Workforce Safety & Insurance’s Chief Apologist?
Word is from some visitors to my booth down here at the NDGOP state convention is that certain reporters in the North Dakota media are calling me “WSI’s chief apologist.”
Given that I’d just as soon privatize worker’s compensation insurance in North Dakota by making it like car insurance (required to carry it, provided by private companies), I hardly think I’m an “apologist” for the agency at all. I’m just interested in truth and fairness, and I don’t think the North Dakota public is getting that from the state media on the WSI issue.
The state media has held WSI “whistleblower” (and current Democrat legislative candidate) Jim long up as a wrongfully-terminated martyr, but the truth is that Long’s employment WSI was ended for a variety of very good reasons including a possible affair with a subordinate. I think that side of the story should be told to the public, but the state media (by their lack of coverage) apparently doesn’t.
When Jasper Schneider, the Democrat insurance commissioner candidate, has his uncle in all the state papers attacking WSI (Jasper and his party’s #1 issue) I think the relationship between Jasper and his uncle should be noted in the articles so the public can consider the source. The state media, by their routine refusal to make such connections, doesn’t think so.
When someone like KVRR (Fargo Fox affiliate) news director Jim Shaw produces a news story so transparently biased and one-sided that even casual observers of the WSI issue are left scratching their heads I think the media owes the public a rebuttal. But none is, nor will it ever be, forthcoming.
If pointing out the facts that the media won’t makes me an apologist, then I guess I don’t mind the title.
