Grand Forks Herald Fails To Identify SEIU Organizer In Letter To The Editor

Tweet

Written By:
Rob Port

May 17, 2010
11:14am

The various editorial boards of Forum Communications (which owns the Grand Forks Herald, the Fargo Forum and a myriad of other newspapers, television stations and radio stations around the state) are fond of deriding “out of state interests” in North Dakota politics. Frequently conservative organizations in the state with ties to national umbrella groups are accused of not representing actual North Dakotans, and any time any right-leaning national figure comments on issues relating to the state he or she is accused of not being “in step” with North Dakotans.

It’s a refrain repeated so often on the pages of those newspapers as to have become cliché. So it’s rather funny that a paid political operative, working for the SEIU and the union-backed advocacy group Change that Works is able to get a letter published in the Grand Forks Herald without the editors even bothering to be transparent about the fact that he is a paid political operative.

And one from out of state, to boot.

Ryan Nagle is the director of North Dakota Change that Works and a communications director for the SEIU. Yet, when he sent a letter to the Grand Forks Herald blasting a call put forth by Governor Ed Schafer for a cut in the state’s oil extraction tax, none of this information was made public.

And this isn’t the first time Nagle has flown under the radar. Back when Rep. Earl Pomeroy held is one and only North Dakota town hall about the health care bill (a telephone town hall rather than a face-to-face event), Nagle just happened to be the first in line to have his call taken. Another paid operative named Don Morrison, who works for NDPeople.org a group affiliated with Change that Works, was also among the first callers in the “town hall.”

Now, whenever I write a letter to the editor of the Grand Forks Herald I’m identified as a talk radio host and the author of this blog. Which is as it should be. Transparency is a good thing.

But apparently that transparency isn’t equally applied.