By Emily LePain
Murphy News Service
Long after it hit the airwaves, KSTP’s story alleging Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges flashed a gang sign with a community organizer in North Minneapolis continues to reverberate.
The Minnesota chapter of the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists along with the Twin Cities chapters of the National Association of Black Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association recently held a panel discussion to discuss the story that became known as #pointergate on social media.
The panel included Duchesene Drew, Star Tribune’s managing editor for operations, Anthony Newby, the executive director for Neighborhoods Organizing For Change (NOC), and Jane Kirtley of the SIlha Center for the Study of Media Ethics.
SPJ also issued a statement after KSTP’s story aired, calling it “fundamentally flawed and based on a faulty premise.”
KSTP, meanwhile, continues to stand by the story and has refused to apologize despite pleas from the community.
“[Hodges was] clearly pointing, and it doesn’t take a genius or someone with a degree in anything to be able to tell that, unless you really believe that her intent is different or that she should somehow know,” Drew said to the journalists and members of the public assembled in University of Minnesota’s Cowles Auditorium. “On its face, it isn’t a valid story, and it isn’t the kind of story that speaks well of us as a profession, or as helpful when we’re beginning to talk about very real issues like gang violence.”
But to Drew, the issue wasn’t so much the initial story KSTP ran with, but the fact KSTP held to the story.
“When you realize you’ve made a mistake, you correct it,” Drew said. “We’re here not because they made a mistake, but because they kept holding to it.”
The person Mayor Hodges was pictured with was Navell Gordon, a community organizer working with NOC to persuade people in northern Minneapolis to vote during the November election cycle.
Anthony Newby said KSTP should have never ran the story.
“Navell isn’t a gang member, hasn’t been a gang member,” Newby said. “There’s no evidence of any gang activity … So this was not a story.”
KSTP declined to have a representative on the panel. Mayor Betsy Hodges also declined an invitation to participate the panel discussion.
The Up-Take live-streamed the panel. The complete recording can be found here.
Emily LePain is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.