Article on Rocky was unfair and distorted

Elements of a recent front-page article about Mayor Rocky Anderson's travel ("Too much flitting about by Anderson?" April 16) maligned and misrepresented both the motives and effectiveness of the mayor's travel schedule and denigrated the hard-working employees of Salt Lake City.

The Deseret Morning News has printed numerous misleading stories about Mayor Anderson over the years. (For a detailed account, please see www.slcgov.com/mayor, then click on "Speeches & Publications," then "3/27/06 — Speech on media ethics to Daily Utah Chronicle's annual banquet"). For several months now, however, the city beat reporter's coverage of Mayor Anderson has been generally fair and unbiased. Unfortunately, the April 16 article departed from this new norm. The recent article unfairly compared Mayor Anderson's travel with that of the mayor of Phoenix. The article stated that "Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon almost never leaves town." Undisclosed by the News, Phoenix employs a "council-manager" form of government, where the city manager is the chief administrator, and the mayor, while elected at-large, votes as a member of the City Council. A thorough and fair article would have disclosed this distinction.

The News article failed to disclose relevant information about two of its sources, as well as the newspaper's own financial support for one of those sources. The News quoted two members of the Salt Lake City Council, Dave Buhler and Eric Jergensen, who criticized the mayor's travel. The article omitted the fact, however, that council members Buhler and Jergensen have both indicated interest in running for Salt Lake City mayor — highly relevant information for readers. The article also failed to disclose that the chairman of the News' board of directors, Ellis Ivory, contributed $1,000 to Buhler's campaign in December, a fact that places the newspaper in a conflicted position when reporting on issues of city governance.

Contrary to the claims of some council members, the mayor's travel on city business reaps substantial benefits for the city. Rocky led the effort, for example, to make the Salt Lake City International Airport the first in the nation to screen all checked luggage for explosives, creating a system quickly emulated by other airports nationwide. This effort involved travel to Washington and meetings with the Federal Aviation Administration. Should the mayor have stayed home rather than effectuate this change?