A pre-sentencing investigation by the U.S. Probation Office claims Mississippians lost $300 million because prison head Chris Epps steered contracts to high bidders.
It cost these high-bid contractors $2 million to bribe Epps. That’s an incredible return.
Fortunately, the corruption was caught by the FBI, but only after an insider reported the graft. By then, the corruption had gone on for years. It got so blatant the contractors were wiring mortgage payments for Epps’ beach home directly from their accounts. That’s how confident they were they would never get caught.
With our bidding laws in shambles – riddled with exceptions and exemptions – who knows how much money Mississippians are losing to corruption, perhaps billions. We have an ethics law, but neither the state nor local authorities enforce it. The penalties are so weak corrupt politicians just ignore them. The FBI, being a slow, ponderous federal bureaucracy, only acts in the worst cases when an insider comes forth and exposes the scam.
Back in the day, newspapers were a crucial cog in the anti-corruption machine. Rich with profits, big newspapers hired investigative reporters who were eager to ferret out tales of corrupt politicians bilking the taxpayers.
Now we have the free Craig’s List so consumers don’t have to buy a classified ad in the big paper. Classified revenue used to make up a third of a newspaper’s revenue. Now that’s gone.
Big-city papers like the Clarion-Ledger have lost half their readers. Gleeful consumers think they’re smart going to Google News and saving their monthly cost to subscribe. This is the ultimate in penny wise pound foolish.
What consumers have saved in free news and free classifieds, they’ve paid 10 times over in government graft. It’s just they don’t know.
I know because I am in the newspaper business. I have watched the corruption grow year after year as quality reporters got laid off. We have half as many professional journalists as we did 20 years ago. And the ones we have are often young, poorly paid, and lacking the support and resources to do their jobs properly.
If you think a blogger in his pajamas is going to make up the difference, you have no idea what real journalism is about.
Luckily for me, I’m in a niche of the newspaper business called community journalism. Unlike the big metros, my segment has held up relatively well publishing news about weddings, births, deaths, high school news and Eagle Scouts. In fact, my business has benefited by the decline of the big papers such as the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. We haven’t had to lay off reporters.
Often people will tell me they no longer subscribe to the Clarion-Ledger but subscribe to the Northside Sun. They assume that makes me feel good.
It does not. Even though the Clarion-Ledger has competed against me, sometimes ruthlessly, I take no joy in watching its decline. A great state needs a great newspaper. The Clarion-Ledger was once a crucial watchdog for the citizens of Mississippi. Today, its reporting prowess is a shadow of what it once was. This is a tragedy.
I am not trying to dog the Clarion-Ledger. They are still the source of hundreds of stories no one else is reporting. They were crucial to the Epps investigation. They do remarkably well given their limited resources. But times have changed and it’s not good for our cities, states or nation.
Many people have rejoiced at the troubles of our big papers because big metro dailies tended to be liberal. That’s true. Crusading journalists tend to be idealistic. That’s a function of human nature, not some grand conspiracy.
But it was those liberal crusading journalists who did the hundreds of hours of legwork to expose corruption that is now going undetected. If you think the Northside Sun can fill the gap, you are dreaming.
It’s all we can do to keep up at the Sun. There’s an unending flood of corrupt bidding, illegal contributions, secret meetings and ignored corruption.
Numerous times the Sun has published stories about ethics violations – criminal offenses – by various public officials. The response, deafening silence. Nothing. Nada. Total complacency by the local and state authorities whose job it is to enforce our ethics statutes. Meanwhile, lobbyists cloak our state capitol conspiring with legislators to cook up more ways to profit from secret loopholes passed when nobody is looking. The capitol press corps is a sliver of what it once was. Nobody’s watching.
When I was a junior in college, I interned in 1978 at the Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the greatest papers in the nation at the time, having won numerous Pulitzer prizes for investigative reporting. I remember being in awe of the top reporters. They were famous heroes. Just this month, the paper, struggling with bankruptcy, was donated to a nonprofit. It breaks my heart.
Preventing the Epps scandal alone would have paid for all the newspaper subscriptions in the state for a decade. And Epps is just the tip of the iceberg. Penny wise. Pound foolish.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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