Editor’s note: Nick Monsarrat is the former editorial page editor for the Burlington Free Press. He is an editor for VTdigger.org, and he serves on the nonprofit’s board of directors.
In Vermont’s just-concluded election for governor, “most ethically challenged” became a campaign mantra for Republican candidate Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie’s effort to paint ultimate winner, Democratic state Sen. Peter Shumlin, as untrustworthy. Compiled by VTdigger.org, via Internet search-engine Google, here is a representative sample of the war of words that coursed through Vermont’s political bloodstream from early-March to the Nov. 2 election, in print, press releases, the Internet and over the airwaves.
March 8, 2010. Fox Business Channel airs an interview with Democratic candidate for governor Peter Shumlin in which he mistakenly asserts Germany gets 30 percent of its electricity from solar power.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4087852/lawmaker-on-closing-nuclear-plant/?playlist_id=87053
March 12. “Yes Vermont Yankee,” a Web site advocating relicensing of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, posts a critical commentary and video of Shumlin’s Fox Business interview. Other critics soon begin to characterize Shumlin’s solar-power gaffe as a “lie.”
http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2010/03/shumlin-overstates-himself.html
March 13. VermontTiger.com, a self-described “free-market” blog, takes Shumlin to task for the error.
http://www.vermonttiger.com/content/2010/03/bad-infomation.html
March 15. The “energy collective,” a pro-business and pro-nuclear Web blog, reports Shumlin’s Fox Business appearance under the headline: “Vermont Senate President Peter Shumlin Caught Lying to the American People on Fox News.” (In fact, Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie is the Senate president; Shumlin is Senate President Pro-Tem.
March 17. Bob Audette, of the Brattleboro Reformer, reports Shumlin’s lengthy explanation of his Fox Business Channel comments after he gets a cascade of criticism for it.
March 17. A 7Days news story by reporter Andy Bromage reports the outcome of the weekly newspaper’s survey of Vermont legislators, lobbyists, and statehouse staffers and reporters, noting the lawmaker to get the most votes as “most ethically challenged” was Senate President Pro-tem Peter Shumlin. (The surveys sent out were returned by only 30 of the 400-person sample. A total of 12 of those 30 respondents checked off the “most ethically challenged” box for Shumlin.)
http://www.7dvt.com/2010legislative-survey
March 19, In a second article, after the first of many anti-Shumlin attack-ads appears based on the survey, reporter Andy Bromage defends 7Day’s decision to publish the survey. In the comments box following this story, 7Days co-publisher Paula Routly also defends publication, despite the low response rate.
http://7d.blogs.com/blurt/2010/03/national-governors-association-fires-on-shumlin-using-7d-survey.html
March 22. Burlington Free Press Statehouse reporter Terri Hallenbeck reports in vt.Buzz, the Free Press blog, Shumlin’s error about Germany’s solar power usage and his explanation for his misstatements.
http://bfp-poltics.blogspot.com/2010/03/shumlin-out-foxed.html
June 23. 7Days publishes a lengthy Shumlin profile entitled “Peter Principled?” in which they leave out the context that the survey had a paltry response rate, leaving the reader to link back to an earlier story containing that context, or, for those who did not link back, with the impression the survey could be one of several indicators of Shumlin’s poor ethical character.
http://www.7dvt.com/2010peter-principled
Sept. 20. Kate Duffy of Brian Dubie’s campaign issues a press release and video using the 7Days survey as a basis for a sweeping “Shumlin-most-ethically-challenged” attack-ad theme that will continue
throughout the campaign.
http://vtdigger.org/2010/10/20/dubie-releases-new-shumlin-ethically-challenged-ad/shumlin-using-7d-survey.html
Sept. 29. Republican Governors Association TV ad also uses 7Days survey as basis for “most-ethically-challenged” label
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_S_ix34rrc
Oct. 6. Vermont Public Radio’s Mitch Wertlieb interviews Paula Routly of 7Days and St. Michael’s College journalism professor David Mindich on the “most-ethically-challenged” controversy. Routly staunchly defends publication of the survey. Mindich calls it “a fun, lighthearted survey…not scientific” but “definitely with room for manipulation…which 7Days acknowledged.”
http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/88943/
Oct. 6. Front-page blogger Jack McCullough at Green Mountain Daily.com, a staunchly pro-Democrat/progressive Web site, blisters Routly on the basis of that interview.
http://greenmountaindaily.com/diary/6892/paula-routly-cant-be-that-stupid
Oct. 7. Front-page Green Mountain Daily blogger Julie Waters points to contextual and statistical lapses in 7Days’ followup coverage of the survey controversy.
http://greenmountaindaily.com/diary/6894/basic-statistical-literacy-or-lack-thereof
Oct. 11. Blogger Jon Margolis, Vermont News Guy, provides some context for the subject of ethically challenged politicians and the Shumlin controversy. http://www.vermontnewsguy.com/ethical-quandary
Oct. 21. Shumlin campaign launches strong counter attack on the “most-ethically-challenged” allegations.
http://vtdigger.org/2010/10/21/shumlin-dubie-has-launched-most-negative-campaign-vermont-has-ever-seen/
Oct. 22. In Vermont Public Radio interview, state Sen. Dick Mazza, a moderate Democrat, tells reporter John Dillon some legislators he knew who filled out the 7Days survey treated it as a “joke.”
http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/89081/
Oct. 23. Norwich, Vt. direct mail copywriter Josh Manheimer, posts the video “When Pigs Fly” on his youtube channel, anyonebutdubie, ridiculing Dubie’s most-ethically-challenged claims against Shumlin and questioning Dubie’s temperament.
http://www.youtube.com/user/AnyoneButDubie
Oct. 23. Burlington Free Press reporter Nancy Remsen reports on Shumlin and Dubie’s last televised debate on WCAX, during which Dubie stands by his “ethically-challenged” charge and again cites the 7Days survey as proof.
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010101023021
Oct. 23. Controversy goes national with David Gram’s AP report of the WCAX debate.
http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=213&sid=2070990
Oct. 25. VTdigger.org’s Anne Galloway posts her investigative roundup of all the most questionable campaign tactics both campaigns have employed, including the widely circulated link to the Dubie campaign’s Web list of “Peter Shumlin’s Top Ethical lapses,” which includes the 7Days survey findings.
Oct. 27. In a Mark Johnson WDEV radio interview, columnist and reporter Shay Totten of 7Days defends publication of the survey, repeating co-publisher Routly’s argument that its coverage contained adequate context for readers, and newspapers can’t be held responsible for how politicians use news stories for their own ends.
http://blog.markjohnsonshow.net/2010/10/28/102710-totten-pt-2.aspx
Oct. 29. Jerry Skapof of Manchester Center, in a strongly-worded letter to the editor of the Bennington Banner, deplores Dubie’s most-ethically-challenged attack on Shumlin, saying it has tarnished Dubie’s “nice-guy” image.
Oct. 29. Dave Gram’s AP account of a libel suit filed by a Vermont businessman against the Dubie campaign and its manager, Corry Bliss, (involving a different matter) lands on Bloomberg’s Businesweek Web site and others. The article also mentions the Dubie campaign’s list of Shumlin’s 11 “most ethical lapses.”
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9J5K29O0.htm
