No Second Thoughts: Power to the People

We won’t lose any sleep over the fact that Pafford’s CEO, in a last-ditch effort to save face, threw us under the bus in front of the Clark County Quorum Court and before a standing-room-only crowd. Because a much larger bus, en route to a place called Regnat Populus, was barreling at high speed toward that CEO.

Without calling us by name, a multi-millionaire belittled local newspapers — a voice of truth for our community — and blamed us for her company’s poor public perception. What she failed to point out was that Pafford’s name, which we hadn’t even recognized until five months ago, was already mud to an outspoken web of first responders already familiar with the company’s shortcomings.

We first met Jamie Pafford Gresham, at her request, in the hours after she bought Baptist Health’s Arkadelphia ambulance fleet and in response to our news report that morning. With tears in our eyes we offered an apology to Mrs. Gresham for dragging her father’s sins into our reporting because, in hindsight, in wasn’t relevant to the story at hand. Hoping that the ambulance issue would soon be put to bed, we kept our reporting to a minimum. When top county officials seemed to be dragging their feet on the selection process, we reluctantly followed up, working from CHI St. Vincent Hospital while our dad was fighting a losing battle with cancer. Mrs. Gresham was more than polite when it came to checking on his condition and sending prayers, and for that we thank her. She’s more personable than most give her credit for, and that’s an applaudable attribute for a businessperson.

We suppose we fell out of her good graces once we posted an article regarding the cease and desist letters Mrs. Gresham sent to her most outspoken critics. Partly out of fear that we could be next in line, we consulted our own media law professor about her legal team’s efforts to stifle negativity and, in doing so, got a refresher course on the topic of prior restraint, a topic whose basics every U.S. citizen should familiarize themselves with.

Several weeks later, when we got our hands on an official government report of Pafford’s apparent failure to respond swiftly to medical emergencies, we fully intended to give Mrs. Gresham an opportunity to respond. We didn’t, and we regret that. We own our mistakes. She claimed our report was erroneous because it didn’t reflect her own numbers. For the record, the report included ambulance calls dispatched through the local 911 center — not the hundreds more, which she pointed out in an attempt to discount our work, that went directly to Pafford’s landline from our town’s two nursing homes or hospital. She poked holes in our reporting, relying on semantics to cast doubt in our work, but interestingly she didn’t refute the extraordinarily long response times included in the same report.

We very easily could have reported more had we acted on every tip that came through from readers, first responders, social media warriors and everyday citizens. Alas, there are only so many hours in a day, and so many rabbit holes to get lost in. Furthermore, we could have been much more detailed in our account of the two-hour meeting, but given our livestream received 35,000 views (and counting), we’re confident that the community is fully aware of what was said.

Yet we did something most newspapers covering Pafford’s service areas seem to have failed at. We acted as The Fourth Estate, ensuring government accountability and transparency; we fostered debate, allowing citizens to express their views and engage in an issue; and we documented the story, serving as a online archive so that, hopefully, a concerned citizen or understaffed newsroom in some other small town can ask questions when Pafford comes knocking at the door.

Contrary to the blame-shifting, we did our job, and we did it honestly. And at the end of the day, democracy won, corporate greed lost, and We The People can rest easy.