The Forum: Propaganda Machine or Pulitzer-prize winning paper?

Region’s Largest media organization won’t respond to allegations of news coverage manipulation

By Bryce Haugen
Staff Writer/ with additional reporting by Tre Martinez and Cindy Gomez-Schempp, Editor

In North Dakota’s small media market, Forum Communications Company is the undisputed head honcho. And a radio talk show host is accusing the region’s press behemoth of a glaring conflict of interest with the state’s at-large congressman.

Fargo-based The Forum Communications has never disclosed to its readers that company CEO and President Lloyd Case’s wife, Ellen Case, works for freshman Republican U.S. Representative Rick Berg, the lone declared contender for the state’s open Senate seat. Meanwhile, KFGO News and Views Host Joel Heitkamp said he has heard from sources within Forum Communications that Lloyd Case has dictated to news departments what they should and should not write about Berg.

The former Democratic state senator discussed the topic on his June 16 morning call-in show. Heitkamp said his main source experienced Lloyd Case acting like a bully as he threatened several jobs - including the source’s - and made his spousal connection to Berg clear.

“That made me ask whether [The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead] was a promotional department or a Pulitzer Prize winning paper,” Heitkamp said. “[Lloyd Case] is an incredibly powerful man and to abuse that on behalf of your wife is unethical and it drags a Pulitzer Prize-winning paper down to a tabloid, which is unfortunate because the Fargo Forum has some high quality reporters and, prior to this, I thought some high journalistic standards.”

As of press time, Lloyd Case and Forum Communications Chairman William C. Marcil have not responded to these charges. HPR left numerous messages at their homes and offices over several days. Neither were home Tuesday night when HPR knocked on their doors. Tuesday afternoon, a receptionist who wouldn’t give her name, said all company top management - and the executives’ receptionist - would be gone until next Monday. Reached at his home Monday night, The Forum publisher Bill Marcil, Jr., refused to confirm or deny Heitkamp’s allegations. “At this point,” he said, “I have no comment. But keep digging.”

Heitkamp said The Forum management doesn’t want to talk about the claims because they’re true. “I think,” he said, “their lack of comment says a lot.”

Current Forum reporters referred questions to their editor, Matt Von Pinnon, who hasn’t responded to email or phone requests for comment. In an email, a former reporter who asked to remain anonymous defended the newspaper’s separation of powers. “I can honestly say ... I have never experienced any sort of meddling from top management, nor have I heard a single other reporter complain about it,” the reporter wrote. “I believe Bill Marcil is a big believer in staying out of the newsroom.”

William C. Marcil, who took over as publisher for his late father-in-law, Norman D. Black, Jr., in 1969, said in a December 1999 Forum article, “The Blacks considered publishing a newspaper to be a public trust. That has been the philosophy of this company since 1917. We will not abuse the power of the press.”

If Lloyd Case did interfere in the newsroom, it would be a clear abuse of that power, said Kelly McBride, a journalism ethics expert at the Poynter Institute. “That would be completely inappropriate and incredibly harmful to the newspaper’s credibility with its audience - if it’s true,” she said.

Asked whether Berg believes coverage of him in The Forum newspaper is fair, spokeswoman Alee Lockman asked a question herself. “Have you read The Forum?,” she said with a laugh, making it quickly clear she was joking. “We have a very cordial relationship with The Forum.” Ellen Case, who now works in Berg’s Fargo office on constituent cases, was merely one of hundreds of volunteers for last year’s campaign and never used her husband’s status for the congressman’s gain, Lockman said. Berg’s office didn’t make Ellen Case available for comment and she didn’t return messages left at her home.

Besides The Forum, Forum Communications owns daily newspapers in Grand Forks, Jamestown and Dickinson, giving William C. Marcil and Lloyd Case some say on these papers’ editorial pages. The company also controls WDAY television and radio, TV stations in Bismarck, Minot and Grand Forks, and several publishing outfits. That’s just in North Dakota.

Grand Forks Herald Editor and Publisher Mike Jacobs said Lloyd Case had no influence on his paper’s news coverage. “News decisions for the Herald are made in Grand Forks, by the Herald,” he said.

Editorial page endorsements for statewide races, on the other hand, are made in Fargo. Herald and Berg officials deny Ellen Case’s presence at any Editorial Board meeting in Grand Forks or Fargo. Heitkamp maintains his source described Ellen Case’s pressure-by-proxy at the pivotal endorsement meeting in Fargo, making the result - a Berg endorsement - a forgone conclusion.

“[Lloyd Case] and his wife have a clear conflict of interest,” Heitkamp said. He suggests that The Forum should include a disclosure statement about the Case-Berg relationship on its editorial page.

That wouldn’t be necessary unless Ellen Case was in a higher profile position with Berg, said McBride, the ethics professor. “Some disclosures are merely confusing,” she said. “You want to be able to tell people information that will help them judge your credibility.”

Jack Zaleski, The Forum editorial page editor, deflected the question of whether the paper has been compromised or influenced but did not deny it. “I do not wish to comment in any way about what might or might not have been on talk radio,” he said. 

An HPR analysis of The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead archive found that, over the past year, editorials that represent the opinions of management overwhelmingly favored Berg, but there was no detectable overt bias in news coverage and a fair balance of letters to the editor.

The North Dakota Democratic-NPL party chairman, Mark Schneider, has a long history with The Forum - he delivered the newspaper on the day Kennedy was assassinated. “It’s a Republican rag and it always has been,” he said, noting that there are a lot of good things about the paper and he understands the economic pressures print journalism endures.

The Forum newspaper’s bias is often subtle, but undeniable, such as regularity of coverage of Republicans versus Democrats and the placement of stories, Schneider explained. Though he has no first hand knowledge of their validity, Heitkamp’s allegations are “not one bit” surprising, Schneider said. “Doesn’t (The Forum’s) silence speak volumes?”

According to McBride, there’s nothing the public can do to hold media accountable besides ending subscriptions, and that’s not usually a realistic option. Without the local daily, “How are you going to function and be a part of civic conversation,” she asked.

From this point on, Heitkamp said, he hopes Forum Communication readers scrutinize what they read to a higher degree, especially coverage of Berg. “Even if nothing else comes of this, I’ve done my job ...”

“I mean I know I’m a talk show host. But I’m also somebody who, if I chose to tomorrow, could be one of the top running politicians in the state in terms of endorsements and in terms of opportunity and be one of the 100 people in this nation to serve in the United States Senate,” he said. “Why would I risk all of that if I didn’t have an absolutely great source telling me that, ‘Look. I’m sick of this. This has to end. This is what Lloyd Case is doing to me.’”

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[Editor’s Note: In the interest of full disclosure, HPR notes that Bryce Haugen was a Forum intern in 2006.]

KFGO video:  Another Mile: Conflict Of Interest- Forum Communications

Joel Heitkamp during “News & Views”. LISTEN NOW
http://kfgo.com/uploads/06232011HPR_FORUM.mp3