Korte questions KRQE coverage

KRQE ran a story a few days ago about an accused swindler teaching in APS, link.  It was a Larry Barker exclusive and prominently featured APS School Board Member and KRQE lawyer Marty Esquivel, both in the report and in a week long deluge of ads promoting the show.

For whatever other reasons he was selected, he was offered the slot to increase his voter recognition numbers in his (yet to be denied) campaign for re-election.

If he had had to pay for that much coverage, it would have cost him a bundle.  Maybe he was even paid to appear.  Did he do it on his own time or the school board dime?

In any event, APS School Board Member Kathy Korte, who announced her candidacy in a stump speech (on school board property), envies him the free exposure.

Korte objects to, and points out in
a comment she posted on a thread
accompanying the story; there is
at least one other board member
manifestly more qualified to speak on
behalf of the board than Marty Esquivel.

She wrote;

Don't know why Marty Esquivel was interviewed,
since LBJ is my school in District 2 ...

That and her wealth of personal experience with the teacher in question.

Kudos to Korte by the way, for standing up for the teacher she knew, in defense of the one who was recently revealed, and for walking the talk; innocent until proven guilty.

The board did not appoint
Esquivel as spokesperson
on this issue.  They did not
at least, in any public
meeting where that issue
appeared on the agenda. 

School Board Policy makes it
quite clear that individual
school board members don't
speak for the board except
at the behest of the board.

The Journal does the same thing for Esquivel; featuring him when they can, quoting him when they can, not quoting others with differing opinion.

Case in point; when the Journal covered the beginning of my litigation against APS and Esquivel in particular, they sought out a quote from him and not from me.  When they covered the Preliminary Injunction that ended Esquivel's lifetime ban on my participation in school board meetings, the Journal sought out a quote from him, and not from me.

I don't know who it is exactly, who is giving Esquivel a carte blanche at KRQE.  I don't know whose fist pounded on the table last, when KRQE decided to not pursue a public records request that would have exposed the cover up of felony criminal misconduct in the leadership of the APS Police force.

I am pretty sure I know who it is exactly, who is giving Esquivel preferential treatment in the Journal.  It is Journal Editor in Chief Kent Walz.

I cite in proof; that
he and Marty Esquivel
together, bamboozled
the NM FOG into giving
APS Supt Winston Brooks
a hero's award for
transparency, while at the
same time all three where
covering up the cover up
of state and federal felony
criminal misconduct.

Were these allegations not true;

Walz would insist that Esquivel and his lawyers produce the ethically redacted findings of investigations into allegations of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators,

and

Esquivel would hand them over happily.

That neither of those has happened and never will happen,
is not insignificant.




photos Mark Bralley