Fargo Forum Editorial Board Has A Truth And Accuracy Problem

A couple of weeks ago the Fargo Forum had a typically juvenile editorial about early childhood education legislation which singled out Rep. Jim Kasper, a Fargo Republican, as the leader of the opposition to the bill.

The Forum wrote that opponents of the legislation were longing “for the time when barefoot, pregnant and home-no-matter- what was the status of most women.” The paper also claimed that opposing the legislation was “threatening the welfare of children.”

The problem was that Kasper didn’t oppose the bill. In fact, he actually voted for it. To my knowledge – and I’ve looked – the Forum has never bothered to correct this factual inaccuracy.

Now it appears as though the Forum folks are caught in another less-than-accurate statement. Today is election day in Fargo, and one of the candidates for the city commission is a woman named Mara Brust. There has been some rumors in the community that Brust enjoyed the support of Jane Ahlin, a member of the Forum’s editorial board, and that Ahlin even hosted a fundraiser for the candidate.

This is problematic, ethically speaking, as the Forum has also officially endorsed Brust without mention of the financial relationship.

But Jack Zaleski, the Forum’s opinion editor, appeared on a Fargo radio show recently and claimed that Ahlin only attended the fundraiser. He said she did not host it (audio here).

Yet, according to a posting on Brust’s campaign page on Facebook, Ahlin did in fact host the fundraiser:

I don’t really have a dog in the fight when it comes to who does and doesn’t sit on the Fargo city commission, but if the Fargo Forum editorial board is going to endorse candidates they ought to disclose that one of their editorial board members is holding fundraisers for the candidate.

And their opinion editor certainly shouldn’t be telling the public that an editorial board member didn’t host the fundraiser, when she clearly did.