The whistleblower gets it right
Like many stories of political scandal and intrigue, this one started with rash accusations from powerful politicians who felt threatened. In their cross-hairs was University of Texas regent Wallace Hall (pictured above), who had made some uncomfortable requests for information about correspondence between lawmakers and UT President Bill Powers. Namely, Hall wanted to know whether the university’s president was doing admissions favors for well-connected Texas politicos.
In response, these legislators tried to railroad Hall with a series of obscure lawsuits and threatened to impeach him. The battles lines were drawn, and a premier institution’s academic integrity was at stake. One reporter stepped up to cover the story – Watchdog Texas bureau chief Jon Cassidy.
It started with Hall being frivolously targeted, but as Cassidy began an investigation of his own he found that Hall had good reasons for trying to shine the light of accountability beneath the school’s proverbial well-wedged rocks. Multiple students with absurdly low LSAT scores had been admitted to UT Law, some of which were children of state lawmakers.
Cassidy did some data analysis and simply could not escape the facts: admissions favoritism was occurring at UT Law. Though bombarded by skeptics, critics, and trolls, he stuck to his guns and reported his findings. In a commentary piece for The Dallas Morning News , he broke down the numbers.
“The University of Texas has admitted at least 18 unqualified students into its prestigious law school,” he wrote, “These students’ scores on the Law School Admission Test would make them long shots at the worst law schools in the country.”
One of the scores was so low, in fact, that you could fill in the bubbles at random and probably get a better score!
Who will clean house?
The initial impeachment and criminal proceedings against Hall are dead in the water now. But the question remains as to whether anyone is going to clean house at UT. The state and local press, says Cassidy (pictured right), have mostly been useful idiots for the lawmakers who have been trying to impeach Hall. Legacy outlets never even tried to figure out if Hall was telling the truth, but since Texas Watchdog started digging deeper, lots of national media have picked up on it. One writer at National Review wrote that “Only Jon Cassidy of Watchdog.org is showing that the Emperor (the impeachment committee) has no clothes.” The Wall Street Journal has also done two stories – one editorial, one news – and is working on a third about Watchdog Texas’ findings.
Cassidy himself has written a few pieces for The American Spectator, and plenty of national outlets like Fox News, Red State, the Washington Examiner, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, City Journal have picked up on Watchdog.org’s lead. Meanwhile, in the Lone Star state itself, Dan Patrick, who’s likely going to be running the state Senate next year as lieutenant governor, has called for an investigation of UT Law based on what the stories Watchdog Texas has turned up.
The Watchdog effect
Stories like these set Watchdog.org apart from most journalism today because the Franklin Center is committed to providing the sort of in-depth investigative stories that the press used to do before all the newsroom cutbacks.
“A lot of reporters never get anywhere near the truth of a story, because they’re worried about offending their sources or seeming biased, and they’re not willing to make tough calls,” says Cassidy.
“Their idea of journalism is narrow and irresponsible – quote one side, quote the other, and you’re done, with no obligation to figure out if anyone was lying. We don’t tolerate lies, we love exposing hypocrites, and we’ll use any of the tools available to us, from deep data dives to working a beat to plain old-fashioned reason.”
Moving forward in Texas, Cassidy hopes to do more work on the issue of unfunded pensions, bring attention to local government bodies with crazy debt loads, and dig into tort reform.
His favorite thing about working for Watchdog.org, where reporters are self-starters and operate in their states with relative autonomy, is that the truth comes first. Sadly, the same cannot always be said for the legacy media.
“The papers do fine when there are two legitimate sides to a story,” says Cassidy, “But when one side is telling the truth, and the other is lying to protect its own interests, the papers rarely push to get the facts that readers would need to realize that.”
“The truth is often right in front of you, if you’ll just stop and consider all the facts.”
Read the entire series, “Trouble in Texas,” at Watchdog.org!
This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2014 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Blog , Featured .
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