My colleague Mark Binker, capital correspondent at the Greensboro News-Record, interviewed Gov. Mike Easley the other day in an end-of-administration session that revealed, among other things, how the governor views the press -- particularly McClatchy Newspapers in Raleigh and Charlotte. It also showed the governor with a startling defense of his administration's poor management of the state's probation system. The News & Observer's series on the probation system -- focusing on 580 murders committed by poorly- or non-supervised probationers over the past eight years -- was nothing but a "hatchet job" on Secretary of Correction Theodis Beck, to whose department the probation system reports.
Leave it to the governor to totally miss the point of the N&O's thorough reporting on the probation system failure: Unsupervised probationers commit too many crimes and his administration did too little to correct the problem. Easley's problem is not that the newspaper did a hatchet job on one of his appointees; his problem is that he wasn't paying attention to what his appointees were doing -- or in this case, not doing -- and the newspaper found him out.
Look: The governor is a charming man, funny, witty, wise in many ways and one of the best woodworkers I know. But on some issues he's full of bull. This is one of them.
I missed the interview in the News-Record Sunday while out of town. Here's a link to Binker's blog, which also has links to audio excerpts from the interview. My friend Doug Clark also has some pithy comments about Easley's words.
Here's Dome's take on it today:
Gov. Mike Easley said the "24/7 press cycle" has led to criticism of him.
In an exit interview with Mark Binker of the Greensboro News-Record, Easley said that the increased demand for news online had led to "gotcha" journalism.
"There's a 24/7 press cycle now," he said. "People calling all night long. They want access to the governor all the time ... So that's created a lot of competition, especially on the print side the pressure has been downsizing and original content. Original content is gotcha stories."
Easley said the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer had been hardest on him of state media because his administration would not release e-mails relating to personnel matters and corporate recruiting.
He said a recent series on problems with the probation system was a "hatchet job" on Correction Secretary Theodis Beck, though he argued that probationers killings are better than they used to be said the death of Eve Carson was being unfairly blamed on the system.
"Some young lady gets brutally murdered by a couple of probationers ... it's now the probation officers fault," he said. "When are we going to start holding some of these people accountable and get some of these executions going again?"
Easley said he tries to be fair to the media for his part.
"I try to keep my side of the window clean," he said. "My job is to be nice to other people and their job is to be nice to me. Just 'cause they're not doing theirs, doesn't mean I shouldn't do mine."
