Sen. Collins BIG Conflict of Interest and the Bangor Daily News Editor

[caligirl]

from Kos.http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/23/145444/164

Senator Susan Collins gets amazing press from the Bangor Daily News. AMAZING. Her press release's complaints that she was being taped by the Allen campaign - while, gasp, marching in a parade - got the BDN to do a front page story and to run an editorial tut-tutting over it as bad for civil discourse in Maine.

When she first ran, the BDN got all agog because people had looked at information in the public record about her.

They are her biggest fans, excusing away every pro-war and pro-Bush vote. They help keep the myth alive that she is a thoughtful moderate.

Well, what almost no one knows is that the Executive Editor of the BDN (Mark Woodward)'s wife (Bridget Woodward) is on Senator Collins' Bangor staff. This is a clear conflict of interest.

How can we inform the people of Maine about it? You know darn well that the BDN won't tell anyone!!!

For a bunch of folks who are SO concerned with potential problems in how campaigns are run, the BDN is living in a big glass house.


Here is the proof: http://www.nytimes.com/specials/teens/wine.html

seventh paragraph: "When Zach asked his mother about Brian's moving in, Bridget Woodward said, "I have to talk with your dad" -- Mark Woodward, the editor of The Bangor Daily News -- even though she knew it would fall mainly on her. Mrs. Woodward, an aide in the local office of Senator Susan Collins, is finicky about her home, and kept mentioning the extra laundry, the food and how they would fit everyone's beverages in one refrigerator. But what she was thinking was, "


And this from a Kossack with first hand knowledge:met them both (23+ / 0-)

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I met both of them at an event, where we chatted about any number of things and where I learned that Mark, the executive editor of BDN, is married to Bridget Woodward, a Collins staffer. Then when the BDN started criticizing the Allen campaign, I was talking to the person who invited me to the event, who reminded me of this relationship.

I haven't found anything listing both on-line, but here is Mark http://company.bangordailynews.com/... and here is Bridget http://www.themha.org/... listed under the Maine (Bangor) office.

Anyone who is involved in Bangor area civic life/politics with folks at this level should be able to confirm this. Or just call either of them and ask them. I doubt they'd deny it.

by maineiac on Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 12:55:44 PM PDT

Better link to Bridget Woodwards name listed in the Collins Bangor office as a case worker: http://www.themha.org/advocacy/delegation.htm

Seems Ms. Collins has an unfair advantage that needs fixing. LTTE anyone? Some have already gone out to a couplre Maine papers. But this needs more light shed on it for the Maine voters.

[meegbear]

1. Jesus' General has a graphic about her ...

Mainessippi Sue on basic liberties

http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/

[caligirl]

2. interesting, looks like this will get some play this week.

[MADem]

3. Out the paper every time you out her--put the two of them together.

And when the coverage bleeds past the editorial page, excoriate the paper.

[caligirl]

5. Seems Woodward was Collins press secretary before taking the top job at

BDN.

http://www.jeanhay.com/COLUMNS/FOURTH.HTM

In the interest of fairness--and in an unsuccessful attempt to get a regular column opposite Day's-- last December I personally handed a copy of my college report to the BDN executive editor Mark Woodward. When I wrote that report in the summer of 1997, Woodward was Collins' press secretary in Washington. He left that position a few months later to take the top job at the BDN. Woodward's wife now works in Senator Collins' office.





How unfair is the BDN:



The northern paper's unbalanced reporting so offended my personal, political and journalistic instincts that, when I went back to college in 1997, I did some research on the subject for the UMaine Political Science Department. I compared and contrasted the coverage of the Norris issue by the state's top four daily newspapers-BDN, Portland Press Herald (and Maine Sunday Telegram), Lewiston Sun Journal and Kennebec Journal in Augusta. The circulation areas of those four papers only overlap at the edges. I discovered that, from the day this "story" broke, the BDN was alone in making a big deal about this issue, or contending that it was scandalous. All the other papers spent a lot of ink debunking the BDN stories as soon as they surfaced.

As part of that process, I did the math. I found that in the Senate race, in which Collins defeated Joe Brennan by 32,196 votes, a full 30,744 of the vote difference turned up in the BDN monopolistic circulation area. Imagine that. As A. Jay Higgins wrote so recently, "Anyone who doubts the power of the press…"

The result of all my research has been posted on my internet web page since last January <1998>.

[MADem]

6. Letters to the Editor--pointing out the relationship, the bias, and the blatant unfairness

Every single time the paper pulls that crap. And if they have a "comments" ability for their online paper, ask people to comment!!!

Fascinating insight, BTW, re: the thirty thousand votes. And they DO read the PAY-PAH up in Maine, still!!!

[Davis_X_Machina]

4. You'd think the Press-Herald...

...which is state-wide, especially on Sunday, might enjoy sticking their finger in their main competitors' -- the BDN's -- eye.

The Blethen family, on the other hand, and their papers, care about nothing so much as the estate tax, and Collins has voted for its repeal. (A whopping 24 Maine estates were large enough to pay any federal estate tax last year, btw...)