Let’s hear it now…How many of you are expecting big, explosive results from Attorney General and U.S. Senator-elect Josh Hawley’s investigation of clergy sex abuse in Missouri?
I said, let’s hear it now…but all I’m hearing is the silence of this cold November night.
I think the vast majority of us — whether we be liberals, libertarians, moderates or conservatives — are expecting to hear nothing more than a pop, at best, out of Hawley’s investigation.
There will be no boom because Hawley already got what he wanted — and why he might have promised an investigation in the first place. On Nov. 6, he handily beat Claire McCaskill, and his sights are now clearly set on Washington, where he’ll team up with Missouri’s incumbent Republican senator, Roy Blunt.
Of course, Hawley must continue acting and saying his investigation will be vigorous and thorough because, well, if he said anything other than that, he’d be acknowledging the investigation was politically motivated all along.
It’s no wonder, then, that he responded strongly to an op-ed piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that suggested his investigation was a lot of hot air.
Rebecca Randles
In the opinion piece, attorney Rebecca Randles, who has represented hundreds of clergy sex abuse victims, and David Clohessy, former director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said they had heard nothing from Hawley’s office during the three months since he announced his investigation.
“It’s hard to give Hawley the benefit of the doubt when he refuses to even make a simple phone call to those with considerable knowledge of the scandal in Missouri…” Randles and Clohessy wrote.
They also wrote that Hawley’s reliance on the “voluntary cooperation” of bishops was “laughable.”
“Like us,” Randles and Clohessy said, “these prelates have also been involved in the abuse issue for decades. Unlike us, they’ve devoted considerable time, energy and resources into keeping this horror hidden, disclosing only when essentially forced to do so by courageous victims, investigative reporting or pending cases, both criminal and civil.”
Hawley responded on Twitter, saying, “We have spoken with the current president and executive director of SNAP multiple times, as well as former leadership of SNAP. We have spoken with other victims groups, those representing victims and dozens & dozens of victims and witnesses.”
…We shouldn’t have to wait too long to find out who’s right about this because Hawley will be sworn in as a senator on Jan. 3. He’s got less than six weeks to deliver the results of his investigation, unless he intends to subcontract it to his successor, Eric Schmitt, who will take over immediately upon Hawley’s departure. And if Hawley does that, we will know for sure that his “investigation” was never a serous undertaking.
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Another day and another inscrutable correction in The Star. The correction in Tuesday’s paper related to a Nov. 24 op-ed piece by Steve Rose.
The Star, as I’ve written before, has a ridiculous policy of not repeating the incorrect information it published. The editors decided, mistakenly, long ago that it was only necessary to publish the correct information in corrections. The result is often a muddle because the correct information usually makes no sense without the context of what was incorrect.
So, here’s how the correction read..
The column by Steve Rose in the Nov. 24 Opinion section should have said that campaign materials for Johnson County Commission candidate Janee Hanzlick stated that they were paid for by the Kansas Democratic Party. There was no such wording on campaign literature for county commission candidate Becky Fast.
I read that two or three times, trying to make sense of it, but it eluded me. I had to go back to Rose’s column (I still had Saturday’s paper, fortunately) to put Humpty Dumpty back together. His column said that in the recent election campaign both Hanzlick and Fast, who were running in nonpartisan races, had said in printed ads that the ads were paid for by the Democratic Party. (Rose’s point was if the races were nonpartisan, it was odd that they would align themselves with one party or the other.)
Sooooo, the correction was supposed to tell the readers that while only one of the two candidates had invoked the name of the Democratic Party, Rose had incorrectly written that both had done so.
…I ask you: Wouldn’t it have cleared the waters to just write this:
A column by Steve Rose in the Nov. 24 Opinion section mistakenly said Johnson County Commission candidates Janee Hanzlick and Becky Fast cited the Kansas Democratic Party as the funding source for campaign materials they used in their campaigns. In fact, only Hanzlick cited the Democratic Party as the funding source.
The length is almost identical to the correction The Star published Tuesday…and it is 100 percent clearer.
The Star’s stubborn insistence on writing tortuous corrections reflects its unwillingness to use the words, like “incorrectly” or “mistakenly,” that acknowledge full responsibility. When it comes to saying, “We were wrong,” The Star would rather not.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
The NYTimes corrections give both what was wrong and the corrected information. The Times even provides (on line, at least) a list of corrections for each day, an accumulating historical record. Who at The Star is responsible for its confusing corrections policy?
Good point and good question, Vern. First, here’s an example of a NYT correction from Tuesday’s paper…
An article on Friday about makeshift Thanksgiving dinner at a relief kitchen in California misstated when a caravan of fire evacuees departed Paradise, Calif. It was two weeks before Thanksgiving, not one week.
As you noted, it straightforwardly lays out what was wrong and sets the record straight.
…Now, as to who’s responsible for the contorted, “we-kinda-screwed-up-but-don’t-want-to-admit it” policy at The Star, ultimately it comes down to the editor — Mike Fannin. He could order it changed immediately. Otherwise, Managing Editor Greg Farmer could suggest a change, run it by his assignment editors and then take it up with Fannin, saying, “This is what we recommend.”
I remember when The Star went to the current policy. It was more than 20 years ago, at a time when The Star used to assign blame by starting corrections with lines like, “Due to a reporter’s error….” or “Due to a copy editor’s error…”
The editors rightly decided that was too harsh. Once published, the paper owns the errors, not individuals, at least as far as the readers are concerned. Internally, it’s a different matter. Then, however, the editors — again, probably the managing editor and the editor — went too far and decided not only not to assign blame but also not restate the error.
This policy was a mistake and should have been changed long ago. All The Star has to do is look at The New York Times and follow its lead. It’s not a bit complicated and shouldn’t be a big decision. The proper and sensible template is readily available.
Historically, there is little to no reason, save for utterances regarding self interest, to believe a single syllable that ever emerges from Hawley’s beak.
The Star makes so many grammatical errors, it makes me wonder if the reporters are using talk-to-text software, instead of manually typing. I use it on my phone to text and, while it’s comical to see the strange words it sometimes produces, it is very annoying to see the same errors in print in the Star.
Also, who is the fool in charge of alphabetizing the Obits? That should be a simple task for young school kids, but apparently not the adults at the Star.