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Article published Mar 26, 2005
TV reporter earned money from state

By Chris Davis and Matthew Doig

At the same time one of Florida's most visible television reporters brought the news to viewers around the state, he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars on the side from the government agencies he covered.

Mike Vasilinda, a 30-year veteran of the Tallahassee press corps, does public relations work and provides film editing services to more than a dozen state agencies.

His Tallahassee company, Mike Vasilinda Productions Inc., has earned more than $100,000 over the past four years through contracts with Gov. Jeb Bush's office, the Secretary of State, the Department of Education and other government entities that are routinely part of Vasilinda's stories.

Vasilinda also was paid to work on campaign ads for at least one politician and to create a promotional movie for Leon County. One of his biggest state contracts was a 1996 deal that paid nearly $900,000 to air the weekly drawing for the Florida Lottery.

Meanwhile, the freelance reporter's stories continued to air on CNN and most Florida NBC stations, including WFLA-Channel 8 in Tampa.

On Friday, Vasilinda told the Herald-Tribune that his business dealings with state government don't influence his reporting.

"I have processes in place to make sure the products we put out for our news clients are free from bias from any source," Vasilinda said. "We absolutely keep arm's length between the two divisions of our company."

But Bob Steele, a journalism ethics professor at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, said Vasilinda's state government work "certainly raises some red flags."

"Journalists should be guided by a principle of independence, and their primary loyalty should be to the public," Steele said. "When journalists have loyalties to a government office or government agencies, those competing loyalties can undermine journalistic independence."

Vasilinda's stories reach millions of viewers because he sells them through Capitol News Service, the television wire service he founded and runs in Tallahassee. NBC and other stations subscribe to Capitol News Service and then can download and air any segments done by Vasilinda or the reporters who work for him.

Steele said Vasilinda's government contracts are the latest blow to media credibility following the revelation earlier this year that three journalists were accepting government contracts to promote certain programs.

In January, USA Today revealed that President George W. Bush's administration had paid conservative columnist Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote No Child Left Behind, the president's education reform law.

After the Williams flap went public, two more conservative columnists were exposed for accepting money to promote Bush's beliefs on marriage.

Vasilinda said his situation is nothing like Williams' because he has not personally promoted any government programs or appeared in any of the videos his business produced.

In fact, Vasilinda has a reputation for being among the most aggressive reporters covering government in Tallahassee.

"No one has ever suggested that our coverage, in any way, is soft on anybody," Vasilinda said. "The proof is in the pudding."

Steele said that argument doesn't work because being unbiased is only partly about what gets on the air.

"We don't know everything he passed up, questions he didn't ask, issues he didn't explore," Steele said.

Many of the agencies that have contracted with Vasilinda were unable to provide details of the contracts late Friday.

In January, a Herald-Tribune reporter left repeated messages with Gov. Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj requesting information about whether any journalists have received money from state agencies.

Faraj, who worked for Vasilinda at Capitol News Service before she was hired by the Bush administration, never responded. Faraj also did not return calls Friday seeking comment for this story.

State officials from several agencies said Vasilinda Productions has created promotional videos, filmed public service announcements featuring prominent government officials and made copies of videos and compact disks for agencies. Several years ago, Vasilinda Productions produced a back-to-school video featuring then-Education Commissioner Charlie Crist who went on to become Attorney General and is now considered a contender for governor in 2006.

The fact that Vasilinda works for government agencies is widely known among reporters and government officials in Tallahassee.

At a press conference in front of other reporters in 1996, then-Sen. Jack Latvala, a Republican from Palm Harbor, singled out Vasilinda for accepting the lottery contract.

But viewers around the state have never been told of Vasilinda's broad financial ties to state government.

In fact, several television executives at Florida's NBC affiliates -- stations associated with but not owned by NBC -- said they were unaware of Vasilinda's contracts and would not comment on them until they had more information.

CNN, which aired a Vasilinda story on Terri Schiavo on Thursday, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The only NBC-owned news station in Florida, WTBJ in Miami, said it will review the situation with Vasilinda and won't run any stories he produces until they have completed the review.

WFLA News Director Forrest Carr said he knew that Vasilinda had been hired by the state but did not know how many contracts or how much money Vasilinda had been paid.

Carr said Vasilinda's business is separate from his news reporting and does not represent a conflict of interest that concerns WFLA. The station doesn't plan to stop airing Vasilinda stories, Carr said.

"We have discussed this. He assures me he has safeguards in place," Carr said. "He would not allow himself to be in a position where he would allow his journalism to be compromised."

Carr points out that most media companies have government contracts, but they are carried out by people who aren't involved in news coverage. Because Vasilinda runs a small business, he's unable to separate the business and news side of his organization, Carr said.

The Tampa Tribune, which shares some content with WFLA and has cited Vasilinda as a contributing reporter for at least one story, plans to review how Vasilinda separates his contracting business from his news coverage, said Executive Editor Janet Weaver.

"I want to make sure that any journalist that is contributing to our report is not entangled with any sort of government influence," Weaver said.

Vasilinda told the Herald-Tribune on Friday that he is not involved in the production or content for his government contracts. But he said he is involved in business decisions for Vasilinda Productions as well as news decisions at Capitol News Service.

Vasilinda said he would not allow the reporters who work for him to accept state money from government agencies.

The Herald-Tribune's affiliated cable news station, SNN 6, has determined that it ran at least one story produced by Vasilinda. The station will no longer run any stories produced by Vasilinda, said SNN General Manager Lou Ferrara.

"The SNN staff has been alerted not to use that material because it looks like a conflict of interest," Ferrara said. "How do you expect to look 100 percent clean if you are being paid by the government you're supposed to be covering?"

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