KOAT Target 7 Investigates the insipid, ignores the important.

All week long, KOAT TV had been touting its investigation
into APS student records that had not been protected.

When the story finally aired last night, we found that a small
handful of records turned up somewhere they should not have
been, no one knows how they got there, and the APS has taken
appropriate steps to insure that it doesn't happen again.

So what?

At the same time, Target 7 Investigates sees nothing worth
investigating about the fact that;

1. there is not a single senior role model in the leadership of the APS, who can be held honestly and actually accountable to the APS Student Standards of Conduct, or that
2. the leadership of the APS is suppressing evidence of criminal misconduct in the APS Police Department scandal, and has suppressed that evidence long enough for statutes of limitation to expire, thereby protecting senior APS administrators from the consequences of felony criminal misconduct, or that,
3. APS will be asking taxpayers to pony up another $650M in a bond election next February, while steadfastly refusing to conduct an impartial audit of the standards and accountability that are supposed to protect taxpayer investments from waste due to incompetence and corruption.

So why does Target 7 target the insipid and ignore the important?

I suspect that it is due to the influence
of the President and CEO of the
NM Broadcasters Association,
Paula Maes. In particular, her influence
on Mary Lynn Roper, who is also an
officer in the NMBA, and who is the
President and General Manager
at KOAT.

Maes, still an APS School Board heavy
hitter, and while serving as the School
Board President, once boasted that
she would never agree to any audit of the APS, that would name the names of the corrupt and the incompetent in the leadership of the APS.

So far, she has made good on her boast. There has never been,
and there likely will never be, any audit that names the names
of any of the good ol' boys who are not doing their jobs.

APS' last audit, an internal audit of APS Administrative Functions, found that there were senior APS administrators who confounded audit results by failing to respond to repeated inquiries from the auditor. The audit did not name those administrators. Nor is there any indication what so ever, that there is any consequence at all for APS senior administrators who ignore auditors' requests for information.

While community interests would clearly be served by a Target 7 Investigation of

• APS' refusal to conduct an impartial standards and accountability audit,
• their refusal to hold themselves honestly accountable as role models of the student standards of conduct, and of
• the Peanut Butter Gate Scandal in the APS Police Department,

the movers and shakers at KOAT will never investigate the real incompetence and corruption in the leadership of the APS.

Nor will any other news outlet whose leadership serves with Maes in the NMBA.

It's just not the way they roll.




photo Mark Bralley