With the media continually pushing Salt Lake County leaders lately, probing every nook and cranny for any whiff of scandal, the County Council on Tuesday decided to push back.

"I don't think some of the reporting has been very reflective of reality," Councilman Joe Hatch said.

"It's an extension of election season," Councilman Jim Bradley said. "Our two competing newspapers are really enjoying the editorial license of finding things that are wrong with the county."

The county had a lively election last year, with the mayor — in court on felony charges — withdrawing from the race and several other controversial issues.

Hatch said he thought a recent newspaper article, which addressed the possibility of county landfill money being used for a new downtown theater, was "appalling," saying the writer took things out of context and made assumptions that weren't warranted.

"Lately, a lot of the reporting on the county has done that," he said.

The county has been under fire over the past year, experiencing more than its share of controversy and scandal — and much of it deservedly so, council members said. But things are getting to the point where some stories are being manufactured out of whole cloth, or at least are blown out of proportion.

"With a $700 million budget, there are going to be excesses," Bradley said. "There are excesses in my budget at home."

Councilman David Wilde, while sharing in his peers' frustration with how the media appears to focus unremittingly on the negative, has another complaint as well. He says in many cases the council is being left on the sidelines, not consulted or made part of the process in dealing with the county's problems.

"I've read in the paper about tuition issues, timecard issues and now this (a recent story on waste in billing procedures)," he said. "If there's that much waste in the county, we ought at least to get it on the agenda. . . . I have no problem with people saying we want to clean things up. I just want to feel part of the loop."

For his part, chief administrative officer Doug Willmore — whom Wilde criticized for talking to a reporter without Wilde's knowledge — noted that "we shouldn't assume everything in the paper is completely accurate."

One county official conceded that, yes, the media don't always get things exactly right. But that's just the nature of the beast.

"There will always be an adversarial relationship there," he said of government and the media. "That's the way it's always been."

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E-mail: aedwards@desnews.com