Jake Harris: Sheriff Joe ASU event ends amid controversy

By Jake A. Harris

An interview of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio conducted by reporters from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University in Phoenix Monday night ended prematurely due to disruptive protests.

Arpaio, has faced criticism among the media and charges of racial profiling during his illegal immigration sweeps.

Arpaio was chosen by ASU because he is “powerful, popular and controversial” said Cronkite dean Christopher Callahan, who pointed out that interrupting the protests eliminated the effectiveness of the three journalists’ questions.

“The scenario is you don’t want public scrutiny of this man,” Callahan told the protestors. “You don’t want reporters to be asking him tough questions.”

Questions asked ranged on topics from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s lack of response to public information requests to Arpaio’s personal relationship with the media.

“I’m the elected sheriff. I have to [communicate] to the people I represent,” Arpaio said. “I don’t have to have a public information officer follow me around. I have an open door policy for the media.”

The panel of journalists, Cronkite professors Rick Rodriguez, Susan Green and Steve Elliott, cited instances in which reporters were allegedly turned away from press conferences by the sheriff’s office.

“Most of the time I deal with the media is controversial,” he responded. “I’m not afraid to face the media no matter what the subject is.”

Arpaio elaborated that when a press conference is called, “it’s for a specific subject. If there are a couple instances where one or two reporters come in to get me or respond to other issues, they can do that in private,” he said.

The panelists also discussed several lawsuits in which the Arpaio’s office targeted members of the media for reporting unfavorably on the sheriff, including an instance where the MCSO allegedly refused to send press releases to a west valley newspaper.

In response, Arpaio said the MCSO began publishing its press releases online where anyone could access them.

As a result, “we did improve our relationship with that newspaper,” he said.

The panelists also addressed the arrest of two Phoenix New Times reporters who were arrested for allegedly reporting grand jury information.

“I presume that is a violation of the law. The issue is that my chief deputy made a decision to put those two people under arrest,” he said. “There is a logical reason for everything we’ve done in that investigation.”

Arpaio refused to elaborate or answer questions directly on either the New Times or West Valley View cases, citing pending litigation.

The panel also addressed the MCSO’s responsiveness to public records requests and accusations of stalling reporters and unnecessarily redacting information for which it has no legal right.

The Sheriff wondered aloud whether media purposely filed “thousands and thousands” of reports with the intention of complaining when each request wasn’t handled in a timely manner.

“When you ask for tons of information… That takes time. It all depends on the circumstance in the situation… There has to be a little line [to wait in],” he said. “We’re going to try to get to it as quickly as we can,” he said.

The event was brought to a close 10 minutes early after the panelists posed a question of whether the Sheriff viewed himself above the law, in light of his recent public refusal to cooperate in the federal investigation into allegations that the MCSO racially profiles during its illegal immigration raids.

Before the Sheriff could fully respond, a group of protestors in the mostly-student crowd sung a parody of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” denouncing the sheriff’s tactics.

Peoria Resident ASU Journalism junior Chris Ogino summed the disruption up as “interesting.”

He said he wasn’t sure if the group got their point across.

“I think it reflects badly overall,” he said. “I don’t think that’s really their point, but I don’t care.”

Green said after the event that she thinks things still went well, in spite of the protestors. She said the point was to show the school’s journalists how to ask questions in different ways to get responses out of tougher interview subjects.

“The point of this was to teach the students how to ask tough questions,” she said. “If you don’t get the answer that you want, just keep asking it.”

Green said the problem wasn’t the protestors, but the fact that they forced an end to a discussion that included difficult questions aimed at the sheriff.

“I don’t have a problem with people protesting,” she said. “We had 12 minutes of great questions that we didn’t get to ask. What I wish is that they would have waited until the end.”

H/T

Jake Harris is a student at ASU.  Jake attended Monday Night’s debacle and contributed this article to SWR.