A m e r i c a n P o s t – G a z e t t e

Distributed by C O M M O N S E N S E , in Arizona

November 23, 2009

Another classic example of yellow journalism by Yvonne Wingett
Full of lies

As posted in Cactus Alliance:

http://cactusalliance.blogspot.com/2009/11/another-classic-example-of-yellow.html
wingnut

Yvonne Wingett, the Arizona Republic hack reporter assigned to cover Maricopa County government, developed a pattern of playing fast and loose with the facts. In the absence of any real news, she makes up her own. Her close relationship with the County Supervisors, colors her coverage of all county affairs. She turns a blind eye to the Supervisors’ illegal acts and gives their attempts to take over other county agencies a free pass. She is complicit in assisting the Supervisors smear other county agencies and is often seen cozying up to the County PIO, Richard de Uriarte. Take the article she wrote in Saturday’s Arizona Republic about an audit of the County Treasurer’s Office, entitled “Audit Cites Treasurer’s Office Slip-ups.” Did she even bother to read it first? (Read her reporting here)

The Supervisors ordered an audit of the County Treasurer’s Office for no reason other than to harass the office, which had not been acceding to its demands. Wingett ignores the overall positive report, and instead accuses the office of mishandling procurement and the hiring of contractors. She asserts that “the office failed to follow county procurement policies on tens of thousands of dollars of contracts.” This sounds terrible, but in reality, it involved two contracts for computer services. One of them was arranged by the County’s OET division, not the Treasurer’s Office. So the County Supervisors should have been dinged for failing to follow procurement policies, not the Treasurer’s Office.As for Wingett’s other accusation, she says the office did not properly formalize agreements before hiring two contract employees. She left out the fact that both the hiring and the payments took place during the prior administration. The exact quote from the report on the issue is,

“The payments to Help Desk Technology and Teri Johnson occurred before November 13, 2007 and were authorized by the previous Treasurer.” She also ignores the main audit finding. “For the period reviewed, we found that TIF expenditures were in compliance with ARS §11-495. In addition, we found that TIF revenues were collected and recorded in compliance with this statute.” Why would she do this? Simple, it’s more helpful to the Supervisors to smear their enemy, the current County Treasurer.

This kind of reporting demonstrates that Wingett cannot be trusted to be a fair and impartial reporter. She is the very model of the worst kind of reporter. Her biases come through, and it is reporting like hers that is the reason why people are increasingly deserting the Arizona Republic as a legitimate news source. She is a discredit to all real reporters and an embarrassment to the Arizona Republic, and that’s hard to do.