Fair ?Weatherly? reporting

Fair ‘Weatherly’ reporting

We couldn’t help wondering why the only individual who received a check from David Howell who hadn’t been named in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as of Nov. 12 was Dan Greenberg, a newly elected justice of the peace in Pulaski County and son of D-G Editorial Page Editor Paul Greenberg.

Dan Greenberg, as Arkansas Business reported on Oct. 28, cashed a $5,000 check from Howell during the first week of October. It was among 25 checks totaling $2.15 million that Bank of America honored that week even though Howell didn’t really have enough money in his checking account to cover the drafts.

The D-G listed most of the checks included in the bank’s lawsuit against Howell’s estate on Nov. 19, but the check to Greenberg wasn’t included.

Contacted that day, D-G Business Editor Jack Weatherly insisted that the daily had reported Greenberg’s name “several times.” But we weren’t able to find it until the next day, when the D-G included it in a “Getting It Straight” correction in the business section.

We still don’t know the reason Greenberg escaped coverage for so long, but Executive Editor Griffin Smith did tell us what the reason wasn’t in a written response:

“The Democrat-Gazette’s news policy is straightforward: we print what we consider newsworthy. Dan Greenberg’s absence from the Howell stories was not the result of any favoritism toward Dan — or toward his father, our esteemed Editorial Page Editor,” Smith wrote.