Say Anything Blog

No kidding.  That’s a direct quote from the allegedly objective “journalist.” KVRR news director Jim Shaw, who was behind the recent KX network (Reiten Broadcasting) hit piece on Workforce Safety.

This is a statement sent to Mr. Shaw by WSI Communications Director Mark Armstrong:

This week a TV series portrayed Workforce Safety & Insurance (WSI) with only one set of the “facts”.  Fargo FOX News affiliate News Director Jim Shaw offered an opportunity for WSI to participate in the TV series about a month ago stating that he wanted to do a series about how, “WSI denies claims and is out to screw injured workers.” On that basis, we declined to participate, believing it would not be a fair and balanced report.


Mr. Shaw at no time indicated that he had specific cases that he intended to focus on during his series.  WSI is unable to provide specifics about a claim unless a release of information is signed by the injured worker.  Without that release, only one side of the story was told in the stories presented in the TV series.  With respect to the opinions that were expressed in the series by Mr. Jim Long (currently on administrative leave from WSI), obviously, we disagree and are disappointed that he is providing inaccurate information to the public.  Mr. Shaw did not tell us that Mr. Long was to be featured in the series at all.

In any event, the focus at WSI is to move forward. We are confident the remaining outside investigations and reviews that are scheduled to be presented to our Board of Directors at their March 6th meeting will ultimately sort out the facts from the fiction.

Emphasis mine.

The comment about screwing injured workers is unbelievable.  I confirmed with Armstrong himself that this is a direct quote from Shaw.

Frankly, Shaw might as well have asked Armstrong and his colleagues at WSI if they’d stopped beating their wives yet.

Armstrong is right that this was not a fair-and-balanced news report.  Here’s the facts:

1. Injured worker attorney Mark Schneider was interviewed to give his not-so-objective view of injured worker claims.  Schneider also happens to be the uncle of Insurance Commissioner candidate Jasper Schneider who, along with his fellow Democrats, is making WSI his #1 campaign issue.
2. Mark Schneider’s client who had his worker’s compensation claim denied by WSI, Douglas Brown, was interviewed about his claim specifically but was not asked to release WSI to talk about his claim.  Thus, all viewers of this report got was Brown and his lawyer’s side of the story.
3. The reporter in charge of the interviews, Jim Shaw, is a frequent guest host of liberal talk radio host Joel Heitkamp who also happens to be a Democrat state legislator and an anti-WSI demagogue.
4. Shaw, unbelievably, asked WSI to comment on how they’re “screwing injured workers.” Whether or not you agree with that statement, that’s not how a professional journalist behaves himself.  That’s how a hack producing a hit piece operates.

Full disclosure: I’ve had a syndication agreement with Reiten Broadcasting to syndicate my posts from this blog onto the KX station websites (KXMC, KXMB, etc.) for some time now and I’m probably not doing myself any favors by going after Shaw and his report which appeared on their station.  But shoddy journalism is shoddy journalism.

And I’ll go beyond that and say that I strongly suspect, though I can’t prove it, that this WSI piece was coordinated by shaw with state Democrats.