Thursday, March 20, 2014

What Actions During the Campaign Got Osborne Hired by Cranley?

If you want the number one news article Kevin Osborne wrote during the campaign that would have clinched any alleged quid-pro-quo it would be this false story that was disproved rather easily by Osborne's old new outlet, CityBeat.

The second action Osborne gave Cranley was this follow-up story where he continued the Cranley attack on Qualls, disguised as allowing Qualls to respond. It is hardly balanced when a reporter expands on the attack in a story billed as a response to said attack.

The inaction Osborne provided his prospective employer during the campaign was keeping silent on why Cranley resigned from council.  I missed any reporting from Osborne on why Cranley waited nearly six months after he got the Ohio Ethics commission letter, telling him he had a conflict of interest, before he resigned from City Council.  One might figure Osborne, who was working for CityBeat at the time, would have reported on that and investigated it.  I guess he was too busy investigating how he would spin the 'exclusives' the Cranley Campaign was feeding him.

This hiring is beyond laughable, it is just pathetic.  Local media are reporting on it, but are not allowing their reporters to hit, at least not yet.  Any journalist who considers this ethical may need to revisit a few journalism basics.  Since there is evidence of Osborne throwing away any journalistic ethics he may have had out the window, no honorable journalist can hide behind any type of "blue line" code of protection for other journalists.  They also can not play the fear game, that Osborne can deny access.  Any threat Osborne, Kincaid, or even Cranley make to journalists is hollow.  More importantly, if they try to act on it, I think there are plenty of the nine members of Council that could easily nullify any attempt at Cranley retribution on a journalist.

What needs to happen most immediately is for the investigation into who leaked the Duke Memo to Kevin Osborne be restarted.  Osborne's connection to the Cranley Administration is more than clearly there. If WCPO knows the source of the moemo, they now have the ethical obligation to report it, if it came from anyone who would have had connection or influence over hiring Osborne for his new political job.

If anyone believes there is not smoke to the allegations of a quid-pro-quo to the Osborne hiring, they need to know something about the Cranley cabal, things like this don't happen in a vacuum.

3 comments:

  1. One of the problems with the reporting on Osborne's hiring is the cosy relationship between the local reporters in this small media market. The Enquirer reporter covering Osborne is a friend of Osborne's. I talked to her on Tuesday via DM and she confirmed that she had known about Osborne's new job and was waiting for a formal announcement to write it up.

    The other issue is the fact that the local media has given Cranley a free pass since he entered politics, and they continue to do so to this day. The Business Courier is the only local news outlet that has dared to report accurately about Cranley.

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  2. This just in.... Cincinnati Cops are not responding to 911 calls because they are to busy arresting innocent peoples caught in their roundups!!!!

    The Cincinnati Media must be in on this as they are not reporting it... Do not walk the streets of Cincinnati as the police are making roundups and you might get caught in their net and have bogus charges placed on you!!!!


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGM-hW0QzXg

    Here is the explained version of the arrest of the Cincinnati Witnesses. We are in the process of setting up an account to a law fund to help those charged with Obstruction of Business, which could carry a sentence as much as up to a year in jail. As you will see in the following video these men did not obstruct the police officers from doing their duty and complied with all orders given.

    The fund is soon to be announced.

    Thank You

    Peter Deane
    CEO Clover Valley Media

    From the Supreme Court Decision of 2013 --

    "Gathering information about government officials in a form that can be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting 'the free discussion of governmental affairs."

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  3. Follow up: I talked to the Enquirer reporter in question and she assures me that she is not friends with Osborne whatsoever and never ran across him prior to his WCPO position. She also said that she could not print the rumor she heard about Osborne being hired by Cranley because she could not verify it from multiple sources as the Enquirer's rules dictate. I take her at her word and apologise for jumping to conclusions about her being friends with Osborne.

    I still stand by my thoughts that the Cincinnati media market is a small pond ruled by a few big fish who don't criticise each other, and that Cranley has been given a free pass since entering politics.

    ReplyDelete

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