NewsNight Minnesota; 4085; NewsNight Minnesota Episode from 01/27/1997; SD-Base

Tonight on NEWSNIGHT makes you want to risk hypothermia. Why your home heating bills have gone through the roof. Gay marriages in Minnesota viewers weigh in with their vitriol and the descent into tabloidism media accuracy and responsibility. It's NEWSNIGHT for Monday January 27. Tonight's broadcast of NEWSNIGHT Minnesotan is presented in part by Norwest bank contributing to the growth of the Twin Cities through support and community service. Cargill supporting Minnesota's tradition of community service and by the attorneys of Briggs and Morgan providing a broad range of legal services to business individuals and government entities. The words are and welcome to NEWSNIGHT. We begin with Ken Stone of the summary of the day's news. It's nice cafe it wasn't quite a day in court but John Bures finally got a hearing today from a state senate committee. Doris is still upset that on primary day last September the Star Tribune printed his picture above a story about charity fraud. The story had nothing to do with Paris and he wound up losing the primary by 104 votes to

Linda Higgins who went on to be elected to the state Senate. Doris wants the Senate to overturn Higgins's election and he thanks the Star-Tribune purposely printed the picture to influence the outcome of the election so members of the Senate elections committee think he may be right. I think what they did to John and I think it's evil that they will not participate in trying to clarify they put themselves above the law. We have to function within the law. They're above it. The Star Tribune says that the picture was a mistake. A lawyer for Linda Higgins told the committee even if the paper printed the picture deliberately there's no reason to throw out her election. The committee now wants to put the Star Tribune on the hot seat. The committee is asking the newspaper to send a representative to a meeting next week and explain its side of the story. Kathy will have more on the media accuracy and responsibility later on in the program.

The new chair of the DFL state party is touring the state today fresh off his election this past weekend in man Cato Dick's unease teaches psychology at St. Olaf and has been active in DFL politics for several years he was an early Paul Stone supporter for Senate back in 1980 and worked for Wall St. in Washington. So nice says one of the big challenges facing the DFL is indorsing a strong candidate for governor in 1098 and avoiding a divisive primary race among the crowd of Dhia fellers who want to be governor. I talk to all the people who've announce you're running for governor. All of them are going to vie for the endorsement and I am convinced that we will have an indoor city. And I'm also going to be the next governor. Sinise takes over the DFL party chair job from Mark Andrew Andrew is stepping down too. What else. Run for governor. Ever since he sold West Publishing for more than three billion dollars people have wondered what Vance Opperman was going to do with his share of that money apparently give some of it away. Operations donated one million dollars to the University of Minnesota Law School Opperman graduated from the school in 1969 and he's currently president of the school's board of directors.

Pressure continues to mount for changes to make snowmobiling safer. A report out today says the state's trails and enforcement of snowmobiling laws lags behind the industry which is creating faster and more powerful machines. The report was written for the state legislature which is setting up to strengthen safety laws. And a snowmobiling club the candy Ohio Easy Riders is going to take a long ride this weekend to promote safer sled driving from Atwater to the spice or New London area. And the DNR has set up a toll free hotline to report any drivers which seem to be speeding or operating their sleds dangerously there it is 1 8 8 8 2 3 4 1 2 8 6. Already this season. Twenty four people have been killed in snowmobile accidents. And finally tonight a little Business News St. Paul based Green Tree Financial says 1906 was its best year ever. Net earnings were up about 20 percent almost three hundred ten million dollars. Not such a happy story for The St. Paul companies for the year net income was down almost 50

million dollars compared to the year before. The company says a year of frequent and severe storms was to blame. But don't cry for St. Paul the insurer still had earnings of over 400 million dollars and Kathy that's a summary of the day's headlines. All right thank you. Well. You've got a heating bill recently it's not news to you that the price of heating oil natural gas and propane has skyrocketed. Combine that with unusually harsh winter and you get heating bills higher than many have ever seen before. It's such a powerful combination of forces that Minnesota's two US senators usually diametrically opposed have come together on an issue. Both of them are asking President Clinton to release the emergency heating funds for low income folks. If the president does Minnesota could see about 11 million dollars of energy assistance. But if you think you get it bad try living on the Minnesota prairie where the wind and the weather have been the worst. Me and my family are what they call the working poverty.

Because it gives us all extra money for one month not even an option. Roxanne rents a four bedroom home in his Austin neighborhood with her husband and two children. Last year energy assistance gave her one hundred dollars that paid only a third of January's bill. That might not sound like much but Roxanne says without the extra cash her family would be over the summer. I want bill pay my way bro I couldn't do I want to do it in rural Minnesota. Most residents get their heating fuel out of a tank. Dozens of propane tanks dot small towns and few will be delivered by truck a few times a year. But last month prices skyrocketed while across propane is given by demand. Actually yeah we've had an unusual cold

heating season started early. There was a heavy crop growing season ahead of the home heating season and yeah now a lot of the areas of the country are propane is highly used commodity because they don't have access to other types of heat sources. Propane customers can usually contract with their dealers in the summer and get a low price for the whole year. But some people can't come up with a full year's payment all at once and they have to pay higher monthly rates in the winter. Jan Reid says he's had to cut people off. We have a lot of people not only old people but younger people that have fixed incomes and we just have to what we try to do if we know about it is we try to accommodate them any way we possibly can by arranging so that we can help them pay their bills we give up get our try to get them on a budget type of arrangement where they can pay monthly Lyndon LaRouche his organization provides assistance for folks who can't pay their energy bills. She tells the story of a senior citizen on a fixed

income. The woman needed fuel but already owed money to a vendor and she was concerned that the vendor would not release any law any more until that was paid. And she had just so much money and she says you know I might have to make a choice between my fuel bill and buying groceries. Many people blame the oil companies for price gouging. John Reed says his company is not making any money off of the current high prices. Nobody likes high prices. We don't like high prices I would actually it's detrimental to us because our margins are so many cents a gallon and the cheaper the price of gas is the more volume we sell so the more money we make Linda Lara's agrees that most small fuel dealers are willing to work with customers. But there's a limit utility companies are not social agency. They will cut you off and it doesn't matter if their children know how many people think well I have children. Doesn't matter. Thanks to our Austin correspondent Kevin Hansen for putting that story together. Now over to Ken Stone for

more. Thanks Kathleen you're here to talk about heating assistance of both the federal and local level. Mark is in Scheme. He's director of low income energy assistance programs for the state of Minnesota. Mark thanks for coming. Compare this winter at this stage of the game to last year or previous years worse better or the same. Well this winter is much colder last year and tack on the top of that very high fuel prices. It's affecting people very. Quite a bit. How many people are we talking about who generally need some sort of fuel assistance statewide how many households we're talking about 100000 households. OK. Are you also worried about the length of the winter is there a certain point way where you start wondering gee it's not just cold now but it's still march or It's still April I mean at what point are you worried from a money point that gee we're just not going have enough funds to make it through whatever we actually worry about that all the way through the middle of May. So because when it comes down to March and April your utility companies are starting to look at the cold weather rule and look at the possibility of turning people off and that's when we have

a lot of metropolitan people and people on a regular gas. Another way I understand it is utilities can't cut household off in the middle of the winter is that right but those rules do not apply for say somebody who gets fuel oil or. Right. Correct. Do you have any idea is there any way for you to figure out how many people are getting cut off or. No actually we don't have those figures and those figures are very hard to get. We just hear people calling in just saying they don't have any electricity or gas or fuel. Let's talk about the typical family who's getting help how much help do they get. Typical family would say a family of four that makes about fifteen thousand fourteen thousand dollars and they might get $700 in fuel assistance. OK Our it is a rough breakdown between the working poor I mean how many of these people have jobs and just can't afford to pay it. How many of these people are already on assistance. About 30 31 percent of our people actually have some kind of wage income. What we call the working poor. They're not on any kind of

other type of assistance programs. Let's talk about the piles of money that are out there. Senator well Stone Senator Graham's a number of other senators are asking for the release of money. There's also some state money. Where are the different piles of money. Well we took a 25 percent cut in federal funding from last year. And with that we have about 38 million dollars of federal money and the governor appropriated a million dollars last year for the program plus an additional nine million dollars contingency funds which has kicked in right now. So with that 9 million dollars roughly make up for the 25 percent cut in the federal funding that you would to receive it roughly does a lot of people would also be asking about well what about the teacher program you know they pay a couple of bucks per month on their electric bill I mean how much money does that raise the teacher program raises almost two million dollars a year. State wide. And people do apply for that many people that receive assistance from us and also receive crisis money from us. Also try to tap into the teacher because they just can't make it with our money alone. Twenty years you've been doing this. I've been doing this since about 1900.

Is there a story that you've heard recently this year that that makes you stop even though you've been doing it for 15 16 years. Well I actually have couple stories one is get a call from Personally on my telephone I don't know how she got it but a call from a single family mother in central Minnesota who had applied for energy assistance was going to go in to fill out the application and then was caught in a snowstorm for we couldn't get out of her house and at that time I received a shut off notice. And then by the time the agency was going to gotten in. Take a onsite application. They couldn't get to her house to take us so everything was done over the telephone and the negotiation at the work of the utility company. And then I got a call from an elderly household out in western Minnesota who's a furnace kicked off. They ran out of fuel but there was no way a delivery man could get to their house. They were snowed in. All right thank you very much. Good luck with the rest of the winter I hope it doesn't last too much longer. Next up the cafe and the power of the media to get it wrong.

The media really doesn't have much influence. Why would politicians spend millions of dollars on advertising. So what are we seeing in the media these days. Well this past week we saw hours of live coverage of a carjacking involving a missing child which turned out to be a hoax. We saw an interview with the shoplifter allegedly hired by that Roseville family except he wasn't the right person was on network pay a grocery store chain five million dollars because the TV company lied to get its reporters on staff get Borgman is news director WCCO AM radio Professor clay Steinman teaches communications at McAllister college in St. Paul.

Brian Lambert is a media critic for The St. Paul Pioneer Press. Well Brian you most of it's back with the rest of us watching everyone in their mother go live on Friday with the carjacking everyone had their live trucks out. Some stations had Crawl's going across the bottom of the screen. It's not unusual that everyone want to get the story first but what really struck me was no one really had much of anything to go on. Well I mean it seemed like everybody was trying to provide a genuine public service here and it's one of these one of these moments where you really pay me to criticize the media but you think what else what other response would you have in the situation I mean if the call goes out through the authorities that this carjacking is legitimate. This seems to be a perfectly legitimate use of the media. Let's or let's let's help find it. Is that the media role media's role in this. Maybe doesn't describe the way in journalism schools but I'm not I'm not going to criticize. I'm not so sure that that's why they go about doing what they doing then there might be some public service motivation but I think that most media outlets these days they're part of these huge conglomerates that have to have these spectacular bottom line reports each quarter for Wall Street.

And so they're more interested I think in show biz than they are in information. One of the things that television does that no other medium does is it goes live. And I think they have an incentive to go live to show off why you should watch their news rather than read it in your newspaper. I think it's really probably a little bit of both because we didn't report the story until the Minneapolis Police called us and asked for our help in giving the description of the vehicle and the license plate number. We do things like that we do that things like that all the time and you know and this was the first the first we've heard of this and we had it on the air immediately. And our objective at that point was to. Get the word out. Hopefully have this car found on that at that point we were relying on the police believing as the police did that this was a legitimate carjacking and that this child could very well be in danger and we were hoping to be the first to report we found her. You know somebody somebody called and told us we found her. So sure there's a little bit of that but

we didn't have any reason to doubt it as long as the police didn't have any reason to doubt it. And we were all over that story covering it from the angle the command post we had somebody at the home of the mother. We couldn't find her there were a lot of mysteries a lot of unanswered questions all day long and yet the police kept telling us you know that this was we had to get the word out we have to find this. At one point I believe the police even told reporters this was a life threatening situation. We had to take it seriously we couldn't do anything else. That was you know I mean the police have been the rule of the authorities worth examining in the Richard Jewel case and the case of the two Dallas Cowboys football players. And in each of those things the reporters to a certain extent follow the lead of the authorities follow their best sources followed people I mean the Joule thing became a whole other circus with all the competitive pressures that go on in this thing that turns this into this this kind of mass lunacy. But the authorities in all these cases it legitimized you know the the suspects involved are being used. Yeah I mean maybe it's not such a big deal in this case it's more of a big deal in the jewel case and in the Dallas

Cowboy's case a much bigger deal than the other political events that have occurred in the last 20 30 years. I think reporters need to know when they should question the police not that the police are necessarily trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes but they're not necessarily reliable sources on every issue. Well in this particular case the police were behind closed doors with the uncle trying to get the truth out of him. And we respected their need to talk to the people involved. Meantime we had to decide what we're going to do drop back from the story or continue reporting the description of the car the license the license plate if we had to err I would rather err on the side of caution just in case. Let's switch gears here just a little bit the shoplifters suspect. How what a hoax story that CCTV ran. There's a couple different things to chew on here one for all this. The number of different things the producers the CATV ran with this story and it came from a tabloid TV show right Brian.

Mistake number one. Well this is the you know when people complain about the media. Well you know everybody may be media but not everyone in the media is a journalist and I doubt that CC Oh television is going to make the mistake again of taking swallowing whole story that comes from one of these tabloid things. But it does speak to this intense you know kind of psychotic business of SKU pressure at competitive prices and I'd be willing to swallow it whole but I think we're going to there's a reason that they're taking stuff from extra And I think it's because unfortunately the line between what we might like to consider legitimate journalism and tabloid journalism is getting narrower and narrower and it has to do again with these competitive pressures. Well I also think it points up the downside of outsourcing. I mean you're hired. You hire an outside independent producer you don't know them you don't know their work you can't vouch for them as WCCO TV set. We didn't hire him. And and. We shouldn't have trusted him with it if we just use their material yeah. When I had learned I'm sure he'd never be growing up my mentor was John McDougall a great case to

pound into my head always double check every fact that you went with what happened to double checking it. Well you know things like this will make them double check the next time around. I think these are wake up calls. There's no question about that. I think TV then turn Dave Weldon move to correct the story to get it right. And as Dave as Dave said that if you are a professional journalist there are you usually you've been doing this long enough the little lights go off that there's something wrong with the story that was being told in this case by the hoax. But you know what you say is absolutely true. I mean we are we are too prone at this moment to grab the stuff wherever it comes from if it looks like a hot lead to be first to be. Also it has to do I'm sorry it isn't journalism professor though. What do you tell your kids when you see something like this. Well everyone makes mistakes and mistakes are going to happen but people can be more careful what I was taught as a journalist my editor told me Don't assume anything. Right. Check and check check and double check. And but I think the larger question here is why. Why did

the media spend so much time on these kinds of stories rather than other kinds of stories and I think they do because they're sensational they're not substantive but they're also not going to offend anybody. And so it helps them bring in the audience they want to deliver to advertisers food line the food line settlement with ABC that's a really very interesting story I'm sure you'll be talking about that in your classroom. This is where ABC was sued by the Food and Grocery store chain. They sent in some ABC employees. They did an exposé evidently allegedly Food Lion was selling tainted meat and expired food products. They sued and ABC lost. And this was an undercover sort of a situation and they would like company one on fraud and trespassing using that sort of libel. So as a news director kit Boardman What did you think when you saw the settlement. Well I thought the implications were chilling. I I think that some of the best stories that have ever been done have been. Used with undercover investigative techniques. I think sometimes we get loosened a little bit

too careless in the use of hidden microphones and hidden hidden cameras and all but I think some of the best stories in the interests of the public have been uncovered this way where they would never the truth would never have come to light any other way by a company with ABC employees lied to get in line to get in because they pretended they well they weren't any different. You know private corporations are not. They're quite different than the government the government is required on most issues to tell us as journalists what to tell journalists what they need to know. Private corporations are not. They don't have to give out any information. They don't even have to let you on their premises to do the story. If they don't want to do what I was doing some research on Procter and Gamble and the people there told me we're not going to tell you anything unless it helps us. So how are journalists supposed to get into these stories and you know look at you know what these private companies can do in this case he can have a dire effect on the terror alert terrible because they have all this money that they can use to sue. What are they. To suggestions though ethical questions I mean that is that's the appalling part of this I think to

journalists is that the jury was never saw the finished piece never had a real sense of the context of the public benefit that was served by this story. And it has to be weighed it is a very it's a provocative issue it should be deserves a lot of this question but I mean who's there. I'm washing meat with bleach and selling it to people. I think the message in effect in this this ruling was it doesn't matter whether or not it was the truth we just you just can't get it that way. And and that is a debatable issue. But I think that when an issue so overwhelmingly is in favor of the public interest. I think the jury should have been able to see the report. Well and judge for themselves. Always a good time with you. Thank you very much appreciate it. Thank you. Well next up viewers react to a Newsnight debate on gay marriage it's talking about rewriting 6000 years of human history here Scott. I mean this would be like throwing out the Democrat I think little sister slope arguments are more about fear than about information about the soldier because really there's nobody out there advocating for marriage is for political marriages in fact

that they've existed in this country far more than gay marriages have. Well it's certainly been a hot topic over the Capitol. Well that was Scott Cooper from the Gay and Lesbian Community Action Council and they're from the Minnesota Family Council. They were debating whether the state legislature should pass a law banning same sex marriage. Obviously make me want to ban Cooper didn't we let them go at it for several minutes and then asked for viewer input. And boy did you put in more calls about this subject than any other in Newsnight history. Literally hundreds. They were almost evenly split for and against the ban. Here's a basically representative sample and a word of warning. We didn't sanitize the responses. I can still see marriages and I am adamantly opposed to it. My feel that the gay and lesbian group. Well not if that's the definition of family. And I feel they eventually will have to accept it or go again. General

thank you. Gay and lesbian marriages are no threat to the family. If you want to work to strengthen the family he should work for economic justice and the reduction of the income gap between rich and the poor. Your very program will be in the dance of the reasons so many people support channel 2 financially I and want to. Go for it for legalizing it. Thank you very much. Vigorous is absolutely ridiculous. True people would even be dignified move proud of three sex marriages through protocol. You know under a station that's doing pretty good. Hero or nice to some two bit queer. I am a straight married elderly woman. I am very much in favor of gay marriages because I believe it would stabilize

families and I certainly believe the constitutional statement that full faith must be given to the contract of another stake. Therefore when Hawaii allows them they should be allowed in Minnesota by the way we checked with GUY COOPER Before we decided to go ahead and air that one call and he said he wanted people to hear what others were thinking and that we should use the call so here's the comment line number 6 1 2 2 2 9 14 30. Let us know about the other subjects we've covered to the media. Home heating prices whatever 6 1 2 2 2 9 14 30. If you want to give us your first name the city where you live we'd love to credit you with your opinion. Well finally tonight the weather forecast just does not change much this time of year. Mostly cloudy in the West with light snow by the afternoon hours increasingly cloudy in the east as the day goes on. Highs from the single digits above zero up north to about 10. Down south.

As we go tonight if you can't beat it join it. That's the idea behind the same Paul Winter Carnival and it's not a bad idea either. Here's the ice sculpture contest looks pretty at least from inside our nice warm studio. Good night. NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is made possible by the contributors to the power of two campaigns

program funded with major grants from the London Foundation and the McKnight foundation. Tonight's broadcast of NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is presented in part by Norwest bank contributing to the growth of the Twin Cities through supporting community service. Cargill. Supporting Minnesota's tradition of community service and by the attorneys of Briggs and Morgan providing a broad range of legal services to business individuals and government entity.