For his part, Rappleye is unbowed about the recent scrap with Governor Carcieri. “I would ask the same question again,” he says. “I have no reason to apologize or to retract. I think the governor was trying to avoid answering the question. He tried to slough it off with the way he typically does, with his sort of jovial, ‘We all looked into that, she was a distant relative.’ ” The responses, he says, necessitated follow-up questions.
Rappleye says he was surprised by the sharp response from the governor’s office, with its accusations of a partisan attack. “I have gotten in the face of David Cicilline a lot worse than I did the governor,” the reporter says, referring to the Democratic mayor of Providence, and done other stories examining the link between state jobs and elected officials. As he notes, “There’s no doubt that patronage is a big part of the Rhode Island political system.”
While gubernatorial adviser John Robitaille faulted Rappleye’s use in his story of an interview with Bill Lynch, chairman of the state Democratic Party, an oppositional source was a natural avenue for comment. Rappleye says he turned to Lynch after being unable to get comment, prior to his deadline, from Operation Clean Government.
Meanwhile, with the governor’s time in office ticking down, Robitaille’s complaint served notice that the best defense can be a strong offense.
It’s a bit ironic, given how Carcieri — who came into office with superb communication skills — has struggled at times to extend consensus beyond his base. The meeting of executive and legislative minds on the state budget owes more to the severity of the situation than to anything else.
Robitaille acknowledges that Carcieri “prefers talk radio because he is allowed to give his message clearly and it’s unedited.” In other media, “he does believe, quite often, his message does not get reported in a totally unbiased way.”
It’s worth remembering, though, that the conflict with Rappleye prompted the governor’s office to seek a state Ethics Commission opinion on the hiring of his niece-in-law. On Monday, the commission opened the way to a complaint being filed on the matter — something that Lynch promptly, and not surprisingly, pursued — by declining to make a post facto ruling on the hiring of Accaputo.
As the media industry goes through an era of wrenching upheaval, there are any number of unfortunate byproducts: newspapers have fewer reporters to do the work that pro-vides a rationale for getting the product; reporters at some TV stations are squeezed to do more, in less time; the squeeze for ad dollars, with potentially dubious permutations, will get likely get worse.
Considering all this, it’s heartening that reporters in Rhode Island hold fast to the need to ask tough questions, maintaining an adversarial role with those in power.
To read Ian Donnis’s politics + media blog, go to thephoenix.com/notfornothing. He can be reached atidonnis@phx.com.
