For advanced symptoms of that particular affliction, you must consult the general manager of KAET-TV (Channel 8) Charles Allen.
Pointing to the Brewer episode, Allen fired Jana Bommersbach as the public television station's commentator. He said her position at the paper as editor linked her to behavior that some found unethical. A few of these people had actually phoned the station.
The Brewer flap was not the first time viewers have been upset with Jana.
Bommersbach, a staunch defender of abortion on demand, read pro-choice commentary on Channel 8. A few months ago, an estimated crowd of 10,000 pro-lifers marched on the State Capitol. You can bet those women regard Jana's position as something worse than unethical; those women find Jana supporting murder. Apparently Allen had no problem telling these women to go to hell.
Bommersbach's controversial abortion stance, however, did not occur as Channel 8 was trying to raise money.
Allen's dramatic overreaction in the Brewer affair occurred on the opening day of yet one more pledge drive.
While Allen moved to eliminate Bommersbach, he said nothing to New Times staffers Cap'n Dave and Michael Burkett, who were scheduled to go on the telethon and beg for money for Channel 8. Apparently their direct links to the unethical newspaper would not be allowed to interfere with the cash flow. Only Bommersbach, who'd had the temerity to go on the air and actually attack Brewer's legislation, was to be silenced.
Soon Allen was expanding his explanation to say that although Bommersbach had been fired from her spot as commentator, she might be allowed to return to the round-table discussions on Horizon, "unless other newspapers forbid their reporters to appear with her."
Forget for a moment, if you can, the notion of the John Kolbes and the Mark Flattens of this world attempting to carry Horizon without Jana.
Regard Allen's credo. Maybe because Allen only rents journalists instead of actually hiring a newsroom of his own, he thinks he can get away with this.
In the often antagonistic world of Arizona media, Allen presumes to give other reporters a carte blanche veto over Jana Bommersbach.
This has an all-too-familiar ring.
Duke Tully, the former publisher of the Republic and Gazette, once attempted to exercise this very sort of prior restraint by forbidding his reporters from appearing in public with New Times journalists.
Incredibly, Allen proposes to go Tully one better and let every medium in the state dictate whether or not a New Times editor is a peer.
New Times is the only news organization in the state where four Arizona Journalists of the Year work. The fellow who opens our book has a Pulitzer. No other journalist who appears on Channel 8 has as many commendations, both local and national, as Jana Bommersbach.
Who is Chuck Allen to institute de facto licensing of our writers?
We will not hold our breath waiting for Sigma Delta Chi to launch an inquiry into Allen's ethics.
We will say this.
When the attorney general, a few short weeks ago, convened a grand jury to reopen the investigations of the 1977 Don Bolles murder, the Republic and Gazette regarded it as front-page news, day after day until the same grand jury, probing the same homicide, targeted for possible indictment the would-be publisher of the journalistic monopoly Bill Shover. Five days before the Brewer demonstration, the legal problems of Mr. Shover, longtime spokesman for the papers, were buried in the middle of the second section.
The reporters and editors of the city room whose ethics permit this sort of news manipulation are now supposed to sit in judgment of whether or not Jana Bommersbach is worthy to join them on KAET?
Maybe you don't see anything wrong with the play of the Shover article.
Maybe you still find the Brewer episode unethical.
I disagree.
But that is what discussions of ethics are all about, disagreement. When Harvard law professor Arthur Miller posits his ethical quandaries on television, there is uproar, not consensus.
When everyone agrees, it is no longer a matter of ethics but one of dogma or religion.
You will have to excuse us at New Times if we refuse to worship at a church where the likes of Charles Allen serve as deacons.
Save the whales, spare the elephants and screw free speech.
Journalists believe it is just fine to behave deceptively if they can get a prize. But it is unethical to do the same thing to get a laugh.
Jan Brewer was done wrong in the way that most drives bluenoses nuts. She was turned from a paragon of fundamentalist virtue into a parody.
Allen's dramatic overreaction in the Brewer affair occurred on the opening day of yet one more pledge drive.
No one told the targets in these stories that a television reporter was preparing to hammer their brains out with interviews and film footage obtained by flying false flags.
