Credit Is Due

On March 11, the Rocky Mountain News published a story about two (very fast) moving violations racked up by Denver Nuggets forward Kenyon Martin and the less-than-draconian punishment that came his way afterward. Following separate 2006 incidents, Martin was ticketed for exceeding the triple-digit mark — once in a 30 mph zone in Cherry Creek, according to the Daniel Chacon-penned piece. But he avoided losing his license in both cases thanks to the intervention of prosecutor Russell Stone, who improved on at least one previously arranged plea bargain. Stone subsequently served a three-day suspension without pay for his actions, which gave the appearance of preferential treatment in the eyes of his boss, Vince DiCroce, the article said.

The evident inequity, coupled with Martin's celebrity status, convinced the Associated Press to make a more succinct variation of the story available to news agencies that subscribe to what's anachronistically referred to as its wire service. The AP version, sourced to the Rocky, soon popped up on web addresses across the country, including sites affiliated with every major Denver-area television station except for Channel 7. In a lengthy report broadcast on January 29, Channel 7 correspondent John Ferrugia revealed the very same information that eventually surfaced in the Rocky.

Under ordinary circumstances, the AP might simply have missed Channel 7's efforts. But in this instance, Arthur Kane, a onetime Denver Post journalist who's now a 7News producer, had personally sent the wire service's Denver branch a text version of the Martin material around the time the Ferrugia package aired. When the story didn't make it to the wire the next morning, Kane contacted Jim Anderson, the branch's news editor, to express the station's displeasure. Anderson now calls the 7News offering "a bang-up story," but the AP still didn't circulate it and only stamped the subject with its imprimatur after the Rocky took up the cause.

Ferrugia was irked by this turn of events, which reflects a larger pattern, he says. As he puts it, "This is one of a number of times when we have broken a story, a very high-profile story, and it doesn't appear on the wire. But then the story appears in the newspaper and does appear on the wire — and the story is credited to the newspaper."

Disputes like this are more common than many media watchers realize. From the earliest days of journalism, news organizations have chased stories first reported by rivals without publicly admitting it under the theory that fessing up gives aid, comfort and positive publicity to the enemy — and TV-newspaper partnerships further complicate matters. Because the Rocky has a cooperative arrangement with Channel 4, articles with CBS4 reporter Brian Maass's byline regularly show up in the paper the morning after his latest broadcast airs, and the Denver Post coordinates in a like manner with Channel 9. In contrast, channels 2, 7 and 31 have no such pipeline to print.

This setup gives a built-in advantage to channels 4 and 9, and that nettles Ferrugia when he feels promotional goals outstrip journalistic judgment. "You'll see another station do a minor story that's played as big news in the newspaper because of the marketing agreement," he argues. "And because Channel 7 doesn't have a marketing agreement, it tends to get less play in the newspapers even when we do a major story."

Of course, the AP doesn't require a report to appear in a traditional print publication before it can be placed on the wire, but Ferrugia says he's seen evidence of favoritism. He cites a series examining accusations of abuse at the Air Force Academy that the station ran in early 2003, two weeks after a Westword cover story by ex-staffer Julie Jargon on the topic. (Channel 7, which conducted its investigation during the same period as Jargon, didn't name-check Westword in its reports.) Ferrugia recalls that after the AP initially passed on the story, which went on to win a prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Broadcast Journalism award, a 7News staffer contacted the local office, "and we actually got a response from a senior night-side person. That person is now gone, but his response was, 'We didn't see anything in the paper about it.'"

If such a pro-newspaper bias exists, the Associated Press's Anderson, a well-traveled veteran of the organization who took charge of the Denver operation just under a year ago, wants to squelch it immediately. He points out that AP staffers monitor as many news outlets as possible, including television stations, in search of intriguing items, and when stations like Channel 7 proactively inform them about an impending blockbuster, it makes everyone's job easier. "This is a cooperative, and we encourage all of our members to share their content," he says.