Steve Brandt, the Strib reporter whom I criticized yesterday, has posted a response to that blog and another comment I made at e-democracy. (The rules of the e-democracy forum prohibit me from making a response because I’ve hit my daily post limit already due to my own stupidity. The daily post limit is two, btw.)
So here is Brandt’s response to me:
Those who followed Tom Bartel’s link to The Rake might have been better served had Bartel gotten his facts straight. He suggests that he ought to be hired by the Star Tribune to cover schools (my beat) because he was able to speak to Chris Stewart on Monday. That’s great, but I wasn’t trying to reach Stewart on Monday. Another reporter was. That’s because this began as a 5th District campaign issue. I cover schools. I did try to reach Stewart on Tuesday night as returns came in, for normal campaign coverage. He didn’t return my call, nor that of the reporter who originally tried to reach him. I got someone else’s mess dumped in my lap after the election.
As for why no story was printed out of the Lee press conference for the election-day paper on the basis of one candidate’s assertion, the Star Tribune is very cautious about printing last-minute charges without a response from the target. That’s something that differentiates the MSM from blogs. Some people like to throw up anything and see if it sticks. If that’s your threshold for reporting, fine. But for all the Star Tribune’s faults, that’s not our M.O.
Steve Brandt
Star Tribune
Not The Rake
And here is mine to him:
I notice that Brandt didn’t deny anything I said in my blog, except that he hadn’t made the original call to Stewart. Here’s what the story Steve Brandt wrote said: “Stewart didn’t return calls until after his election.” Please forgive my inference that Brandt had made the calls related to a story that Brandt wrote.
However, the substance of my post was that Brandt, or whoever makes his calls for him, blithely accepted Stewart’s “explanation” of the site. He didn’t question why Stewart had published it under a pseudonym, or why he’d linked to KKK and Nazi sites, or why, when Lee first confronted him, he posted a response along the lines of “Thanks, Tammy for making us famous,” or any of the other questions I suggested. Finally, he never asked (or at least didn’t print the reponse to) the question of why Stewart refused to return calls until after the election.
The answer to that last one, though, Brandt does supply himself. It’s because Stewart well knew that the meek Star Tribune reporters wouldn’t actually do any digging, or threaten to print the truth without his comment, and that Stewart would be safe from widespread bad publicity until after the election. Hey, Steve, papers print things all the time like: “Stewart refused to return repeated calls for comment.”
That’s part of the story–that Stewart was stonewalling admitting his involvement, wasn’t it?
Brandt calls this caution. I call it sloth or cowardice. Take your pick. If that’s the Strib’s M.O., you can have it.
Tom Bartel
The Rake
Not the Star Tribune
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