(Picture by Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press)
As a former resident of downtown Detroit, for more than seven years, I am very proud of the Detroit Free Press.A city like Detroit needs real Watchdog Journalism.So, here it goes …It seems now that Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff lied about their relationship last summer at a police whistle-blower trial that has cost the cash-strapped city more than $9 million, according to records obtained by the Detroit Free Press.
These are excerpts from SkyTel text message printouts that show communication between Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty.Thanks to the Free Press we know now that Kilpatrick and Beatty, both 37, exchanged personal messages almost daily, including romantic notes.The Free Press reviewed nearly 14,000 text messages received and sent from Beatty’s city-issued pager in 2002 and 2003.Basic reporting always pays! More than 1,300 messages have been posted on freep.com since Wednesday night when the Free Press broke the story about Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick lying.The irony of the scandal is that if the mayor and his top aide had used a regular cell phone and text messaging service from Verizon, AT&T or Sprint, there would be no record.Those messages are simply passed through to the connected devices by the wireless companies and not stored on any master server.But the mayor used SkyTel, which stores the messages.And by using the city-paid private messaging services from SkyTel for his very personal communications, the mayor left a trail that the Free Press uncovered.When you use a city-owned device on a taxpayer-paid communications system to plot your dalliances, there is no such thing as privacy.Free Press lawyer Herschel Fink, and the reporters Jim Schaefer and M. L. Elrick, deserve the credit for the investigation.I am sure that the Detroit Free Press is selling more copies than ever.Good for them.Watchdog journalism sells!