Morning News Does the Ostrich Dance

The Morning News’ coverage of the apparent stock fraud violations of Springdale’s Golf Entertainment Inc. has been at best laughable and, at worst, a disservice to the Springdale publication’s readers.

Golf, a penny-stock broadcasting company, was issued a rare “cease and desist” trading order Sept. 10 by the Arkansas Securities Department. That came about after a series of investigative stories by the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal revealed misleading Securities and Exchange Commission filings by Golf and the appearance of a conspiracy to defraud shareholders.

Since the story broke, the Morning News has buried two follow-up articles about the company deep in its pages and acted as a forum for Golf executives to make unsubstantiated accusations about the Business Journal. Had the Morning News bothered to do any investigative reporting of its own, it would have found a mountain of public documents to back up the Business Journal’s findings.

We assume that the Morning News’ downplaying of apparent white-collar crime in its backyard is the result of getting beat and not sheer ineptitude.

The D-G misleadingly datelined one of its follow-ups from Georgia, but otherwise has done a far better job covering the story than its daily competitor.