The Cincinnati Beacon - Peter Bronson Needs Discipline: A Cincinnati Beacon Call To Action!

Below you will find a letter I sent today. Cincinnati Beacon readers are encouraged to write similar letters to Enquirer columnist Peter Bronson—feel free to use mine in whole or in part—and to copy me ( ).

Today, you devoted your column to a defense of County Commissioner’s Phil Heimlich’s sell-off of the Drake Center to the Health Alliance. From your piece:

And credit goes to Hamilton County Commissioner Phil Heimlich. He fought a bitter and often personal battle to reform Drake. I went to the meetings. I heard patients and staffers make emotional, unfair accusations that he was cruel and indifferent to their health and safety. When Drake’s money train was threatened, the CEO of a local PR firm that had a $600,000 contract with Drake circulated personal attacks on Chris Finney, whom Heimlich appointed to the levy review committee.

This August, I exchanged a series of e-mails with you. Among other concerns, I asked about your August 10, 2006 column which promoted Heimlich’s push for a new jail and mentioned COAST, the anti-tax group co-founded by Chris Finney which worked tirelessly to defeat the Drake Levy. In my e-mails, I provided you with thorough documentation proving that Heimlich, Finney, and their wives own real estate companies called Three Centurions.

I repeatedly asked if you were aware of that relationship when you wrote your August 10 column. You repeatedly failed to answer my question.

In the past few weeks, the Enquirer has published a number of articles by Kimball Perry and Greg Korte which reported that Heimlich and Finney are business partners in these real estate companies. Although Perry’s and Korte’s articles failed to name the companies or to provide financial details, CityBeat’s Kevin Osborne recently reported the companies as Three Centurions LLC and Three Centurions Two LLC, with holdings valued at $1.7 million.

As I made you aware in August, public records indicate that Heimlich and Finney were partners in Three Centurions at the time Heimlich appointed Finney to the Drake Committee. Nevertheless in your column today defending Heimlich and Finney, you neglected to mention that they are longtime business partners, an obvious conflict of interest.

This raises obvious concerns that you are intentionally misleading readers, a multiple violation of Gannett’s Principal of Ethical Conduct for Newsrooms. Your conduct appears to have violated the following guidelines, perhaps others:

WE ARE COMMITTED TO:

Seeking and reporting the truth in a truthful way

* We will dedicate ourselves to reporting the news accurately, thoroughly and in context.
* We will be honest in the way we gather, report and present news.
* We will be persistent in the pursuit of the whole story.
* We will hold factual information in opinion columns and editorials to the same standards of accuracy as news stories.

Serving the public interest

* We will be vigilant watchdogs of government and institutions that affect the public.
* We will provide the news and information that people need to function as effective citizens.
* We will seek solutions as well as expose problems and wrongdoing.
* We will provide editorial and community leadership.
* We will seek to promote understanding of complex issues.

This is to request that the Enquirer publish an immediate clarification identifying that your column today failed to include that Heimlich and Finney were business partners in Three Centurions at the time Heimlich appointed Finney to the Drake Levy Review Committee.

I look forward to your prompt reply. This letter is available online at The Cincinnati Beacon.

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