Blog-Norris: What The BEEP Did You Do To Me?

VolunteerVoters.com
December 1, 2006

This issue was never on the table. In a long conversation with Howard, I was giving her examples of other types of user fees after I said I was against raising the gas tax and against establishing tolls on top of a gas tax that the Bredesen administration is not even using. The transportation trust fund needs to be repaid by the administration out of existing revenues.
~ Senator Mark Norris

Ms. Beep is certainly starting out with a bang here in the Volunteer State. The newly ensconced traffic reporter, complete with her very own blog has set Capitol Hill ablaze with articles on gas taxes and rumors of gas taxes.

According to Ken Whitehouse of the NashvillePost.com, the Senator Mark Norris and his staff spent a significant amount of time with the Rhode Island native trying to get her up to speed on Tennessee transportation issues.

Norris is well versed on these issues and well regarded for his knowledge on Capitol Hill. Folks in the know were quite amazed at Norris' little trial balloon about tying gas taxes to mileage logged.

As well they should, because he did not float it. Norris was simply schooling Howard about various things that one could do with gas taxes in the context of a wide ranging discussion on transportation -- the purpose of which was to educate the young reporter.

Norris was rewarded for his tutelage by what he inserts is an absolutely inaccurate report in yesterday's paper. After the story appeared, again according to Whitehouse, Norris and the paper's editorial sat down and discussed the piece. Norris on the meeting and its result:


I asked for a retraction. They promised a correction, and I got neither.

Norris is quite properly incensed as the story the paper ran neither retracted the fact in the article nor corrected them but instead followed up allowing Norris to "clarify" his position.

The problem is that it was never his position in the first place and Norris is perturbed that it looks like so many other cases in politics where a trial balloon is floated and then retracted.

If this is how it went down and it certainly seems as though it did, it is quite unfortunate for Norris and reveals an inherent cynicism about politics and media.

This scenario has played out so many times before that the cynical public can not really be blamed for assuming that Norris is backtracking off a position he had rather than correcting an erroneous report of a position he didn't.

This is an essential problem with modern media. Someone reports something and it is assumed as truth. The subsequent denial is seen as a political maneuver and truth of the matter is buried behind the game.

This and the Camp controversy calls into serious question the reporting of the Tennessean. Not a good start for the new editorial regime, I don't think.