Evaluate the truth of campaign claims

As the November elections draw closer, readers’ minds are turning to politics even more than usual. I haven’t been surprised that some common themes I’ve heard in years past are starting to crop up more often in my inbox.

This year, I’ve already heard from multiple readers pointing to stories about the presidential campaigns’ talking points. One example was a July 14 wire story, “Romney hammers president over Bain Capital attacks.”

It was a typical report about the two campaigns’ back-and-forth over Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s stewardship of Bain Capital, the private equity firm he co-founded. The story says the Obama campaign “has portrayed Romney as a corporate raider who enriched himself by shipping U.S. jobs overseas.” Particularly at question is the time period of 1999 - 2002 when Romney says he was playing no operational role in the firm. The story in The Star points to SEC documents that seem to indicate otherwise, as Romney was identified as the firm’s managing director in 2000 and 2001.

However, other news reports have supported Romney’s account. The well-respected and non-partisan FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, has laid out the case convincingly that contemporaneous documentation shows Romney was not directing Bain, backed up by similar conclusions from Fortune, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review and ABC News.

We obviously don’t have a time machine to whisk us back to 2000 and cat-burglar our way into Bain’s boardrooms. To my mind, the preponderance of evidence supports Romney’s defense — and so I agree with those readers who have underlined a request I’ve heard uncountable times: When any candidate makes a statement that isn’t supported by the facts, the news story should add that context. Here, the wire story should at the very least have mentioned that other accounts disagree about the import of the SEC filings.

But what about when a politician charges that his opponent’s policies have “hurt the economy,” for example? Ask a hundred dismal scientists about the effects of a piece of public policy, and you’re likely to get a hundred different explanations. There are times when “truth” isn’t a simple matter of fact checking. Here, journalists should offer context, even if there are no concrete conclusions to be made.

Marriage relevant?

I received an interesting question via email concerning a story on the July 12 front page about the fight between moderates and conservatives in Kansas Republican politics.

“I was reading the article in today’s Star about Bill Graves coming back to Kansas to support moderate Republicans and noticed that (Kansas Gov.) Brownback’s spokesperson and the Kansas director of Americans for Prosperity have the same last name — Sherriene Jones-Sontag and Derrick Sontag, respectively,” she wrote. “Is there a relationship between these two? If so, it would suggest that Americans for Prosperity has a pipeline to the Governor’s office, which should raise some red flags, or at least be reported.”

I did some checking, and her supposition is correct. The two are married. In fact, Sherriene was former Kansas attorney general Phill Kline’s director of communications, and the 2006 press release about that appointment mentioned her husband.

So is that a relevant part of the story? Relationships among people who work in areas of government and public policy are hardly novel. I think some readers would be surprised to see how many lobbyists, consultants and think tankers have close relationships to government officials.

But is that any reason the Sontags’ marriage shouldn’t have been reported? Not that I can think of. It would have taken just a few words.

To reach Derek Donovan, send email to publiceditor@kcstar.com or call 816-234-4487 weekday mornings. Follow him on Twitter at @KCStarPublic.