Globe reporting of LDS e-mail unfair

By Bruce Wilson
Published: Monday, Oct. 30, 2006 8:51 a.m. MST
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I live in Utah and write political commentary. I'm also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So it shouldn't be surprising that recent reports in The Boston Globe caught my attention. Allegations of Mitt Romney's political action committee and Mormon Church leaders collaborating in a sinister plot to drum up support for Romney's unannounced presidential campaign sounded interesting.

But my interest soon shifted from alleged campaign infractions to obvious journalistic infractions. Theoretically, news is published only if it's factual, balanced and fair. I guess in this case, The Globe thought one out of three was close enough.

I'll give The Globe credit for printing the facts, though I had to wade through a lot of innuendo to find them. What's the factual bottom line buried in the more than 3,000 words that comprise the two stories? It's that the dean and associate dean of a Mormon Church-owned business school sent an e-mail to 150 graduates and friends of the school. The e-mail asked recipients to respond if they were interested in participating in Romney's campaign.

The school is part of the church's nonprofit, tax-exempt business structure, and such political engagement can invalidate tax- exempt status. School management was informed of the potential violation, admitted the mistake, vowed it would not be repeated and agreed to ignore all responses to the e-mail.

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It's also factual that before the e-mail was distributed, Don Stirling — a consultant for Romney's political action committee — was in a group who met with Elder Jeffrey Holland, a high-ranking official of the Mormon Church. A few days later, Stirling was in a dinner group that included the associate dean of the business school. Stirling also wrote an e-mail of his own to the chief executive of the church-owned publishing company, and in that e-mail, implied that Elder Holland supported using the business school mailing list to enlist support for Romney.

It's with this second group of facts that unbalanced Globe innuendo comes into play. When you read the account, you can't escape the impression that Elder Holland was orchestrating a sinister plot on behalf of the church, despite the fact that Elder Holland emphatically denies it.

Romney's political action committee agrees with Elder Holland, attributing the mistaken impression to the fact that political consultant Stirling "got over-enthusiastic and overstepped his bounds."

The Globe neglected to point out that a political consultant might have a tendency to "spin" a meeting as something more than it really was. And there was no mention of the fact that nearly everyone has had a meeting experience where every participant left with a different opinion of what was said.

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