Giving credit where credit is due

Historically, we’ve had unpleasant run-ins with both media companies that combined to form the Alaska Dispatch News.

The Anchorage Daily News even started something of a good-old-fashioned circulation war with us a few years back. That endeavor ended almost as quickly as it began, with the near-dismantling of that paper’s Mat-Su bureau and a return to more of an Anchorage-centric approach to their news package.

But even though we have been rivals, we feel compelled to stop for a second and applaud what ADN and Alaska Public Media are doing with regard to the Alaska National Guard investigation.

Whatever you think about the handling of allegations of sexual abuse and whether those allegations should be an issue in Tuesday’s gubernatorial election, the situation is extremely serious.

But we’re not writing to express an opinion on the “scandal” itself. This is about applauding what our fellow journalists are doing in court to hold our government accountable.

Journalists know this storyline pretty well. It happens with more frequency than we’d like to admit. You’re reporting on a government agency that is stonewalling you. You ask for documents and get denied. The stated reasons for the denial seem dubious. You point this out to the agency you’re dealing with, and they stick to their guns.

What do you do next? To whom do you appeal?

In the old days, the newspaper would head to court, seek out an unbiased arbiter, and try to be persuasive.

Sometimes, just the threat of taking the matter to court was enough to un-stick the seized-up machinery of government.

Lately, as journalism has contracted and newsrooms have shrunk, organizations have been less and less inclined to pick costly legal fights. It seems hard to fault them for it when the decision potentially comes down to paying for a lawyer or paying for a reporter. A reporter gets you a dozen stories a week. A legal fight only gets you the one.

What the Dispatch and Alaska Public Media have done here is to make clear that stonewalling isn’t going to stand. That’s good not only for journalism, but also for the public’s right to know.

While there is a mostly good-natured rivalry among news organizations, our big-city rivals have done a good thing here and we don’t mind giving credit where it’s due.

Kudos to Alaska Dispatch News and Alaska Public Media. By drawing this kind of principled line in the sand, you are fighting for all of us and, ultimately, strengthening our democracy.