20 February 2008

media general/kalb/mike magnoli fluff piece on chuck wagner/heath crawford rapides parish sheriff email scandal

the above clip aired tonight on kalb-tv on the 6:00 pm news. the complete thirteen minute nine second interview is found on kalb.com at this link.

first off this is nothing but a fluff piece designed to make the sheriff look good while totally ignoring or intentionally misdirecting the public's attention away from more important questions like on what date exactly was heath crawford employed by media general/kalb. was it before the run-off election of 17 november 2007? the only mention to that is briefly in mr. magnoli's write-up for the interview:

Sheriff Wagner says Heath Crawford (who was briefly employed in KALB's Marketing Dept) was not authorized to contact the news media with any statements for RPSO.
notice kalb puts that part within parenthesis as if its hardly worth mentioning, despite, the fact that sheriff wagner admits that mr. crawford worked on his campaign.

kalb and mr. magnoli have no excuses... especially when they spent hours on this blog today:

and yesterday:


notice that brenda kaiser even saved at least one of our posts to her computer's hard drive:

close-up
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the town talk too

why wont kalb go ahead and fess up and tell us the dates of mr. crawfords employment -- the sheriff went ahead and owned up to mr. crawfords working for his campaign even if he tried to minimize it. so kalb needs to come clean - especially after all the hullabaloo kalb caused during the sheriff race.

mr. magnoli asked sheriff wagner who is the current public relations officer for the sheriff's office and sheriff wagner replied that its herman walters. now thats odd especially when you recall the interview then sheriff hilton gave around 05 november 2007 to mr. magnoli's boss, kalb news director michele godard. in that interview sheriff hilton insinuated that mr. walters had mental problems and did go so far as to state that mr. walters is "paranoid" and that mr. walters "was imagining [things] that was happening -- that wasnt happening..." now we learn that mr. walters is the public relations officer? that doesnt make any sense and tends to strongly suggest that sheriff wagner does play the political payback game...which leads us back again to whats the real story with mr. crawford?

later on in mr. magnoli's interview sheriff wagner says that he wants to do something about the drug problem knowing full well no police force anywhere is gonna do a damn thing about drugs. for one thing the federal government isnt gonna let them stop the availability of drugs.

sadly, but not unexpectantly, nowhere in the interview, does sheriff wagner make any mention whatsoever about investigating any of the political, governmental and white-collar criminals or crime arising out of rapides parish, louisiana. thats because the sheriff's office just like the rapides parish district attorney's have always cast a blind eye towards the blueblood criminals -- although, if they did do something about political, governmental and white-collar crime that would probably take care of about ninty percent of the "drug problem."

this interview of mr. magnoli's was nothing but an attempt at a whitewash on kalb's part generally and bullshit specifically.
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see also central la politics blog
sheriff wagner's 'crawford-gate'

in which that blog points out that kalb and mr. magnoli didnt even bother to get mr. crawford's side of the story for this piece.

snip:
Something else is also clear. KALB Television's credibility has sunk to new lows, if that is possible [...] (KALB) does its fluff piece interview with Wagner, without even checking with Crawford for his side of the story and documentary evidence, like Abby (sic) Brown of the Town Talk did.
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related posts
  • latest gannett/town talk/wagner/kalb/crawford story leaves more questions than answers
  • cynthia jardon: kalb 'beyond the pale'
  • did the central la media and sheriff wagner just get punk'd?
  • did media general/kalb fail to disclose a conflict of interest in the 2007 rapides parish sheriff race?
  • crystal meth is rapides champaign powder
  • ====