far too little original reporting, settling instead to consolidate for free and redistribute  the work of institutions such as the Post and Rocky that it mocks as “main stream media.” Alternatively, new media too often consists of selective reporting designed to advance the agenda of its owners. Or new media consists of partisan rants supported by no reporting.  When your local website pays livable wages and benefits to independent professional journalists who will report the story wherever it leads and who have access to and respect from newsmakers, then you have a model that serves the public. However, if the public refuses to support that model financially, then society will get what it pays for. Having fewer independent journalists ferreting out corporate, political and bureaucratic abuses of power serves no one but the people who hope to exploit the public to their personal advantage. That kind of greed and exploitation always exists. But it runs amok as journalism struggles. Having watched how things work from the PR side as well as the newspaper side, I believe Coloradans and all Americans are on the brink of being manipulated by people with big money and special interests in ways they hardly comprehend.

The following description of Senate candidate Jane Norton in an article on the Steamboat Today website Monday looks innocent enough at first glance, but read it closely: