Daschle Mute on Argus Leader Link; South Dakota Probe Widens

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- The ethical saga surrounding South Dakota's largest newspaper took another turn away from resolution as spokespersons for Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) ignored calls to clarify the relationship between their boss and the political reporter of the homestate newspaper, the Argus Leader.

Calls from Talon News to Steve Hildebrand, manager for Daschle's re-election campaign and Steve Erpenbach, Daschle's State Director were not returned yesterday.

A Sioux Falls businessman touched off the controversy last week when he called for the Argus Leader to disclose the relationship between its political reporter David Kranz and Sen. Daschle that stretches back 35 years. Executive Editor Randell Beck refused that request, despite the ethics controversy that recently enveloped the New York Times. Randell told Talon News, "He [Kranz] works for me and I'm not going to allow Dave to get into a pissing match with a guy who makes this stuff up."

Neal Tapio, a potential Daschle challenger in next year's senate race suggests that Kranz's association has benefited the four-term senator and other Democrats. In his press release he says, "It is no secret that many in South Dakota have been suspicious of the manner in which Kranz spins political stories."

Tapio cites articles in the New York Times and Roll Call that have noted how Kranz and the Argus Leader have "unfairly reported on Republican office-holders." He maintains that the newspaper's refusal to report Daschle's low polling numbers and his wife Linda's lobbying activities on behalf of the airline industry, Boeing, and Schering-Plough are further evidence of pro-Daschle bias.

Tapio asserts that Kranz's reporting over the years has been unusually favorable to the South Dakota Democrat and similarly harsh to Republicans. In 1990, the New York Times called the Argus Leader "vituperative" in its bias against Former Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD) under the leadership of then Managing Editor Kranz. Ironically, in a recent editorial Beck wrote, "Mostly, though, the saga at The Times represents a simple, if shocking, confirmation of what can happen when editors relinquish their responsibility to a newspaper and its readers."

An insider at the Argus Leader told Talon News of "a siege mentality" that has developed in the newsroom. Since the initial telephone conversation with Beck, no further comment was offered despite multiple requests by Talon News. After Tapio made his charges on a KELO radio program, Beck cancelled his regular appearance on the show. Beck also failed to respond to a suggestion from Talon News to appear on KSOO radio's Viewpoint University talk show to answer the questions that now plague the publication.

Tapio renewed his criticism of the Argus Leader in a press release this week in which he called on Beck to follow his own ethics rules. He quotes the newspaper's published code of ethics that states: "We will strive to include all sides of the story and not take sides in news coverage."

Tapio cites Daschle's media consultant Karl Struble's strategy of media manipulation and asks, "Was Dave Kranz a willing or unwilling accomplice in this strategy?"

Beck fueled more controversy during a radio interview on May 22, 2003 when responding to a question about the lobbying activities of Daschle's wife Linda he emphatically stated the Argus Leader "doesn't report on the wives of political candidates." But an investigation indicates otherwise.

The Argus Leader wrote a 1995 editorial critical of Marianne Gingrich, wife of the House Speaker, Republican Newt Gingrich, for taking a position with Israel Export Development Company. The newspaper wrote, "The spouses of U.S. leaders should be held to a high standard: Not only should they avoid impropriety, they should avoid all appearances of impropriety."

In 1990, the South Dakota newspaper published a thirty-six-paragraph article about Harriet Pressler, wife of Republican Sen. Larry Pressler that suggested the senator had used his office to help his wife's real estate business. By contrast, the recent purchase of a $2 million Washington, DC home by Sen. Daschle and his wife is mentioned by the paper in only five sentences.

Tuesday's New York Times reported on a $20 billion Pentagon plan to lease air-refueling tankers from the Boeing Company. The newspaper cited that liberal and conservative groups opposed to the arrangement called it a "sweetheart deal" that must be approved by Congress. The article pointed out that Boeing has hired lobbyist Linda Daschle, the wife of the Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle to represent the company. South Dakota's largest newspaper did not find that story newsworthy, having yet to make any reference to it at all.

Linda Daschle's lobbying has long been a source of potential conflict of interest issues. Her firm's clients include American Airlines, a recent recipient of billions in taxpayer funds to keep the company in business. Another client, L-3 International, a manufacturer of baggage screening equipment, won a lucrative contract from the Federal Aviation Administration in 2000.

Mrs. Daschle had been an official with the FAA before joining the lobbying firm of Baker, Donelson, Bearman and Caldwell. Tapio's press release takes the newspaper to task asking, "Shouldn't the Argus Leader be concerned with the influence peddling of a Senator while financially benefiting at the expense of public policy, and the relationship of lobbyists and U. S. leaders?"

Even the Daschles' refusal to make their income tax returns public didn't get a notice from the same publication that aggressively pursued Harriet Pressler a decade ago. When Kranz was with the Mitchell Daily Republic in 1982, he wrote an opinion piece that praised Mr. Daschle for releasing his income tax returns and criticized his opponent Clint Roberts for not doing so. But Kranz was silent when the Daschles' announced they would not release last year's returns. It is estimated that their return would reveal a combined income estimated at $6 million, most of it from Mrs. Daschle's lobbying.

In the course of investigating what may have been an innocuous association decades ago, serious ethical questions have arisen. The refusal of both Kranz and Daschle to acknowledge their relationship has spawned a probe by Talon News and others who are examining the Argus Leader's reporting during the tenure of David Kranz. Staffers at the newspaper are being interviewed about editorial directives and story assignments that might support or contradict Tapio's claims of bias.

tommy two tongues has many friends in the state, most of them residing in the slums east of the Missouri River. If Souix Falls and all Indian Reservations, were to sink into the earth, the state would be even more solidly Republican than it already is. A fact the argus liar is well aware of and so in the interest of fairness they have established their present editorial policy.

Linda Daschle's flunkies at the lobbying firm, where she gets $6 million a year selling access to her husband [# from Insight mag as reported in the southdakotapolitics blog], issued a statement and got the NYT and AP to "correct" the story.

The statement said, verbatim, "Linda Hall Daschle does not lobby senators on behalf of her clients."

If it hadn't been a service to a fellow Democrat, the Times and AP would never have fallen for that old trick. If you put your Democrat-parsing skills, so hard-won during the years of Clinton Chicanery, to use, that translates to, "Linda Hall Daschle doesn't lobby the senators -- with whom she might be at a disadvantage. She goes directly to the Senate staffers, who are most vulnerable to the pressure she and hubby put on."

I hope she's saving all that money that she's supposedly making with all her lobbying skill, because when Tommy retires due to ill health (the voters, unlike his love-gerbils at the Argus, being sick of him), zot! Her lobbying skill will have shown a mysterious decline, and she will no longer be able to pull in multi-mils with no heavy lifting.

This is why Democrats have all that concern about poor people. If most of them ever had to stop relying on graft, they would be the poor people.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

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