Golden Silence, At-Risk Students, and Prison Pell Grants
IN THE NEWS:
The tradition in Virginia politics for many years was for state Democrats to remain quiet about national Democrats they did not like and didn’t want to vote for. Now things are much more explicit--and some experts are predicting more Never Trump Republicans will emerge in Virginia.
For years, schools identified how many students lived in poverty by taking a look at who received free or reduced-price lunches. That left many high-poverty students out of the equation, and the system had to be scrapped when many divisions started making meals universally available. The new way of identifying high-poverty students is based on participation in federal assistance programs, and the Department of Education estimates that 43 percent of public students are at-risk.
For many years, Pell Grants were not available to people who are incarcerated. But now the law has changed, and about 14,000 people who are incarcerated have access to the money to pay for college classes. But only 11 of Virginia's 45 prisons offer college classes.
Episode Transcript
Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope.
Lauren Burke
I'm Lauren Burke.
Michael Pope
And this is Pod Vigrinya. A podcast that's getting ready for the birthday of Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell -- a frequent listener of Pod Virginia Leader Surovell, I know you're listening. So happy birthday. All of our listeners who know the leader should send him a text or an email and wish him a happy birthday this week.
Lauren Burke
We have a present for leader Surovell.
Michael Pope
Yes, we do actually have a present for leader Surovell. Here's the present: this podcast. Let's get to the news: golden silence. The tradition in Virginia politics, for many years, was for state Democrats to remain quiet and to remain silent about national Democrats they didn't like and didn't want to vote for. During the reign of Harry Byrd, this was known as the Golden Silence. John Milliken at George Mason University says it worked.
John Milliken
He would just not say anything about the presidential race. But most of his followers took that as a sign that they could comfortably vote for a Republican at the national level and not suffer any political repercussions for doing that.
Michael Pope
That's how things worked in the 50s and 60s. Now, things are much more explicit. In the 2016 election cycle, former Republican Senator John Warner endorsed Hillary Clinton. Now, former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.
Lauren Burke
Former Republican Delegate David Ramadan now teaches at George Mason Schar School; he predicts more Never Trump Republicans will emerge in Virginia.
David Ramadan
Many others will, simply because the other side is egregious. This election is one of those consequential elections. You can't stay silent in those scenarios.
Michael Pope
I think lots of people are totally willing to stay silent. I'd like to agree with David Ramadan that many more Never-Trump Republicans in Virginia are going to emerge, but Lauren, I'll believe it when I see it.
Lauren Burke
Well. You know, it's interesting to see some of the Never Trump Republicans who have already emerged. Many of them are not necessarily from Virginia. You saw that George Will changed his registration. I think Stuart Stevens or Rick Wilson did as well. These guys are definitely Republicans; they were the campaign managers for John McCain and more. But in Virginia, I don't know if we're going to see too many more. Staying silent has been the strategy, but you never know because Trump really is starting to sort of ramble in a way that, even for him, is a little bit strange. His last press conference was even more unhinged than usual. When you look at that contrast with the Vice President's campaign and with her vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz, they're putting together a very positive image. I think one of the things that came out on the white dude's call for Harris-Walz was the fatigue of the negativity. The pushing of fear and the idea that everything is negative and the country's terrible; people are just worn out by it. I think that matters. I think people are not looking for a negative message. They are looking for something positive. When we look at history, we see many presidential campaigns that were built on that. I think about JFK, for example. I think we might see a few more never-Trumpers in Virginia. You never know.
Michael Pope
If you look at the pattern of Never Trumpers, most of them move over to the other side, right? Ted Cruz was once a Never Trump Republican in the 2016 Republican convention. Didn't he make a big show about not supporting Trump? Now he's, like, totally on the Trump Train. If you think about JD Vance, their vice presidential candidate, he was a Never Trumper at one time. I think the track record of Never Trumpers is that most of the time, they end up becoming Trumpers.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, and it's unusual to pick somebody that you have footage of criticizing the top of the ticket. That was part of the problem with Marco Rubio, the Senator from Florida. But Vance is not too far from that. The Democratic side is rolling tape on that, and it's not a pretty picture.
Michael Pope
Yeah. Denver Riggleman is possibly the first to emerge in Virginia. I'm wondering Who else will emerge. Lauren, what are some names of potential Never Trump Republicans that might emerge? David Ramadan, of course, would be one. So you got David the David Ramadan and Denver Rigglemans of the world. Who else might emerge as a Never-Trump Republican?
Lauren Burke
That's a good question. Who else is sort of a moderate Republican? I can't think of anybody. When you start to get to the national level, the Federal and congressional level, that's typically going to be someone who is pretty partisan. I don't know. I can't think of anybody offhand.
Michael Pope
Yeah, right, exactly. All right. Well, then, in that case, let's move on to our next story, in poverty and at risk. For many years, schools have identified how many students live in poverty by taking a look at who receives free or reduced-priced lunches. That left many high-poverty students out of the equation. The whole system had to be scrapped when many school divisions started making meals universally available. So, here are your stats about free and reduced-price lunch. Levi Goren of the Commonwealth Institute says the new way of identifying high-poverty students is based on participation in federal assistance programs.
Levi Goren
It's a good thing that we're more accurately counting the number of low-income students in Virginia, and we need to do the work as a state to make sure that those students have the resources they need to thrive.
Lauren Burke
Carol Bauer at the Virginia Education Association says student performance is kind of like Olympic performance. The athletes who have the funding do well.
Carol Bauer
They have the uniforms. They have the coaches. They have the transportation. When they're missing some of those things, they aren't as successful. I think the same could be said for our students. When they have the resources that they need, when they have the teachers, when they have the textbooks, when they have the wraparound services that help them be successful, then, in fact, they can be successful.
Michael Pope
There's an interesting change. The data has changed in terms of how the school systems measure students who are at risk. In other words, students who live in poverty. How do you measure how many of your students live in poverty? The old way was to look at this one metric: free and reduced-price school lunches. Once you start making lunches available to everybody, regardless of their ability to pay. You don't have that data metric anymore. Now, the new metric is to look at the family's participation in federal programs like SNAP, Food Stamps, and TANF, which are welfare, Medicaid, and Head Start. So, if you receive benefits from these federal programs, then the school system is going to say that this child lives in poverty. Here's the interesting thing: now that we've got a different way of counting the students in poverty. Guess what? The number shot up; 43% of public school students in Virginia are at risk. That's according to the Virginia Department of Education, which has identified that 43%, that's almost half. Think about this: one out of two public school students live in poverty. That's a huge metric, and what's probably going on here is that those students have always been in poverty. But we had a really crappy way of measuring poverty before. Now we've got a more accurate way, and we know that basically half of the public school students in Virginia live in poverty. Those students are more expensive to educate, but it's also more important to educate them.
Lauren Burke
No, absolutely. Even though they may be more expensive to educate, what's really expensive is on the back end. Problems that happen years later. When people can't make it in our society economically because we have an extremely expensive criminal justice system in this country, I also think that Biden's policy with regard to the child tax credit was the $2,000 benefit for kids under 17, which lifted a bunch of kids out of poverty. That was a big deal. These programs are proven to work and move the needle. And hey, Virginia, you've got a $1.2 billion surplus. This would be a nice thing to focus on.
Michael Pope
Yeah, it does seem kind of interesting; this is a different topic, of course, but the budget surplus. What's going on with the people who count the money? Why do we keep finding surplus money? Isn't it a problem with our government that they can't do the math right, and we're constantly making mistakes? And, oh yeah, it's mistakes where we have extra money. So that makes us feel good. We've got a sugar high about having this extra money to spend. Isn't it a problem that we always get the math wrong?
Lauren Burke
You know what? I'm not gonna criticize that. Because I think that what's more painful is when you get the math wrong, and there's not enough money; when there's too much money, sure, they should have figured it out, but you know what, it's okay. It's something to celebrate and feel good about. The question is, where does that money get allocated? Who benefits from it? Is it going to be another tax cut for the rich? Which is typically what Republican policy does with extra money. But I think Youngkin has been fairly respectful to Head Start. I believe I normally catch hell if I'm wrong about that one. I do think it would be good to invest in our young people. Everyone knows that every study shows that when kids come to school and are fed and ready to learn, there are better outcomes. That's just a known fact across the board. So when you have a big surplus, this is the type of thing that would be good to invest in.
Michael Pope
Yeah. I guess the decision is on the horizon. Do you take this extra money and give tax cuts to millionaires? Or do you make sure that students who live in poverty get an education that'll help them succeed in the world? I think that's the choice that a lot of people are going to have to make on the horizon. It's actually kind of similar to investing in a different group of people, which is the topic of our next story. Pell in prison. For many years, since the 1990s, Pell grants were not available to people who are incarcerated, but now the law has changed. President Biden signed legislation in the first two years of his administration that not only made Pell grants available for people in prison but made it so it would be a problem if you denied access to that money to those people who are incarcerated. The estimate here is about 14,000 people who are incarcerated right now in Virginia prisons have access to Pell grant money to pay for college classes. Terri Erwin is the Director at the Virginia Consensus for Higher Education in Prison. She says only 11 of Virginia's 45 prisons offer college classes.
Terri Erwin
14,000 people, that's a lot of folks who have the possibility of pursuing a degree program, but right now, not yet a practical possibility. They have the money, kind of figuratively, in their pockets through the Pell Grant. But they don't have a classroom to walk into and sit down at a desk, open a textbook, and start that program.
Lauren Burke
Governor Glenn Youngkin recently signed an executive order directing state officials to figure out a way to expand access to college classes behind bars. John Donnelly is a partner in the Virginia Consensus for Higher Education in Prison.
John Donnelly
It's really incumbent on us to expand access to everyone who can benefit, expanding to everybody who is eligible for Pell while incarcerated, to earn associate degrees, bachelor's degrees, credentials, industry certifications, whatever is going to benefit them as they transition back into society.
Michael Pope
I'm going to hit you up with some numbers here. These are very important numbers. We talked about 14,000 people. There are 14,000 people incarcerated in Virginia prisons, which is an estimate. They are probably eligible to take college classes and receive money from Pell Grants because of the recent change that Biden signed into law. Okay, 14,000 people are eligible. How many people are currently taking college classes in Virginia, only 500? Only 500 out of 14,000 people are receiving the college classes that they should be receiving. That's the current situation because of some pilot programs that were established about a decade ago. Here comes Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, who is signing an executive order saying, hey, state government, make this happen; figure out a way to have college classes in all 45 of your prisons. So, this actually has bipartisan support. Republicans and Democrats are on board with this. This is a win-win situation for everybody. So this is federal money. Virginia doesn't have to spend any of the money here other than making classroom space available in prisons. This is a win-win for everybody. Because the Republicans benefit, the Democrats benefit, the people who are incarcerated benefit, and society benefits by having people who come out of prisons who have degrees that will help them re-enter society.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, it's a good idea, certainly, in a country that has a criminal justice system that costs $1.2 trillion. Yeah, it's a great idea. Of course, the US leads the world in the rate of incarceration and has for many years. We have to decide whether or not what we're doing is throwing people's lives away. Is it just purely a punitive system that we have of punishment with no redemption whatsoever? Yeah, I do think you have to register for an approved prison education program to get the Pell Grant. So there's a little bit of a hurdle there. But I suspect that people will be working hard to change that as well. Because that 500 number out of 14,000, that has got to improve. And it probably will. We'll see what happens. But I think, generally speaking, it's a good idea. It reminds me of Congressman Bobby Scott's Youth Promise Act. A policy direction of trying to do things on the front end. This is sort of a back-end policy. Obviously, these are incarcerated people, but you do have to do things on the front end to prevent incarceration in the first place. Very expensive for everybody in society when the person gets incarcerated. But this sounds like a good idea.
Michael Pope
You're right to point out the influence of mass incarceration. It's really important to remember that Virginia's prison system is way out of whack with the rest of the planet. If Virginia was a country, it would have the third-highest incarceration rate in the world. We have a mass incarceration problem in Virginia. And so, what is the point of locking up all these people? How does that help society that we have chosen to incarcerate such a gigantic group of our population? This is going some way toward addressing that issue. There's another topic that we've talked about on this podcast many times. This is a Kamala Harris sleeper issue, which is people in prison being able to vote. They are constituents. The people who are currently incarcerated in Virginia prisons have a member of Congress. A member of Congress represents them. The math in terms of how many people are in each congressional district is based on how many people are incarcerated in Virginia prisons. It's not like they're not represented. They are represented, but they don't have the franchise. How does that help anybody? Then I hear the criticism of people saying, I don't think people in prison should be able to take college classes; I think people in prison shouldn't be able to vote. Well, why shouldn't they be able to take college classes? Why shouldn't they be able to vote? I know Kamala Harris is not in a position right now where she could make that case about people in prison being able to vote. But that is a conversation somebody should have at some point.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, and also, somebody should have the conversation about the restoration of the right to vote after you have served your time. Virginia is the only state that does this, where only the governor can approve restoration. To the point of leader Surovell, and Happy Birthday, leader Surovell. That is something that could have been very easily added to this executive order. The restoration of rights issue. For some reason, everybody's restoration has to be approved by the governor. Why and how did that happen?
Speaker 1
Jim Crow. A toxic mix of Jim Crow and the Bryd regime.
Lauren Burke
That's right, Jim Crow and a toxic mix is exactly how it happened. That's unfortunate that the Republicans are always trying to make it more difficult to vote. Not making it easy to participate civically in our society. But at any rate, that's something unique to this governor, and, ironically, he's brought all of this up, and the restoration piece is not there. So, one can only hope.
Michael Pope
Well, if we're going to talk about the governor, we need to point out the benefit that he has achieved by signing this executive order. He has really helped a lot of people currently in prison. But their local prison doesn't offer any college classes. What needs to happen is one of these community colleges, Piedmont Virginia Community College. They operate in three prisons. Well, why don't they operate in 10 prisons? That's the ramp-up that we're getting ready to go to, and Governor Glenn Youngkin is making that happen with his executive order.
Lauren Burke
Yeah. I mean, when I step back and take the wide-angle lens view here. Incarceration is big business, and some of this, when I think about this whole thing, even though I do think what the governor did was great. The executive order was, was good. But you have to understand that the front end and the reason that you have this incarceration system is money. This is a job. These prisons are jobs. They're charging prisoners exorbitant fees to make a phone call. Is money coming in? The whole thing has a profit. It is influenced by money in a way that I think is not healthy for our society.
Michael Pope
The prison industrial complex is a real thing. Lots of people are making lots of money incarcerating people in Virginia. This is one of the reasons we have a mass incarceration problem because it's hugely successful for a lot of people.
Lauren Burke
Absolutely.
Michael Pope
All right, let's take a break. When we come back, we're gonna play a round of trivia and head over to the water cooler. It's gonna be spicy. You're gonna wanna come back after this commercial break. All right, let's play some trivia. Last week, we asked you which Virginia town is denying access to more than 3,000 emails about a proposed Amazon data center.
Lauren Burke
The answer is Warrenton. This is where the town government is trying to hide documents from the public about their communications about the Amazon data center. Here's Peter Cary, the Fauquier Times.
Peter Cary
We think, we in the press, and I hope we in the public, think that the comings and goings and doings of these public bodies ought to be utterly transparent. I mean, we elect these people, and then the people we elect hire the other people. So they are our public servants. What they do should serve the public, and we ought to know about it.
Michael Pope
Yeah, but the mayor of Warrenton wants to hide these documents. The town manager wants to hide these documents. Interestingly, I think the town manager whose emails we're talking about is no longer Warrenton's town manager. I think he took a job at Amazon. So there's that. The answer to the question is Warrenton. And we have some winners: Senator Suhas Subramanyam, Farmville Mayor Brian Vincent, Ryan Ruzic, Lauren Kaiser, and Jay Speer. Jay pointed out that listeners would already know that if they were on the email list for the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.
Lauren Burke
Okay, what's our trivia question for next week?
Michael Pope
All right, our trivia question for next week is kind of gruesome. So hit the fast-forward button if you're squeamish. All right, here it is: how much blood did George Washington's doctors remove from his body the day he died?
Lauren Burke
Are we talking about bloodletting?
Michael Pope
Yeah, yeah. We're talking about bloodletting, as in removing bad humors from the body. George Washington was a big believer in the healing power of bloodletting, removing bad humors from the body. The day he died, Washington was bled not once, not twice, but three times. Three separate occasions where he had bloodletting. One, bloodletting; two, bloodletting; three. That's a lot of blood that came out of George Washington's body. Here's the trivia question: how much blood did Washington's doctors remove from his body the day that he died?
Lauren Burke
Yikes. If you think you know the answer to this gruesome question, hit us up on social media. You might even win a prize.
Michael Pope
Yeah, like a razor or two. Maybe a leech or something, I don't know. But all right, let's head over to the water cooler. Lauren, what's the latest you've heard around the water cooler?
Lauren Burke
The latest I'm hearing around the water cooler is that there's a big convention this week in Chicago. As we record this, I'm sitting in Chicago. I'll be seeing what the Virginia delegation is doing. Obviously, a historic nominee of Vice President Kamala Harris. We'll see what the week brings. Chicago's a great city, and that's my water cooler. I'm sticking to it. I think this is going to be an exciting time. I actually can't wait to see where they put the Virginia delegation. Is Virginia in play or not? Will they be upfront? Will they be in the middle? Or will they be in the back? I don't know, but I'll see. I'll see pretty soon.
Michael Pope
It's only 13 electoral votes. So, if you're just talking about raw numbers, you'd probably want to put California and New York upfront.
Lauren Burke
Well, we were upfront last time. So let's see what happens. It's only 13, but to me, they're my focus, so I don't care where they're located; I'm gonna find them.
Michael Pope
I'm jealous. I'd love to go to the Democratic convention. I'm definitely hoping that when you get back, we could talk about it on the podcast.
Lauren Burke
What about you, Michael? What's the latest you've heard around the water cooler?
Michael Pope
Well, I tell you, my head is still spinning from that podcast that we did last week about leaks. We had two great guests, Susanna Gibson and Kelly McBride. We had a very interesting discussion about the responsibility of media organizations when they're covering stories in terms of what is okay to publish and what is not okay to publish. Our listeners will be familiar with the story of Susanna Gibson, who endured very negative coverage during her campaign for the House of Delegates when the Washington Post published reports about screen grabs that were done without her consent. This is non-consensual pornography that the Washington Post was reporting on. If you follow this podcast, you know that we had lots of discussions about Pearl clutching at that time. The Washington Post was really clutching its pearls about Susanna Gibson doing these things that violated a Victorian sensibility. They also did it by putting the word tips in the headline, which made it sound like money was involved. But Susanna Gibson never made any money on this. Her husband never made any money on this. The word tip is accurate but misleading. Because the tip was like Reddit gold or a thumbs up on Facebook, it was a thing of value in the sense that on the internet, it had a kind of value. But there was no money involved. Well, hey, when people see the word tips in the headline of a Washington Post, they're gonna think that money is involved. One of the things that's fascinating about this story is how the Washington Post got its hands on these stolen, non-consensual pornography images from the dark web. Well, as it turns out, there was a GOP operative who handed over all this stuff to the Washington Post. They reported on it. Now, fast forward to 2024, and we're talking about the Iranian government offering hacked information to media sources, including the Washington Post, The New York Times, and Politico. Those media outlets decided to, instead of focusing on what was in the leak, to instead report about the leak. Potentially reporting about Iran, potentially, we're still trying to figure out all the facts about this. But potentially foreign influence in the election. Okay, so are we not using that same value system when we talk about what happened to Susanna Gibson? What about this Republican operative? We have never used the name of this Republican operative on this podcast. We've never read the name of the Republican operative in the Washington Post. The Post is going to totally destroy the life of Susanna Gibson, to the point where, if you heard the podcast, you heard her talking about crawling into a fetal position on the floor because her life was ruined; she could no longer speak in complete sentences because she was in a very dark place. All because the Washington Post essentially ruined her life with this story. We're going to let the Republican operative who took the non-consensual pornography from the dark web and gave it to the Washington Post. Are we going to give that guy anonymity? In our podcast, Kelly McBride from the Poynter Institute said this.
Kelly McBride
I wish they would have named the source.
Lauren Burke
They did.
Susanna Gibson
They do.
Lauren Burke
They named it; they basically said it was a GOP.
Kelly McBride
They did. They described him, but I think I would.
Susanna Gibson
They gave him anonymity despite him breaking the law.
Kelly McBride
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Like he is, I think that person should have their name on this story.
Michael Pope
That person should have their name on this story, says Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute. I doubt the Washington Post is going to do a follow-up story where they named the Republican operative who handed them this non-consensual pornography from the dark web. But maybe they should.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. First off, to keep it real here, there are no rules. There are no standards. There is nothing in journalism other than, in my view, making stuff up as we go, case by case. You see it all the time. And this is a beautiful example. This whole, JD Vance and Iran must have hacked somebody. Now, the New York Times and The Washington Post, of all people, don't want to publish. What standard there is for these things, I have absolutely no idea. The idea is that anonymous sources are not used. Well, anonymous sources are used all the time. Hit jobs and oppo dumps are brought to journalists all the time. All the time, it's standard practice. I was actually surprised that the Post said that in the piece. Because it's such a standard practice, what made that oppo dump any different from any other oppo dump that they've gotten and put in the paper? That was interesting, but I think it was actually commendable that they did say that.
Michael Pope
Wait, just to be clear here. You're saying it was commendable for The Washington Post to point out how they got their hands on the information. Normally, we would not read this sort of information. Still, the Post was actually being a little more transparent than you often see in the media by saying, Oh yeah, we actually did get this leak from a Republican operative.
Lauren Burke
Absolutely. And again, it happens all the time.
Michael Pope
But what was the name of this person? Why are we not reading their name? There's an unfair battlefield, right? We've got Susanna Gibson's name. Why don't we have the Republican operative's name? Why does he get to remain anonymous?
Lauren Burke
Because this is what these papers have been doing for years, they get away with it because, legally, they can get away with it. Much of the construct of what you're seeing is legal protection. Particularly as it pertains to public officials. Once again, because for a public official, and I understand Susanna Gibson, of course, was not a public official, she was a candidate at that moment. But I would think they would argue, oh, close enough, she's a public person, and you'd have to prove that the thing published was not true, which was true. What was published was accurate. It was on tape. There was no question there of veracity or truth and accuracy because this was on tape.
Michael Pope
That gets a little murky. Because I think the mechanics of how this happened is that it wasn't actually on tape. It was a live cast. So somebody was taking screenshots and captured during the live cast, and that's what was later made available. The facts here are a little murky.
Lauren Burke
My point is when someone is in the paper with regard to something very controversial, or someone is making an allegation that's very controversial, it is published. Typically, what journalistic organizations say is that we get to publish this information because someone told us it. And because somebody told us this information, we got to publish it. In particular, we get to publish if, in fact, the subject is an elected official. In this particular example, the subject matter is on a video. So, the question of whether or not something is happening or has happened was answered. I think that's part of what the Post felt like, and of course, I can't speak for them. I'm just guessing here, but I think they felt like this person was filing to run for office in Virginia.
Michael Pope
It was clearly her. I mean, there's no dispute that the non-consensual pornography was actually of the candidate, right?
Lauren Burke
And she's not denying it's her. It's sort of confirmed at that moment; it was her. I'm confused about why it is in the Post. Frankly, I do think that some of this is just news organizations publishing things that are prurient to get subscriptions and web traffic. I just cannot get around that. I think about the Trevor Bauer set of stories. I'm not sure why I needed to know about the details of Trevor Bauer's sex life. The former pitcher of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He's not running for office. He's not a priest or somebody in some moral position. He's a baseball player. They did a whole big investigative expose on his sex life. Then we find out that one of the women is on tape saying a bunch of things that, quite frankly, were not good for her in terms of what she was alleging. And then the Post disappeared once that happened. I think that getting into the details of people's private sexual behavior just as a subject matter is not a particularly good idea. But the media wants to bring us here. The media wants to bring us into these stories.
Michael Pope
Lauren, let's not paint with a brush that is too broad here. Because you said the media wants to do this. I don't want to do this. If someone came to me, and I've said this on the podcast many times, it's worth repeating. If somebody came to me with these images and said, Hey, we got this candidate who is in these images; you want to do this story? I would say, No, I'm not doing this story. Take this to somebody else because I don't do these kinds of stories. The Washington Post received the images and said, Yeah, okay, cool, we'll think about doing this.
Lauren Burke
But it's happened before, though. We've seen other stories from the Washington Post. They did a whole thing on Doug Wilder; remember that Jenna Portnoy did a story on how he's dating someone; that's a May-December thing. He's dating a 23-year-old. And they go out on what sounded like a date in the story to me. They were out someplace other than Virginia Commonwealth University, and a complaint was filed. Now that's in the paper, and we're trying to figure out and unpack what happened. Then, VCU investigated him and exonerated him. Then, all of a sudden, it's not a story anymore. But my point is, why did we need to know that? Doug Wilder is not in office. What was the point? I can certainly understand times when people are sitting elected officials, and that's typically the media argument; this is a public official, and the public needs to know this information. In Gibson's case, I think what the Post was thinking was that this might go to judgment. Certainly, the timing was fairly close to the filing of the election. But you're talking about consensual activity with someone's spouse. Then you wonder, well, what brought them to that? What was the standard of publication for that? I think they're all over the place on their stances on publications. It's such a guessing game to figure out what they might focus on and what they might not focus on. My thing is that the focus should always be that before you publish, you should be sure that what you're publishing is accurate. That should be the first rule of publication. Is this information accurate? Can we prove that this is accurate? Or is this someone talking? Because they love to say, Well, someone told us this, so now we have to put it in the paper without knowing and without investigating whether or not that something is accurate. We saw that the Loudoun Times in June put a story in there about Delegate Dan Helmer; they don't name the person making that allegation.
Michael Pope
Yeah, unnamed. The person making the allegation was unnamed.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, what was that? Now you have this story. You have this thing with no person named. In the case of what Kelly McBride was bringing up, she was saying that the Republican operative should have been named in the story.
Michael Pope
She wishes the Republican operative would have been named.
Lauren Burke
I think the more serious the allegation, the more I say to myself that they should name whoever's making that allegation. Particularly if we're getting into criminal-related matters, that person can't find a police station, but they can find the Loudoun Times. So you're doing the Loudoun Times and The Washington Post, but you can't talk to the police. That tells us that you can talk about this. You're willing to talk about it. But you're bringing it to a journalistic organization and not a law enforcement entity.
Michael Pope
Just so it's clear for our listeners, you're talking specifically now about the Dan Helmer case. The anonymous person who brought the allegations against Dan Helmer did an interview with the Loudoun Times Mirror, and the newspaper quoted her without naming her. She is anonymous in the sense that her name has not been widely used, but she is a talking, anonymous person.
Lauren Burke
I'm just saying that if we're going to get into questions of journalistic ethics, who should be named and who shouldn't be named? That, for me, would be a good example of where you have someone with no name. But they get the story in the paper. So once that gets published let's just understand something very clearly, such as whether there's a name attached or not. Once that gets published against someone, it's extremely damaging to that person. I would actually define some of these things that have gotten published without proof, evidence, or investigation as life and career-ending. In other words, this is something that will destroy your career and destroy your reputation. Google is forever; it doesn't go away. It's always there, and everybody knows it. Ms Gibson brought some of that up in the podcast, and I certainly think that's accurate. This is why you have to be very careful about, and to her point, you have to be very careful about what is published. Be sure that it's accurate before, not after. Because news organizations, they hate it, and this is all their fault a lot of times in these examples, they hate it when; we publish something, we rush it into the paper because we want to be the first to publish. Then someone comes along and shows them a bunch of documents, court records, court filings, and restraining orders that indicate this is not the entire story. And then they don't want to publish that because that indicates that their first reporting was incorrect and not complete. Under the law, they can do that. They can publish the wrong thing and walk away. Like I said, when it pertains to an elected official. Interestingly, there hasn't been any real follow-up to the Gibson story in the Washington Post. Certainly, she's not the only one who feels aggrieved about this particular thing. But, it's a product of the speed of publication and journalists trying to keep up with Twitter. They're rushing and not investigating. Then it gets printed, and the elected official has no recourse anyway, so what?
Michael Pope
Maybe the Washington Post will do a follow-up where they name the Republican operative who gave them these non-consensual pornographic images. Or maybe the Republican operative will come forward. Maybe he's listening to this podcast right now and says to himself, well, you know what, I'm proud of what I did. I'm gonna put my name on it and let everybody know. I'm gonna call up Pod Virginia and do an episode with them. Make it happen, dude. If you're out there and you're listening to this, let us know who you are.
Lauren Burke
Yeah, I think the chances of that are zero. Again, I'm going to say it. I think that's standard practice. I think so much of what you're seeing published is, in fact, something brought by a political operative. The media is not necessarily always telling you that. I brought up Doug Wilder, former governor Doug Wilder; how do you think those documents from VCU happen to find themselves at the Washington Post? I'm just pulling that out as an example. How do we think that happened? Years ago, in 2015, we had that Dolley Madison story. It dinged the late Don McEachin and Tommy Norman, Senator Norman. How do we think that ended up at the Richmond Times? These are not accidental moments. I would say that what the Post did, in terms of being transparent about where that information came from on Gibson, was a little bit surprising to me because that's almost never referred to.
Michael Pope
All right, let's open up that Pod Virginia mailbag. Lauren, what are our listeners talking about?
Lauren Burke
The Olympics. We talked about two of the top Virginia Olympians, but we neglected to mention Arlington swimmer Torri Huske.
Michael Pope
Yeah, voila. Congratulations to all the Olympics from Virginia. Bravo. Now let's celebrate some birthdays.
Lauren Burke
Tuesday, August 20, is the birthday of Delegate Lee Ware of Powhatan County.
Michael Pope
Wednesday, August 21, is the birthday of Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell.
Lauren Burke
Friday, August 23, is the birthday of Delegate Terry Kilgore of Scott County.
Michael Pope
Saturday, August 24, is the birthday of Delegate Kannan Srinivasan of Loudoun County.
Lauren Burke
It's also the birthday of Senator John McGuire of Goochland.
Michael Pope
Yeah. So, happy birthday all around.
Lauren Burke
A lot of Leo is rising there. A lot of Leo. That's it for this episode of Pod Virginia.
