Where is the Bryan Boulevard vehicle/pedestrian accident report?

UPDATE: As of 6:30 P.M., the report has still not been provided.

UPDATE II: An hour after this post, the city fabricated a record to provide instead of the accident report. See it and a real accident report here.

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Greensboro Police reported via press release a vehicle/pedestrian accident occurring on June 8th on Bryan Boulevard. According to the press release, the pedestrian was taken to the hospital where he died from his injuries. From the press release:

"On June 8, 2014, at 3:45 p.m., Officers responded to the Joseph M Bryan Boulevard and Brassfield Road in reference to a traffic accident. A collision occurred between an Acura sports utility vehicle and a pedestrian." 

Usually, accident reports are posted online within hours and, indeed, there are several reports from other accidents just before and after the Bryan Boulevard collision posted online. There is, however, no accident report online for this collision, as you can see:

I formally requested the accident report from the City of Greensboro Monday night (which they acknowledged Tuesday morning), but I still have not received it.

Authorities will often withhold the identities of the deceased pending notification of the next of kin but the city has not said that is what is happening here nor, if that is the case, is it a reason for withholding the entire accident report.

Just the worst. News & Record's ethical lapse

GREENSBORO, NC -- I know newspapers are stressed. I know that, for years now, they've been trying to do more with less — or even less with less, without folding. And sure, entrenched old fogies paralyzed by shock and lacking new ideas but unwilling to relinquish the reins carry plenty of the blame for being slow to innovate. Nonetheless, a certain level of quality requires nothing more than conscientious attention to some basic standards and it is something a news enterprise can do immediately with no cost.

As Jay Rosen argues, the days when it was enough to just give both sides of a story — without providing any additional viewpoints or fact-checking — are over. He said/she said journalism is both an ethical lapse and a failure to understand how the media business itself has changed. -- Matthew Ingram 

I first started paying attention to local media about the same time I started seriously paying attention to local public policy. It was around 2000, when Greensboro went all out, successfully, to recruit what was then supposed to be the mid-Atlantic overnight cargo sorting hub for FedEx. I won't re-litigate the arguments for and against here. Suffice it to say that there were people with concerns that this city, desperately watching the last vestiges of its once solid furniture and apparel manufacturing evaporate, was investing all hope in lofty promises of great benefit while avoiding any serious consideration of costs. Fourteen years later, the worst fears have not materialized—attributable to the fact that the hub's promised activity has not materialized, never getting close to the projected 126 flights per night.

Terribly frustrating during the period of public debate was that the local media, the News & Record in particular, clearly took the pro-hub side and subtly but effectively marginalized the opposition. That's when I first noticed the insidious he said/she said "reporting" tactic in action. It's simple. Lazy, misleading and simple. Instead of reporting empirical facts as facts, report them as the assertions of someone. Then report someone else "arguing" against them. There is no need for fact checking, when both "sides" have been reported. Where do the facts lie? Who knows?

This is, unfortunately, exactly what Taft Wireback brings us with his Sunday front-pager "How dangerous is coal ash? Well, that depends," inspired by the recent Duke Power coal ash spill into the Dan River.

Wireback begins by posing the question:

Is this power-plant byproduct the “toxic sludge” so threatening to the state’s ground water, streams and lakes?

Wireback never gives his readers a real answer. He could have reported the results of water quality studies conducted after the Dan River spill for some actual empirical measurements of toxicity but, instead, he is content to let two parties duke it out, each with his assertions and giving the largest megaphone to "coal ash expert" John Daniels, a UNC-Charlotte professor who has consulted with Duke Power and who is working on making useful materials from coal ash. It is the perfect bad example of the ethical lapse of he said/she said journalism. Thus, Wireback "reports" such demonstrably false and grossly misleading nuggets as this.

The 1 percent of coal ash with a potential to harm involves such metals as arsenic that humans ingest routinely in small doses every day, Daniels said.

“You could have drank a liter of Dan River water on the day after the spill and close to the spill, and you would have consumed less arsenic than you usually ingest from other natural sources” daily, he said.

Reporting unchecked assertions was never good journalism, even back in the days of the FedEx hub debate. Its deficiencies are even more obvious now in an age where people have empirical sources at their fingertips. The News & Record should ask itself just what benefit this kind of he said/she said reporting, free from fact checking, brings to its audience. The answer is none and continuing it puts an unnecessary obstacle in the path of an already challenging future for the News & Record. It should stop, once and for all.

Allen Johnson's opinion completely wrong on the facts

GREENSBORO, NC -- What value is an opinion formed on an incorrect understanding of the facts? Not much. So it is with the News & Record's Allen Johnson. In an opinion absolving city council woman Nancy Hoffman of zoning violations, he gets his facts completely wrong.

Johnson: "If she didn’t own the buildings at the time of the citation, as it turns out, she shouldn't be held liable for their condition at that point."

Fact: Hoffman, with her partners as South End Partners, LLC, bought the buildings on October 23, 2013. They have sat in disrepair for nearly eight month, as Hoffman even admits, explaining the delay in making repairs by saying, "these things don't happen overnight." The citation was issued on June 6, 2014. 

Johnson: "She is the owner now, and she has made prompt repairs. Case closed."

Fact: As noted, Hoffman has owned the buildings since October of last year. The code violations were documented in pictures on May 30, 2014 and June 3, 2014, and in the citation of June 6, 2014. If she has made repairs since, and that has not been reported or documented anywhere that I can find, eight months to make such repairs is anything but "prompt."

Johnson is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. In this case, his facts are unquestionably wrong.

For local elected officials (and the News & Record)

GREENSBORO, NC -- To our local elected officials who insist on planting their online presence exclusively on Facebook (usually with a mandatory log in, no less): I'm sure the ability to be able to "block" people who ask inconvenient questions has its appeal, but you should think about what the guy in this video has to say and the implications of requiring your constituents to use Facebook as the online conduit to you.

What are you asking us to acquiesce to to be able to connect with you? This applies too to the News & Record too, who not only requires a FB log in to post comments, but requires that users accept the FB tracking cookie just to be able to even see comments.

Special entitlement

GREENSBORO, NC -- Joe Killian of the News & Record writes of city council woman Nancy Hoffman's downtown properties being cited for code violations. Specifically for violations of the downtown "good repair" ordinance, an ordinance approved with the intention of keeping downtown properties from becoming eyesores.

"City Councilwoman Nancy Hoffmann’s company, South End Properties LLC, was cited by the city on Wednesday for violating the Good Repair ordinance — a regulation she helped craft and pass." [emphasis added]

[snip]

"The citation said Hoffmann’s company received a warning about violations such as broken windows and boarded-up areas last July." [note: According to county records, Hoffman's company purchased both buildings in October of last year.]

[snip]

"Hoffmann said she bought the buildings last year and has been working toward a renovation of them using historic tax credits."

Hoffman also was quoted as saying:  "These things don’t happen overnight."

Here's the problem, Hoffman not only voted for the ordinance she is violating, she helped craft a more-stringent version (that did not pass) and was unmoved by concerns expressed at the time by fellow council person T. Dianne Bellamy-Small about "expediting improvements versus compassionate treatment of property owners."

Now Hoffman is pleading that these kinds of repairs take time and for some compassionate understanding. She may have a good point. However, if Hoffman is finding the ordinance under which her properties were cited is too demanding, she should go back to council and, with her experience as a guide, suggest loosening the requirements of the ordinance. What she cannot do is remain in support of the ordinance while she makes excuses for why she is not complying with it. That kind of self-serving double standard is not desirable in elected officials.

News & Record dances the ol' Melvin Okie Doke

GREENSBORO, NC -- Ever willing to withhold important details to avoid offending tender community sensibilities and comfy myths, the News & Record's Jeff Mills wrote this about a statue of former mayor and Bryan Foundation head Jim Melvin at the Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball stadium:
The statue was placed in the ballpark, which is hosting its 10th season of Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball. The park was built for $22.6 million of private money, an effort led by Melvin and the Bryan Foundation.
Greensboro Baseball LLC bought the ballpark back from the Bryan Foundation last year.

Allow me to offer a rewrite that includes all of the relevant facts and see if they don't give you some insight into the News & Record's standards and allegiances:
The statue was placed in the ballpark, which is hosting its 10th season of Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball. The park was built for $22.6 million, including $12 million from the Bryan Foundation that Melvin heads.
Greensboro Baseball LLC bought the ballpark from the Bryan Foundation last year. The group owns the team for which the ballpark was built. Melvin has been identified as a member of the ownership group. The group paid  $10 million dollars less for the stadium than it cost to build.

The Bryan Foundation, that Jim Melvin leads, subsidized the purchase of a stadium for the baseball team of which Melvin is part owner: to the tune of just over $10 million. The News & Record dances right up to those facts then, like little boy afraid of being impertinent, averts its gaze.

This is ground control, do you read me?

GREENSBORO, NC -- Dr. Joe Guarino writes a post in response to mine last week about the false comparisons of the Veteran's Administration to Obamacare; or should I say, he pastes another writer's thoughts. His title: Why the VA Scandal is Extremely Relevant to Obamacare.

It's flawed right from the get-go. Rather than tackle the facts on their face, rather than make an argument from reality, Guarino's writer requires a heavy dose of paranoia first:

"Americans need to take a close look at the VA—and not only because of their concern about poor treatment of our wounded warriors. It is the prototype for Obamacare. The intent behind Obamacare is to completely centralize control over health care, and thus turn American health care into one huge Veterans’ Administration." [emphasis added]

Actually, the prototype for Obamacare was Republican Mitt Romney's health care plan from Massachusetts, itself a product, in part, of the conservative Heritage Foundation. But while the Heritage Foundation praised the individual mandate and subsidies of RomneyCare, when the same policies are implemented under Obama, well, then it's all just part of the real intent for the guvmint to own all health care facilities and have all health care providers on its payroll. Got that? Good, then you are all set to swallow Guarino's "extremely relevant" comparison of the VA to Obamacare.

On the other hand, here's what a comparison of the two looks like when tethered to the facts as they exist and not from orbit in the paranoiasphere. From Sam Baker at the National Journal:

"If you want to argue that the VA's problems are a sign of what happens under true government control of a health care system, well, there's an argument to be made there. Some of the problems at the VA—namely, long waits to see certain doctors—are similar to the biggest complaints about other socialized or quasi-socialized health care systems, including the UK's.

"And the VA is about as socialized as it gets: The federal government owns the hospitals, employs the doctors who work in those hospitals, and finances the coverage that veterans use to get care.

"Obamacare, though, is not socialized medicine. It's not a government takeover of the health care system. Sure, people call it that, and in comparison with charges like "death panels," those characterizations don't sound so off-the-reservation. But they're still wrong.

"Most people accessing the health care system through Obamacare will do so by purchasing private insurance through the law's exchanges. The federal government regulates those insurance policies and requires them to cover certain services. The vast majority of exchange customers also receive subsidies, funded by the government in the form of tax credits, to help pay for their premiums. So it's not like the government isn't involved at all.

"But, unlike with the VA, no one on the exchanges is buying insurance from the government; it's all private coverage. The government doesn't decide how much that coverage costs. It doesn't employ doctors, or decide how much they'll get paid, or require them to accept any of the insurance plans sold through the exchanges. "Obamacare" is not a health care system. The VA is."

It's opposite day for News & Record headline writer

Greensboro, NC -- The headline from a News & Record article:

N.C. plan would join states ending teacher tenure

From the article:

"Only Florida has succeeded in eliminating teacher tenure protections, according to the Education Commission of the States."

"Join states" sounds like we are part of a crowd, a trend — a movement. A more accurate headline would have reflected just what the article reported, that North Carolina's "plan" would make us exceptionally unappealing for teachers.

Dr. Wolicki's deep thoughts

GREENSBORO, NC -- Greensboro physician Karol Wolicki (an ear, nose and throat man) writes a letter to the News & Record today. Here it is in its entirety:

"The parallels are obvious. Any discussion of the comparison is thus far conspicuously absent. If you like the way the government administers health care to our veterans, you'll love Obamacare!"

Maybe the exclamation point is meant to head off any further consideration of his opinion, but I don't find his parallels "obvious" at all.

The VA is a cabinet level veterans benefit system, Obamacare is a series of laws passed by congress that mandate private insurance coverage for use among private health care providers and which helps pay for that private insurance with sliding scale subsidies.

Obvious? I think what's obvious is that Dr. Wolicki, who himself received over $30,000 in public payments last year through government administered Medicare, has something against Obamacare he is unable to articulate cogently.

Journalism

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

— George Orwell 

Keep it stupid, simple: John Hammer misguided on city's public records policies

GREENSBORO, NC -- Rhino Times editor John Hammer drones on with a negative opinion of the city's efforts to improve transparency and its handling of public records requests. In his view, the city is over-complicating things and nefariously working to shield itself from the demands of state public records law. "It's a trick," he writes in his uninformed paranoia.

In his view, access to public information is all very simple: Whoever has public records should provide them when asked. Sure, in some ideal pre-computerized era where paper records resided in binders and file cabinets, that might have worked fine, but in a world where records reside mostly electronically across a multitude of physical and virtual repositories, that's not a comprehensive policy.

Hammer might have gained some insight into the challenges and opportunities of modern technology and pubic records had he gone to the City's meeting today about improving public records access as did Ben Holder, Amanda Lehmert of the News & Record, Jordan Green of Triad City Beat, City Council members Mayor Nancy Vaughan, Marikay Abuzuaiter, Jamal Fox and Mike Barber, the City Manager, the City Attorney, the City's pubic relations director, the City's public records administrator and I.

Had Hammer attended, he might have learned how thinking bigger than his quaint notions has already resulted in greater access to public information and how the city is planing to make an even more responsive and transparent city government. (Not to mention being disabused of his mistaken notion that the City intends to start charging for copies of public records.)

Here are some things the city has implemented or is planning:

Staff education: It's fine for Hammer to say that staff should just "follow the law;" that does no good if staff doesn't know what the law is or what their obligations are. The city intends to implement formal procedures for educating city staff about public records law and the city's policies.

Providing reasons when records are denied: State law allows people who have had records requests denied to ask for the reason for the denial and the city is obligated to give a response. Under the City's updated policies, a reason would be given as a matter of course if records are denied, without the requester having to ask. This is one of those rare examples of the city raising its standards above the minimum the law demands.

Online request tracking and repository: The city has already undertaken laudable efforts to put more information online. The recent document dump of records related to the finances of the city-sponsored International Civil Rights Center and Museum and the now-searchable online access to City Council and committee agenda documents, video and minutes are two good examples. The city also plans to roll out this summer online access to the system that tracks records requests so that people can see just how well (or not) the city is responding to requests for public records.

This kind of proactive and modern transparency is a world away from Hammer's simplistic view of how people are to access public records.

Appeals process: Under state law, the only recourse one has if he feels records have been improperly withheld is to go to court (or whine and make a big stink). Hammer brags of having gone to court over public records. I have too. Hammer is right that it's not the ideal remedy. The city is considering coming up with some sort of dispute resolution process so that people, like Hammer, when denied public records have another course of action more accessible than the courts. It's the kind of proactive policy Hammer should cheer.

Better access to records of elected officials: Today's meeting covered several other aspects of public records that could greatly improve transparency including the possibility of having council members forward emails about city business from their private accounts to a city account where they could be better archived and searched; and considering how texts and emails sent and received during public meetings by elected officials and city staff can be made part of the record of the meeting.

While it's true that many (but not all) of these things are plans and promises, there is a very different posture towards transparency at city hall nowadays. Gone is the hostility towards transparency that flourished under former Mayor Robbie Perkins and the former city attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan. John Hammer would help this city out if he recognized the opportunities this new council and new city administration offer and proded them forward. It may not be like this forever and putting some policies and procedures in place now, in a friendly environment, would make it just a little harder for some future enemy of transparency to clamp down on public access. Hammer could help things along, if he thought about it a little more than he has so far.

Judge: eye contact with police equals reasonable suspicion

From the News & Record, in an article describing an appeals court decision throwing out a weapons possession conviction for a man who was stopped by Greensboro police for walking away as officers approached:

"In his dissenting opinion, Judge Chris Dillon said that if someone walks away from police after making eye contact with that officer, there is justification for an officer to stop the person."

Adobe woes and your profit had you followed my short advice

GREENSBORO, NC -- On March 6th, I wrote a post saying that I was wary of the business prospect for Adobe, the maker of the very excellent website design software Dreamweaver. The title of the post was I'd short the heck out of Adobe, a reference to the stock trading method of placing a bet that the stock price will decline in the future. The day I wrote that post, Adobe's stock closed at $68.92. Yesterday it closed at $60.20. If you had followed my short advice, you would be sitting on a gain of 12.7%.

My opinion then was that Adobe was making a mistake by no longer allowing customers to buy and install Dreamweaver (and other flagship products, like Photoshop) on their computers. Instead, they moved those products exclusively to a cloud based subscription service. I thought that was a dubious move—a roll of the dice that did not justify the then 121 price to earnings ratio (P/E).

[P/E: The price of a share of stock divided by the annual earnings per share. At 121, it would take 121 years of earnings to total the current share price. The S&P historical average is currently 16]

Even with the stock's decline, Adobe's current P/E ratio of 117 is still way too high, for the same reasons I posited previously: I doubt the ability of the cloud-only software model to sustain Adobe's revenues, much less grow them.

Indeed, Adobe's entire cloud service went down yesterday. Customers who no longer have Adobe's software installed on their computers, who had moved to the subscription service, were left in the lurch. I cannot imagine how businesses are supposed to put any confidence in mission critical infrastructure vulnerable to these kinds of sustained outages. From Reuters:

Adobe Systems Inc said on Friday that access to its Creative Cloud was restored following an outage that disrupted the Web-based, subscription service to top-selling software programs including Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash for about a day.

Customers can apply to get compensation for the outage, which company spokeswoman Vanessa Rios said lasted about 24 hours and was due to a database software failure.

Not dead yet

GREENSBORO, NC -- Just as I was observing that the News & Record seems to have become incurably infected with a preference for the laziest substitutions for journalism, along comes reporter Joe Killian with an exceptional glimmer of hope. In covering the defamation suit by Conservatives for Guilford County against a local blogger, Killian takes a story tailor made for the he said/she said trap, gives each side its due but firmly stakes the story down to the pertinent and independently researched empirical facts. Journalism, not stenography.

Update:: There was an error in the link to the Killian article. It has been corrected.

Police unable to identify studies cited in their press release

GREENSBORO, NC -- In a May 6th press release announcing a new round of intensified traffic enforcement, this time on High Point Road, the Greensboro Police Department claimed this:

"Nationwide studies show that intensified traffic enforcement in hot spots serves the dual role of increasing roadway safety while serving as deterrence to potential criminals."

Upon request, Greensboro police were unable to provide or cite such studies. Instead, they provided a variety of documents explaining the methods used for this type of policing, one of which included a reference to a 1996 study of these techniques in Dayton, Ohio, but they were unable to provide or cite a nationwide study, much less the multiple studies they said existed, that demonstrate the effectiveness of these techniques.

Is it the role of police public relations to propagandize the public they serve with made up information or to be accurate and honest?

The News & Record's failure to understand the market

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record "reports" on the lawsuit filed by Conservatives for Guilford County against a local blogger with this very lame link-free, one-sided "she-said" article. Which makes this piece by Mathew Ingram at Gigaom very timely. From the summary:

As Jay Rosen argues, the days when it was enough to just give both sides of a story — without providing any additional viewpoints or fact-checking — are over. He said/she said journalism is both an ethical lapse and a failure to understand how the media business itself has changed. 

Of course, I could have it all wrong. Maybe the News & Record deserves more credit and has simply decided that their audience is not people who want to know the truth. Maybe they've decided their business opportunities lie with telling people what they want to hear.

Cheese eating results in bedsheet entanglement deaths

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Greensboro Police Department (GPD) and the regurgitating News & Record, have been saying that police data shows the GPD's program of intensified traffic patrols made streets safer and reduced crime in the areas of their deployment despite the fact that police data shows a mixed bag of increases in some accidents and crime during such efforts.

Still, that hasn't stopped News & Record police stenographer Joe Gamm from drawing an unjustified straight line of causation: "That campaign resulted in a 16.9 percent drop in crime," he writes of last year's campaign on Wendover Avenue.

Gamm and the GPD should take a look at Spurious Correlations, a website that crunches various datasets to illustrate the reasoning mistake of, well, spurious correlations (although the GPD and News & Record take it beyond correlation and actually proclaim a cause and effect). Did you "know," for example, there is a "correlation" between per capita cheese consumption and the number of deaths caused by people becoming entangled in their bed sheets?

If the News & Record were to receive a press release with the claim, it would report: Cheese eating results in increased entanglement deaths. 

Here is more about the site from Popular Science:

"Data suggest: marriages in Alabama are causing deaths by electrocution, divorces in South Carolina are causing bees to produce more honey, and Nicolas Cage movies are saving thousands of lives each year. 

"Tyler Vigen created a program, appropriately titled Spurious Correlations, that finds correlations between random data sets and produces a chart every minute. Thus, the .95 correlation between mozzarella cheese consumption and civil engineering doctorates is finally uncovered. The sets appear to use easily available information, including loads of statistics about deaths, which lends the correlations a hilariously dark humor.

"Funny? Yeah. Clearly it's a sendup of the sometimes dubious findings of certain studies. But, hey, good time for a reminder: we know "correlation is not causation" but don't immediately dismiss every correlation as irrelevant. Otherwise how will we recognize and stop the swimming-pool-related deaths caused by The Wicker Man?"

Average Crime Stoppers reward: $26

GREENSBORO, NC -- You've probably seen the Crime Stoppers promise of cash rewards for crime tips: "You could be eligible for a cash reward of up to $2,000."

According to figures made public by the City of Greensboro, in 2013, the Guilford/Greensboro Crime Stoppers received 890 tips that resulted in 1,365 criminal charges and the clearing of 284 criminal cases. It paid $23,125 in cash rewards.

That's an average of $25.98 per tip or $81.43 per cleared criminal case.

Look up

Matheny's fill-in-the-blank endorsement

GREENSBORO, NC -- I received a campaign mailer from 6th district congressional candidate Zack Matheny yesterday. It included this endorsement attributed to Greg Walden, Chairman of the National Republican Committee:

"Zack's conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama's irresponsible agenda. North Carolina's hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on their backs. I am certain that Zack Matheny will be a strong contender this election cycle."

Impressive.

But wait...

Here's what Walden had to say about congressional candidate Ryan Costello from Pennsylvania:

"Ryan’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. Pennsylvania's hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on their backs. I am certain that Ryan Costello will be a strong contender this election cycle."

About congressional candidate Andrew Walter from Arizona:

"Andrew’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. Arizona’s hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on the backs of their families. I am certain that Andrew Walter will be a strong contender this election cycle."

About congressional candidate Lee Zeldin from New York:

"Lee’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. New York’s hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on the backs of their families. I am certain that Lee Zeldin will be a strong contender this election cycle."

About congressional candidate Matthew A. Doheny from New York:

"Matt’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. New York’s hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on their backs. I am certain that Matt Doheny will be a strong contender this election cycle."

About congressional candidate Jeff Gorell from California:

"Jeff’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. California’s hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on their backs. I am certain that Jeff Gorell will be a strong contender this election cycle."

About congressional candidate Ryan Zinke from Montana:

"Ryan’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. Montana’s hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on their backs. I am certain that Ryan Zinke will be a strong contender this election cycle."

And on and on...