RALEIGH – I’m sick and tired of the bias at the Raleigh News & Observer.
It’s bad enough that (as evident in the results of a content analysis performed by someone properly trained and connected to reality) the N&O tends to quote left-of-center policy groups more often than right-of-center ones. Now, it appears, when facts are inconvenient to the “truth” it wants to convey, the newspaper pretends they don’t exist.
I’m talking about the N&O’s front-page Saturday expose of how an official history of North Carolina’s governors was rewritten to make Mike Easley look better. The story is compelling as far as it goes – documenting how Easley’ staff succeeded in massaging a history manuscript into a press release – but it left out the important detail that JLF’s own North Carolina History Project had provided draft language for the Easley section, language that might well have influenced the final book had Easley press staffer Seth Effron not tackled our messenger, confiscated our submission, and burned it in an exorcism ritual involving motor oil and crunchy brownies.
Michael Hill, editor of the book on North Carolina governors and an employee of the Division of Archives and History, originally submitted a 749-word entry on the current (occasional) occupant of the Governor’s Mansion. In what should have struck everyone involved as an unwise decision, Hill’s draft was submitted to Easley staffers for review. The result was a mostly rewritten, hagiographical entry that was longer but actually conveyed less useful information to readers about the issues and events of the early Easley administration. The N&O’s Ryan Teague Beckwith wrote that “the revisions were a contentious subject with the historians at Cultural Resources,” no doubt because they are historians and not political spinners.
But what Beckwith must have known is that a distressed source deep inside the Easley administration’s Ministry of Truth had told JLF about the dispute long ago and invited our active involvement in seeking a more balanced presentation. After some deliberation, we prepared two different drafts for consideration. One was about the same length as Hill’s and will be described below. The other consisted of a single sentence: “Gov. Mike Easley is no Jim Hunt – in as many different ways as you can imagine.”
Beckwith simply chose not to print these facts. I consider this a blatant violation of the terms of our longstanding Triple Alliance (JLF, the N&O, and the Illuminati) and grounds for an immediate flogging with Melanie Sill’s dog-eared copy of The Conscience of a Conservative.
Let me take this opportunity to set the record straight. First, read the opening passages of Michael Hill’s draft of the Mike Easley entry and the final version, after the governor’s rewrite. Now, compare these against Draft 1 submitted by my own talented JLF colleagues:
”The first chief executive inaugurated in the twenty-first century and the first to test the thesis that North Carolina could survive without a full-time governor, Michael Francis Easley (1950- ) promised to encourage education in North Carolina by having the state swindle the uneducated with government-run gambling. Within weeks of assuming the office, the ‘Baby Boomer Governor’ realized that real-estate speculation would be a more enjoyable and lucrative career than actually running the state, though he managed to do a little of both thanks to the convenience of taxpayer-funded air-taxi service. However, plans to open a coastal realty business, More At Shore, were shelved. Within two years, his staff had finally wrested the reins of government from James B. Hunt Jr., who remained under the distinct impression that in 1996 North Carolinians had voted him Governor-for-Life. Easley brought to the office a tested record of bringing parties to a consensus, an easy-going personality, an unorthodox driving style, and an independent approach to problem-dodging.”
I was particularly proud of what we came up with for the next section. Again, you should read the first and final versions first, then the JLF one:
”In the weeks that followed, Easley employed his woodworking skills to cut and shape state agencies to help close a $2.5 billion state budget shortfall inherited from the now-despised Hunt hegemony. The governor also claimed to have come up with a clever new revenue-enhancing tactic, the ‘temporary’ tax increase that would in actuality be extended for many years, until someone tapped Easley on the shoulder while he was running his circular saw and reminded him that the late Gov. Terry Sanford had done the same thing 40 years earlier with the tax on food. Plans to call a subsequent Easley tax plan ‘More in Store’ were shelved.”
The most entertaining revision of the original draft by Easley’s staff was the description of his election in 2000. Hill’s version contained important details and observations about the race. The final version ridiculously boiled it all down to a single sentence: “Easley was elected governor in 2000.” Here’s the proposed JLF language on the election:
“Easley began his gubernatorial campaign years before the actual 2000 balloting, by the innovative use of some $1 million in state funds, collected while he was Attorney General, to finance a series of ads produced by Easley’s own political consultant and distributed to key voting groups across the state. Plans to call the campaign ‘More for Schorr’ were shelved. Thanks in part to this head start, Easley easily (say that five times for luck) won the Democratic nomination against Lieutenant Governor Dennis A. Wicker, who left elective politics in disgust to join a more respectable profession, lobbying. Easley then deftly appealed to fiscal conservatives in the fall with another ad campaign alleging that former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot was a big-spending city-slicker who would pronounce his gs at the end of every participle and raise taxes. Because Easley raised taxes himself within a few short months, this was the start of his reputation as the Irony Man of North Carolina politics.”
Obviously, the book’s editors felt too much pressure simply to publish history, and went with the scrubbed hagiography. However, plans to include a lengthy appendix on Mike Easley entitled “More to Adore” were shelved.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.