Media: The Attack Dog
“All right. We’re getting off,” Cole says, seeing that the interview is basically over. “Can I ask a question as I go down, Mr Nace? Can you throw beer in the back of that truck?”
The report aired on Fox 29 in late June of this year, exposing a public employee who earned more than $60,000 last year and didn’t seem to be giving taxpayers his best effort. Philadelphia Inspector General Amy Kurland subpoenaed the station’s video and time logs for an official investigation, and about two weeks later, Mayor Nutter announced Nace would be fired. “We don’t have a staff where we can have people out on surveillance all day,” Kurland says, grateful for the help.
What the hell does Jeff Cole think he’s doing, exactly? Investigative journalism? On local TV news? Huh? Local news is supposed to go down like a bowl of oatmeal before bedtime. Tell us the score of the game that we probably already know. Tell us if we need to wear a coat tomorrow. Frighten and depress us with eight minutes of urban murders and people made homeless by fire. Breaking original news on local TV? Working for weeks, for months, on a story that nobody’s begging to see, exposing petty corruption involving people no one’s heard of? Who does that? Why?
“Public dollars are public dollars,” says Cole, when asked if he picks on the little guy too much. “And in a city that struggles to provide services and has the sorts of issues Philadelphia has, all those things are in play. I think it’s all fair game and important to do. If you pay taxes to a city, you want your money used properly.”
Cole has been doing it for more than 20 years — since 2000 in Philadelphia — though a lot of people only just noticed in September. That’s when Latrice Bryant, chief legislative aide to City Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr., held up pieces of notebook paper on which she’d written, in pen, “Fox 29 are racist” and “Jeff Cole KKK.”
It was the result of what was another standard “confront” — or was supposed to be — that exploded into its own story. Working from a tip, Cole’s team had videotaped Bryant for 10 workdays in June and July, and found that on nine of them, despite indicating full workdays on her time sheets, she’d arrived late or left early. They also learned her salary: $90,000.
“You look for stories that have a certain outrage factor,” Cole says. Bingo! So Cole & Co. showed up at the season’s opening City Council meeting to make some more good TV. In the hallway outside the Council chamber, Bryant ducked and straight-armed the camera, avoiding Cole’s questions, and went inside. Goode went in, too, but not before previewing the hot-button issue: “Don’t you ever disrespect a black woman like that again,” he said. A little bit later, Cole recalls, “I was in the hallway when [cameraman] Mark LaValla called me and said, ‘She’s holding up some sorta sign. It’s got your name on it.’”
“I never felt the need to refute her,” Cole says. “I’m not a member of the KKK.” (Bryant later apologized for the accusation.)
