The mice were snickering Monday. Within the Star Tribune there was much chatter about Kate Parry v. Sid Hartman, Round Two. Or is it three? Or four? Maybe you caught Parry’s ombudsman column Sunday criticizing Hartman — Sid Friggin’ Hartman! — for appearing in an ad for Sun Country airlines, (with Ex-KSTP sports anchor, Joe Schmit). As I read it, I detected Parry’s displeasure both with Hartman’s appearance in the ad AND the fact he did not notify his, uh, superiors and ask for permission.
Parry frets that Hartman’s appearance might lead readers/viewers to perceive a conflict of interest, as in, I guess … “I saw Sid do an ad for Sun Country. So how do I know the Strib isn’t lying the next time they say Sun Country had a lousy third quarter?” Do you know anyone who thinks like that?
If you haven’t seen the spot, Sid appears from behind a copy of the Star Tribune and tells Schmit, who is yammering about Sun Country, to pipe down, because he’s reading, “the greatest newspaper in the world”. (Sid may be the only person capable of making that claim with a straight face. But to his credit as the ultimate homer, he said it). Hartman says nothing one way or another about Sun Country. But obviously his appearance is a tacit endorsement. (Hartman tells Parry he’s donating the free plane tickets he received as compensation, and I’m inclined to believe him. Believe me, Sid himself could take the Strib private. He does NOT need two Sun Country Super Savers to Cancun.)
But it was the other worldly loftiness of Parry’s concern that set off the snickering. The gist of the joke being … WHO, i.e. what possible reader, would ever connect Sid Hartman doing his patented Sid shtick in an ad with the grand ethics of the Star Tribune as a whole? In the interests of further full disclosure let me be among those who urge Parry to print the mail she gets on the topic, in particular the best case any outraged reader/ethics expert makes for how Sid on a Plane undermines the integrity of the work of hundreds of others.
I’m sorry, newspapers have a longstanding problem with the double standard that grants all sorts of latitude, in terms of outside compensation, to sports writers while keeping a very tight rein on most everybody else. Anybody in newspapers sees that all over the place. But lets not pretend anyone outside a 10′ radius of some pedantic editor’s office gives a damn. This kind of hand-wringing just doesn’t register with the general public. Nor should it. It just doesn’t matter.
As far as I can tell, the slice of the public that is hip enough to big media’s myriad failings is a hell of a lot more upset about a major newspaper’s errors of omission — like keeping their heads down and voices low as a President with killer poll numbers gins up a fraudulent war — than whether some sports columnist plugs a local airline.
As for 85 year-old Sid Hartman getting permission from his superiors … don’t make me laugh.
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