INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Mike Pence couched his proposal for a state-run news service Tuesday, hoping to tamp down the ire and ridicule that have flared as word has spread about the public-relations ploy.
Questioned by reporters after an event in Terre Haute, Pence said internal documents regarding a taxpayer-funded news website were misunderstood. The Indianapolis Star obtained the documents before breaking the story about the pending news outlet Monday.
“It is being designed to be a resource for the public and the press, and not a news agency of any kind. I think there was a miscommunication or a misinterpretation,” he told reporters after a speech at Saint Mary-of-the Woods College.
But Pence’s explanation — that he was creating a press release clearinghouse at the cost of $100,000 to taxpayers — contradicted internal documents that were distributed to state agencies’ public information officers last week. Those documents, published in the Star and posted on its website, describe a government-run news service that will “break” news ahead of traditional media outlets and deliver stories written by state press secretaries. The documents describe a site helping short-staffed newspapers, to be overseen by an editorial board made up of a former reporter, the governor’s press staff and others.
Stories on the “Just IN” site will include exclusive news, personality profiles and other features, according to the documents.
Pence said he learned of the controversy by reading the Star story, which quickly went viral and prompted a flurry of furious and humorous comments on social media.
“What I read in the newspaper was there was a memorandum distributed to state agencies that had some language in it that suggested this was going to be more than a one-stop-shop website, and I regret that,” he said.
Pressed on this issue, he said, “I think there was a miscommunication or a misinterpretation.”
Pence traveled to Terre Haute on Tuesday to call attention to his decision to expand Medicaid to cover more low-income Hoosiers under the Affordable Care Act. He sought publicity because the state plan, dubbed Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0, remakes the traditional approach to Medicaid. The federal government just signed off on changes that will insure more than 350,000 Indiana residents.
Instead, Pence faced questions about the news site.
Word of the idea had prompted swift and biting comments from news outlets around the nation. Pundits likened it to Russia’s state-run news agency; a headline on the Atlantic Monthly website referred to the plan as “Pravda on the Plains: Indiana’s New Propaganda Machine.”
A parody Twitter account, @Just_IN_News, gained more than 1,400 followers in less than 24 hours. One tweet read: “To those asking for a comment, you’re too late. We already interviewed ourselves and wrote a story.”
In its coverage of the controversy, Media Matters for America quoted editors from Indiana who scoffed at the idea of publishing stories from a state-run site.
“You don’t pick up news stories from government agencies and use them as news stories that have been vetted and given the kind of scrutiny that you give to the information that we report,” said Jeff Taylor, editor and vice president of the Indianapolis Star. “There’s a big difference between press releases that can lead to legitimate stories where reporters can ask questions and look into information and sift between factual information and something that might have an agency behind it.”
Mike Wilson, news director at WIBC news radio in Indianapolis, also questioned Pence’s intent.
“It looks like they want to control breaking news,” he said.
Franklin College journalism professor John Krull, who oversees the student-run Statehouse File news service, said the idea is both bad policy and bad politics — especially for someone like Pence, who has voiced presidential aspirations.
But reporters may have overreacted, he said.
“These are seasoned journalists,” Krull said. “The idea that a politician might try to find his way around a reporter to communicate probably should not be breaking news in 2015.”
On Tuesday, Pence also defended his record as a supporter of the press, noting that as a congressman he backed a federal media shield law designed to help reporters protect confidential sources.
But he took heat from the Society of Professional Journalists, which issued a statement Tuesday, saying it supports freedom of the press as the Founding Fathers intended:
“One must wonder if a government-run publication, which is paid for by taxpayers, could ever be more than a marketing service for those who control the purse strings,” it said. “If history has any lesson, it’s that there is no Democracy without a free press. It’s the Society’s position that the press is not free when elected officials serve as editor and publisher.”