How favoritism fueled a TV news fracas

The dust hasn’t quite settled over last week’s media melee at the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) charter school. Inver Grove Heights officials might still charge a KSTP crew with trespassing, and TIZA leaders could face assault charges for grabbing KSTP’s camera, cameraman attached.

However, a closer look at the incident reveals how favoritism fueled the tinderbox: KSTP’s for Strib columnist Katherine Kersten, and TIZA’s for KARE-11, whose coverage supported the school.

There’s also a bit of journalistic teeth-baring: KSTP reporter Chris O’Connell is none too pleased that the KARE crew didn’t stop the alleged assault, or get his comments when they reported it. For his part, KARE reporter Scott Goldberg says KSTP distorted its TIZA coverage and helped “feed the fire of hatred.”

The run-up
To understand the events of May 19, you have to look at the coverage leading up to it.

Kersten
got the ball rolling with a March column accusing the K-8 charter of
“being an Islamic school funded by Minnesota taxpayers.” She followed
up with April testimony from a substitute teacher who complained about
student washing rituals and in-school prayer.

KSTP jumped on the story; it left unchallenged the sub’s claim that events “took her totally by surprise,” even though the teacher later acknowledged she read a Kersten piece laying out many specifics.

Reporter
Beth Jett added this devastating kicker: “State law requires the school
to fly an American flag during school hours; however no flag flies
outside of TIZA Academy.”

Unsurprisingly, threats resulted; TIZA called in Inver Grove Heights cops and the FBI. KSTP ran a perfunctory story on this development; KARE jumped into the breach.

Reporter John Croman’s lengthy report
sympathized with the school. He told viewers some threats were “too
profane for KARE11 to share,” and credited Kersten’s column with
“inflaming some readers.”

Croman all but mocked Kersten’s
“Islamic school” designation. He explained that schools must
accommodate prayer, and voluntary after-school religious education was
not part of the school day – conclusions state investigators would
confirm a month later.

Holding a grudge
The day the state released its findings,
reporters naturally contacted the school. Goldberg quickly got
permission to interview TIZA officials on school grounds. O’Connell got
stiffed.

TIZA’s designated spokesperson, who asked not to be named, confirms that officials did not return O’Connell’s calls.

“There
was a previous report by a different KSTP reporter that TIZA felt was
inaccurate and unfair,” the spokesperson explained. “KSTP showed an
unwillingness to correct or modify the report, so they didn’t want to
grant KSTP an interview.”

The bone of contention was the
flagpole. KSTP had said flag-flying was “required,” but TIZA’s lawyer says he told Jett the law was ambiguous regarding charter schools. KSTP did not include that information; instead, Jett told viewers TIZA director Asad Zaman “didn’t know how to work the flagpole.”

KSTP Assistant News Director Sam Zeff says Zaman didn’t offer the legal rationale. Zaman’s flagpole explanation “was clearly their statement,” Zeff says.

The day after the flag report, the TIZA spokesperson say threats increased “ten-fold” over anything the Kersten columns produced. That night, KSTP’s follow-up report noted the school’s ambiguity position, and that the state education department agreed with the school.

At the school
On the day the state released its report, the school’s stiff-arm didn’t stop O’Connell from pursuing the story. He and cameraman Kevin Bubach drove
to the school, taking care to park on a public street rather than the
school’s parking lot.

“I wanted to give [Zaman] a chance to call
me,” O’Connell says. “I made two calls from the street; he saw us out
there. All of a sudden, a police officer comes blazing up.”

The officer represented the first communication from TIZA to O’Connell. O’Connell later told viewers that the officer told him, “the school did not want us there.” On KARE, Goldberg said police “told the KSTP crew not to come on the property.”

Goldberg
was already in the school’s parking lot when O’Connell arrived. Even
though the KARE crew had permission to tape, Goldberg says he was
careful to re-confirm that was OK. “We walked up to the assistant
principal, not even taking the camera with us.”

Watching from
across the street, O’Connell said he could only guess KARE had favored status –
again, no one from TIZA told him, and it wasn’t in the officer’s
purview.

O’Connell says when he and Bubach saw the KARE crew fire up their camera, they concluded, “Maybe [TIZA] is OK with it; they’re obviously
doing an interview. I’m not feeling confrontational. We said, ‘OK,
let’s go.’ We’re rolling and we set foot on their property for the
first time. Twenty-nine seconds later, we’re attacked, confronted.”

Anyone who’s played the game “Telephone” knows the moral: messages get garbled in transmission.

TIZA
used the cops as the telephone; they obviously feared talking to KSTP directly would result in word-twisting. School officials may have believed O’Connell ignored the police message, which could explain — but not excuse — their willingness to take matters into
their own hands.

Of course, maybe O’Connell was overaggressive – I mean, this is a guy who does a stand-up in a hail storm.
But because school officials never communicated their refusal
personally and directly, they created much uglier publicity.

TIZA had made this mistake before. Zaman had refused
Katherine Kersten’s interview requests for months — which didn’t
lead to better press, either. The school subsequently hired a PR
firm, but they didn’t have the pros on site or taking media calls after the report came out.

TV blame game
Now, about that media catfight.

O’Connell
is mad the KARE crew didn’t intervene when Zaman and an assistant
principal grabbed Bubach’s camera. “If another person is getting
manhandled the way I was, if it happened in front of me, I’d jump in,”
he says. “They just kind of stood there.”

Replies Goldberg, “I
didn’t see how the scuffle started, and I didn’t know who started it.
It would’ve been really stupid to jump into an argument without knowing
what the argument was about. It didn’t look like anyone was going to
get hurt. I didn’t feel an obligation to do anything other than observe
and document.”

On KARE’s tape, Bubach can be heard telling the
KARE cameraman, “Dude, shoot this,” which was dutifully done. A clip
appeared at the end of Goldberg’s 10 p.m. report, and KARE posted the complete raw footage on its website.

O’Connell is also miffed that Goldberg “talked about us, but never called us for comment.”

Goldberg
counters the KSTP fracas was incidental to his report. However, he offered the police view, and should’ve included KSTP’s comment, too.

That is not to exonerate KSTP. For example, its 6 p.m. story
never mentioned that the state cleared TIZA of many charges that the
station had publicized. The state’s top-line finding: “most of TIZA’s
operations are in compliance with state and federal laws.”

Goldberg
said his rival’s spin “blows me away. I read the report three times,
and the biggest accusation of the three – that it was an Islamic school
– was not substantiated by the report. There were no concerns about the
curriculum. That was my headline.”

The KARE reporter believes that much
of the TIZA coverage “has been unfair. When you’re dealing with
something that is topic number one or two in America right now — Islam
somehow linked to terrorists — and school kids wearing headscarves, you
have to be responsible. It’s too easy to feed the fire of hatred.”