Just before I took off for a week’s family vacation, Senator Andrew Perchlik (D/P-Washington) held a press conference flanked by Secretary of State Sara Copeland Hanzas (D-VT) where they were handing out $10,000 and $5000 checks to a bunch of local media outlets. Oh, this is bad, I said to myself with some excitement. I’ve got to write about this! So, to kill time during my layover at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, I unpacked the old laptop, dug into the backstory, and learned just how bad this policy actually is.
Sixteen Vermont media outlets received funding from the government (and a matching amount from the Vermont Community Foundation): The Montpelier Bridge ($10,000), Vermont Independent (no longer). Media, including The Commons and Deerfield Valley News ($10,000), Waterbury Roundabout ($10,000), White River Valley Herald ($10,000), Addison (not anymore!) County Independent ($5000), Barton Chronicle ($5000), Caledonian-Record ($5000), Chester Telegraph ($5000), Hardwick Gazette ($5000), Hinesburg Record ($5000), Journal-Opinion ($5000), Northstar Monthly ($5000), Valley News ($5000), Valley Reporter ($5000), Vermont Community Newspaper Group ($5000), and Radio Vermont Group ($5000).
As any reader of Behind the Lines who gets to the bottom of these articles knows, I host the Tuesday edition of Radio Vermont Group’s Vermont Viewpoint on WDEV. And I’ve got to confess, seeing that $5000 number next to my employer’s name gave me a very uncomfortable pause before calling out this terrible, awful, no-good program. Terrible, awful, and no good precisely because of that pause it produced.
Now, I am not a direct employee of Radio Vermont Group, and what they pay me to do the Tuesday show, should it be taken away, would in no significant way affect my material well-being. I do it for the fun, not funds. And STILL, that $5000 gave me second thoughts about writing this piece. Is it worth potentially ticking off the people giving me this opportunity? Should I give them a heads-up first before writing this story? (I did not.) Should I seek permission before doing so? (Nope!) Would writing this lead to an uncomfortable conversation I could easily avoid by simply not writing about it? My readers would never know! Just write about something else this week. Why risk it?
If this minuscule amount of money would give me a queasy hesitation in my situation, how will it affect a reporter or editor whose full-time job—and financial security—is linked to one of these outlets? Are they going to be less likely to criticize the voting record of Senator Perchlik or the policy initiatives of Secretary Copeland Hanzas? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that of the sixteen checks handed out, five went to outlets based in Perchlik’s Washington County Senate District: The Bridge (Montpelier), Waterbury Roundabout (Waterbury), Valley Reporter (Waitsfield), Vermont Community Newspaper Group (Stowe), and, sigh, Radio Vermont Group (Waterbury). And two more are neighbors that distribute to towns in his district: White River Valley Herald and Hardwick Gazette. All tallied, that’s $45,000 of the $100,000 given out to what we can all start referring to now as “Perchlik’s Papers” — in an election year, coincidentally!
And worth noting: Secretary Copeland Hanzas’ hometown paper in Bradford, the Journal-Opinion, received $5k; her office oversees the grant process, which is also not at all transparent. The awards were determined by an “independent panel” kept anonymous to ensure politics didn’t creep into the selection process. Uh huh…. Sounds kind of like the opposite of that; covering up the politics that did go into it. All we know about the panel is that it was convened by Paul Heintz, former editor at VT Digger and former PR flack for U.S. Senator (then Representative) Peter Welch. So, we can all be sure the process was legit. (Eyeroll.)
Anyhow…. It’s true that there is a dearth of traditional reporting on state and local news, and one can question whether or not $5000 and $10,000 bribes out of the state treasury could make it any more biased toward left-wing politicians and their policies than it already is. But the answer to this problem is not politicians tossing sacks of money to the people who are supposed to hold them accountable. No reporting is better than Pravda-VT dispensing state-sanctioned propaganda on behalf of the people writing them checks. Perchlik and Copeland Hanzas have done more harm than good. We may have too little reporting, but they have just severely undermined the credibility of what’s left.
