THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • Late Spring 2019 17 TheCoastalBend.com Editor Freedom fails when we buy into ‘fake news.’ Late Spring 2019 W hy do you bother read- ing this magazine? If, by now, you have be- come a regular mem- ber of our audience, picking up a copy at HEB, or at a cof- fee shop or hospital whenever you see it, the likely answer is that you have grown accustom to finding interesting, thorough and informative report- ing on a number of topics within our pages. Starting with our story about Hurricane Harvey at the end of 2017, and since, on a range of topics from commer- cial and industrial development, to the connection between deadly crime sprees, and even a revealing interview with our sitting congressman, our mission has been to fill the gaping voids—let’s call them ‘infor- mational wounds’—in journalistic coverage by Coastal Bend news media. If and when the governmental system of over- sight wavers and fails the public, our only practical firewall—the one democracies specifically entrust to pierce the barriers of deceit and protection within cor- rupt governments—is a free press empowered by the unabridged freedom of speech. In this edition, we take on a topic that should not be of high controversy in a democratic municipality like Corpus Christi—that is, one that is unofficially governed by news media that see their role as more than transcribers, but as investi- gators whose experience and ‘BS detectors’ lead them to the truth about topics that are of consequence to the people. This is why journalism is the only profession protected by the United States Constitution. When you read “Drowned in Incompetence,” like us, you will be shocked to learn that the national- news-making problems the City of Corpus Christi has had over the past five years or so with water—the most basic of municipal functions—has been overseen by a single manager who has been supported by a small cabal inside City Hall, and who has enjoyed one pro- motion after another, as taxpayers sink millions of dollars into further debt and suffer millions more due to interruptions in business. Inside our handful of lo- cal newsrooms, those who have dutifully covered one water boil after another—not one of them—not one— has taken the time to find out what certification is re- quired by the overseeing authority, the Texas Commis- sion on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), for those who run public water systems, and whether our water sys- tem operator possesses that certification. This would be a key clue as to whether our water system operator has any idea what he’s doing—as evidence would indi- cate that he may not. Sure enough, TCEQ provides a handy-dandy, on- line search system of all people who have been cer- tified by their agency for anything, including Water System Operator. Well let’s see…enter the name of the City of Corpus Christi Utilities Manager, who ran the water department when the problems started in 2015, and before the position of Water Director was created in 2017—his name is Mark Van Vleck. Oh wow! No one by that name has been certified by TCEQ for anything. Now wait a minute, that’s not fair—does this thing re- ally work? Let’s find the names of water system opera- tors in Portland, or San Antonio, or Rockport, which can be found online. Sure enough—those names come up on the TCEQ site! So, the search system works. One Mr. Wittwer, a public water system veteran from the City of Houston, was hired as Corpus Christi’s first- ever Water Director, a job he held for less than a year. Sure enough, his name pops right up on the TCEQ search page. The man who replaced Mr. Wittwer after he quit was an ally of Van Vleck who ran the City’s De- velopment Services department, a Mr. Grimsbo, whom we, of course, also searched on the TCEQ page. Any guesses as to the result? No! No TCEQ certification. Now—the Corpus Christi Caller Times, our 130-year-old daily newspaper that celebrates with great fanfare their annual prestige as an ‘award-win- ing’ Texas newspaper, could not find this simple fact. Nor could KIII-TV or KRIS-TV (which is the same news team as KZTV), or…what else is there? The Island Moon? None of them even bothered to look. It prob- ably never dawned on any of them that perhaps, just maybe—going out on a limb here—but maybe the City of Corpus Christi water department is led by people who have no idea what the hell they’re doing. If the news media is the last outlet of hope for an informed electorate, our city council members and mayors never made the effort to learn something, on their own, about water system certifications. They lis- tened to the blind led by the blind, reporting to the blind, about the most far-reaching and consequential function of city government—the production and deliv- ery of safe drinking water. And not one of them cared enough about the topic to not trust what they were be- ing told, while one failure after another cost the public millions upon millions of dollars, plus the absolutely unacceptable interruption of their daily lives. In most cities, the newspaper tends to be the me- dium of record for detailed reporting on issues of im- portance. One random look at the Caller Times website on any given day would tell you that high school sports is, over and above all other news, the most important topic to the Coastal Bend—bar none! You get your shootings and court sentencings, major car wrecks plus a few fluffy feel-good stories, but it is rare to see anything that is investigative or journalistic, i.e. that which requires experience, education and effort. Corruption and incompetence are at the core of much of what is wrong in our communities—from failing public education systems, failing family struc- tures, failing infrastructure, the human cost of medi- cal errors, staggering inequality in our justice system, to government deficits, and on and on—our local news media’s coziness with and dependence on elected and career government officials have neutered its capacity to dig into issues that matter. To be sure, The Coastal Bend Magazine is the only local media outlet accused of publishing ‘fake news’ by an incompetent and failed City of Corpus Christi official, and it’s a badge of honor that we wear proudly. Use of the term ‘fake news’ has only to do with the breaking down of the democratic system, the sup- porting pillar of which is a free and vigorous press. News media that reports nothing offensive to those in power take no risk of being called ‘fake news.’ Ulti- mately, however, whether it’s our little ’ole community magazine or the Washington Post, which recently ad- opted the slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” the vigor and accuracy of our reporting on issues of conse- quence to the community will determine if we attract and keep an educated audience—and that determines whether or not our advertisers realize a return on their investment in us, and that determines whether we feed our families or not. On the same morning that our “Drowned in In- competence” story was published online, weeks prior to the printed version, the star of the show marched into the office of the City communications director and declared “Fake News” about our story, and demanded that an email be shot off to this publication’s editor claiming numerous factual errors, while questioning our legitimacy as a news outlet, as well as our use of confidential sources. Weeks later, on advice of City of Corpus Christi legal counsel, no corrections or claims of inaccuracies in our reporting were provided. Consider our predicament as a business whose fate depends on the effort we put into our reporting, especially its accuracy. If we ever, in fact, publish actu- al fake news, we’re on the road to being done-for as an outlet of journalism. When we, or the New York Times, or CNN, or even Fox News are accused of running ‘fake news,’ you can be assured of two things: (1) The truth in the reporting is undeniable and the subject has no fact-based response, and; (2) Although the subject’s true believers willingly exchange what is obvious to their own eyes for the warm comfort of ideological ca- maraderie, every exposed lie chips away a few of those believers, who otherwise find themselves living in the real world—a world where “it is what it is.” As we grow as the leader in Coastal Bend journal- ism, you can expect our fearless and serious approach to investigative reporting to be extended to topics af- fecting broad populations of South Texans—with the mission of shining light on problems in our communi- ties that keep prosperity and security at arm’s length for so many of our neighbors. We’ll leave the obsession over high school sports to the daily newspaper. —The Editor