NEW YORK: Editor Joe Cannon of the Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City defended his decision to attend a conservative policy conference this past weekend that barred media coverage, saying the event was a good place to touch base with sources and local leaders.
"Would I do it again? I would do it again," said Cannon, who was criticized by the rival Salt Lake Tribune for the appearance. "I would do it again for the same reasons. There are a bunch of interesting people in town and there was no restriction on my talking to people. Would I have liked to get reporters in there? Yes, but I didn't make the rules."
In comments to E&P late Monday night, Cannon accused the Tribune of unfairly linking his political past with his attendance as an editor. "There is no question that I have been a conservative, I can't change that fact. But they are living in the past, I am not living in the past."
Cannon's comments followed the weekend Council for National Policy conference in Salt Lake City that included the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney and Gov. Mitt Romney. The conference came under fire late last week for barring media outlets from covering its events, which included speeches by Romney and Cheney, as well as a presentation by Cannon.
The Salt Lake Tribune in its coverage questioned Cannon's decision to attend the event, declaring in one story, "Though Cannon is a former lobbyist and brother of Congressman Chris Cannon, his attendance in his new role as a journalist at the meeting closed to news media sends up red flags, ethicists say. That Cannon promised council leaders he would not write about what was discussed should alarm his readers because he is shifting his loyalty from them to powerful government insiders, says Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute, a nonpartisan journalism think tank."
Cannon told the Tribune that he would "be explaining to the group how newspapers operate and describing the local media scene. 'These people don't know a lot about how newspapers work.'" The Tribune then pointed out that "Cannon has been at his new career for only a few months. When he was named editor of the Morning News in December he had no previous journalism experience outside his 11 years on the LDS Church-owned newspaper's board."
He told E&P that the Tribune reporter who wrote the story, Glen Warchol, "had an interest in painting me out of my history. Their story painted me a little more partisan than I am. But if you speak to people here, I do not put my thumb on the scales for a story."
Warchol, a former Morning News reporter with eight years at the Tribune, disagreed. He said Cannon's political past required a closer scrutiny of this issue. "I was not trying to paint him as anything, but I was exploring the issue," Warchol said. "I'm not sure with his lack of journalistic training, if he sees the issue."
Tribune Editor Nancy Conway has not responded to calls seeking comment.
Cannon, who became Morning News editor in December 2006, said he consulted with other editors at his paper and reviewed ethics guidelines from the Society of Professional Journalists and American Society of Newspaper Editors before agreeing to attend the conference.
"I didn’t see anything in there that would prohibit an editor from going to an event and giving some remarks," he said of the guidelines. "There are events like the Gridiron Club that reporters go to and it is expressly off the record. I talked to some people at my paper and asked what they thought and no one said this was something horrible."
Cannon cited his role as a columnist as well, saying he gathered items for a future column at the conference. "I am going to try and get interesting things for the paper," he said. "I was just looking for grist for a column."
He also said his paper has a positive relationship with the Tribune, a JOA partner, despite being competitors. "Our owners like each other a lot and we think we have a very constructive relationship," he said. "But, day to day, we are competitors."
Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P.
