As a lifelong North Carolinian, the three years since the Republicans grabbed complete control of state government have seen a lot of outrageous moments. But it’s going to be awfully hard to top something that happened last weekend. Officials with the North Carolina Department of Transportation actually tried to strongarm a reporter for a Charlotte television station into taking a quote out of a story.
Late last year, the NCDOT signed a deal to build toll lanes along Interstate 77 from just outside downtown Charlotte to the Lake Norman area in northern Mecklenburg County. On Friday, activists with Widen I-77, a group who wants the NCDOT to widen the existing lanes, tried to persuade a court to tear up the contract. At that hearing, Widen I-77 attorney Matt Arnold told Judge W. Osmond Smith:
“This contract is going to hold the citizens of North Carolina hostage for 50 years, and we’re asking the court to declare it unconstitutional.”
But Smith punted, saying that the contract was a matter for the General Assembly, not the courts.
Steve Crump, a veteran reporter at WBTV in Charlotte, was on hand for the hearing. When Crump opened his email on Saturday afternoon, he discovered a message from Mike Charbonneau, the NCDOT’s deputy secretary of communications. It seems that NCDOT officials weren’t too pleased with how Crump quoted Arnold, and wanted it removed. Charbonneau wrote:
“While I understand that you are directly quoting the attorney, this is a completely false statement, used as a scare tactic, and the judge clearly acknowledged that by ruling against all of their claims. We respectfully ask that you remove this quote from the article and soundbite from the package.”
Charbonneau added that Arnold’s statement was “aimed at intentionally misleading the public, and should be discounted since Smith “agreed with the state” and ruled against Widen I-77.
Um, Mike? Crump was doing what any journalist worth his salt would do. He reported what both Widen I-77 and the NCDOT had to say at the hearing, and allowed viewers to judge for themselves who was in the right. Do you and other NCDOT officials really think Charlotte residents’ sensibilities are so delicate that they can’t hear both sides? Judging by this outrageous email, I can only conclude that the answer is yes. And no matter how “respectfully” you make such a request, it doesn’t make it any less ham-handed.
When Crump’s boss, news director Dennis Milligan, learned about this outrageous email, he hit the ceiling. In a colossal understatement, he called Charbonneau’s request “inappropriate.” To his knowledge, it’s the first time in his four-decade career that state officials have demanded a reporter edit out something from a story “that was said in open court.” Milligan rightly said that WBTV had no reason to cut out the quote, since it presented both sides “fairly and accurately.”
Jonathan Jones, a journalism professor at Elon University, agreed, calling oral arguments and testimony in an open court session “among the most protected statements that a reporter can get.” As Jones sees it, Charbonneau and his bosses at the NCDOT have “no legal standing” to demand that Arnold’s statement be edited out. Jones also noted that Smith’s ruling hasn’t been made public yet, so there’s no way of knowing what he was thinking.
To put it mildly, NCDOT officials are being extremely cowardly. They can’t attack Arnold, so they’re trying to shoot the messenger–or rather, twist the messenger’s arm. I realize that things have definitely taken a turn for the worse here in North Carolina. But I would like to think that officials in this state still have some standards of acceptable behavior. Perhaps we should ask the NCDOT if intimidating the media in this way is now considered standard operating procedure. You can ask the NCDOT on Facebook or on Twitter. You can also contact Charbonneau’s boss, Transportation Secretary Nick Tennyson, directly at njtennyson at ncdot dot gov.
