Skip to main contentNow you see an incendiary story about former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt. Now you don't.
Since television stations began posting their stories to their websites a couple of years ago, viewers now can catch stories that once disappeared into thin air. But last week, KATU-2 yanked a story from the Internet, just a day after it aired.
The story, which ran during the 5:30 pm newscast on Sept. 21, was reported by Eric Mason, one of the more experienced broadcast reporters in town. It featured an interview with former state Sen. Jim Hill.
In early 1990, Hill was part of a Senate committee that considered investigating the December 1989 murder of state corrections director Michael Francke. That committee did nothing, however, a fact that still rankles Hill. "I wanted to make sure that no stone was unturned when it came to the Francke killing," Hill told Mason, who has recently reported three stories questioning various aspects of the Francke murder. "But that didn't happen."
In last week's story, Hill, speaking on camera, told Mason that around the time senators were looking into the murder, he received three separate phone calls, two in his office and one at home, saying that "there were some pictures of Goldschmidt engaged in sexual activity with young girls." At the time, Goldschmidt was finishing his term as governor.
Hill went on to say, "At the time I really didn't give credence to it at all because I just didn't see what it had to do with prisons or Michael Francke's death--and frankly, you just wouldn't believe it with the governor."
Mason's story ran and was duly posted to the KATU website. The next morning, emails with a link to Hill's bombshell ricocheted around the state. But by midday, people who clicked on the link found no story.
Mason declined to comment about the sudden disappearance of the Hill interview, referring inquiries to news director Mike Rausch, who told WW that the decision to pull the story was his alone and that he had not been contacted by Goldschmidt or his representatives.
"In reviewing the story, we couldn't verify the substance of what [Hill] said, so we're backing away from the story at this point," Rausch says.
Reached in Florida, where he was traveling on business, Hill expressed surprise that KATU yanked the story.
Hill, who served as state treasurer from 1992 to 2000, says he stands by his on-air comments. "I don't know who the calls were from, but they were definitely not from the same person," he says. "The reason I didn't say anything earlier is that until Goldschmidt admitted he was a pedophile, there was nothing to talk about."
Former state Sen. Tricia Smith, a close friend of Hill's, doesn't recall him mentioning those calls but says he made no secret of his frustration with the Senate probe and the seeming reluctance of the then-governor to give it needed backing.
"He talked about how he always felt that Neil was an impediment to the investigation," says Smith, now a lobbyist for the Oregon School Employees Association.
Hill's spontaneous offer of new information is not the first unusual twist following Goldschmidt's acknowledgment in May that he sexually abused a 14-year-old girl in the 1970s while Portland's mayor.
In June, Gov. Ted Kulongoski attempted to deflect questions about whether he knew about the sexual abuse by offering up, unbidden, the rumor that Goldschmidt had an illegitimate child.
Bob Steele, a journalism ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, is unfamiliar with the specifics of KATU's reporting but says that in general, news organizations owe the public transparency. "When a news organization reports a story and then in essence removes the story from the public record without notice, that can cause confusion," Steele says. "They should leave a trail so that somebody who had seen the original story would understand why there is no permanent record."
"The reason I didn't say anything earlier is that until Goldschmidt admitted he was a pedophile, there was nothing to talk about."
--Jim Hill
WWeek 2015