News Hits read with interest how the two dailies explained the genesis of the Kwamester's indictment last week on 19 counts of mail and wire fraud, and filing false tax returns. The charges stemmed from alleged use of his nonprofit Kilpatrick Civic Fund as a personal and political piggybank.
If you read The Detroit News, you'd surmise that the feds' interest in the fund was a natural precipitate from a cloud of controversy hovering over the fund "for nearly a decade." That cloud, in Newsville, included complaints and questions about the fund raised by candidates Gil Hill and the Rev. Nicholas Hood III.
Over at the Freep, the line of causality was drawn more directly: "According to Internal Revenue Service memos, the federal tax agency has been interested in the nonprofit Kilpatrick Civic Fund since an Aug. 29, 2001, Free Press article revealed Kilpatrick solicited a $50,000 contribution from homeless shelter operator Jon Rutherford during his 2001 mayoral campaign."
And while the institutional kudos are in order, we were among those surprised that the Freep never deigned to mention that pivotal story in the Kilpatrick saga was written by somebody, specifically Freepster Patricia Montemurri. The fund story didn't dominate headlines for months; heck, it didn't even have any sex in it. But, especially considering its ramifications, News Hits thought it might at least be credited to an author.
News Hits is edited by Curt Guyette. Contact him at 313-202-8004 or [email protected]
