Snyder wrote a follow story about how the mayor himself asked the district attorney to investigate whether action should be taken against him for use of city e-mail for campaign purposes. It mentioned the mayor refused to talk to him unless he apologized for the earlier story — and said that Love says "she was not misquoted in the article."

Love said she doesn't think she used quite the words that Anderson says, but, "I initiated the call to the mayor that morning. I felt that my comments had been unfairly characterized. What Brady had in quote marks was accurate. . . . But people I talked to that morning thought that we were somehow investigating the mayor. That was a mischaracterization. My request was to see what the law is. We as a council wanted to know that for our own needs."

Anderson and Snyder eventually had a meeting to clear the air, and Anderson is again talking to Snyder. Hughes says Snyder has done a good job covering Anderson and that he will not remove him from the City Hall beat. He said Anderson has complained at various times about all Deseret News reporters who covered that beat.

Letters to the editor

Anderson complains even more vigorously about the Morning News opinion pages. He charges that the paper manipulates which letters to the editors it publishes to make it appear that more people disagree with him than really do — and says it allows charges to be published that it knows are false, or that it should question.

Anderson says, "Given the discretion that the 'letters to the editors' editor has about what is printed and what isn't, I find it really shameful that the Deseret News has published letters that added nothing to the public dialogue but that were incredibly cruel."

Editorial page editor Jay Evensen says, "Part of the purpose of a letters to the editorial page is to have a free flow of ideas" — so he runs letters of all types and viewpoints. In that free-for-all — including some from people who say radical things — he says readers can sift and find the truth.

He says an overwhelming ratio of letters about the mayor that the News receives criticize him. He said the newspaper actually publishes a higher ratio of positive letters about Anderson than it receives.

Anderson says he doubts that. He notes that when a letter writer said she supported Anderson's opponent because "he is married and has a wife and a family," Anderson's son, Lucas, wrote a letter to the editor. It said his dad "is the best father any son could have," even though he is divorced. Lucas had hoped it would be a surprise to his father when it ran.

"It never ran," the mayor complains. When his son told him about it later, he wrote the Morning News to ask what happened.