I haven’t followed this story and only heard of the scandal once before of Maryland’s Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich, the State, two Baltimore Sun staff, and Willard Hackerman. This paragraph, presumably, provides all the background:
“Ehrlich’s ban, now six months old, forbids state executive branch employees from speaking with Sun columnist Michael Olesker and Maryland political editor David Nitkin. The ban was imposed after Nitkin disclosed a state proposal to sell 836 acres of preserved forestland in St. Mary’s County to Willard Hackerman, a politically connected construction company owner, in a deal that could have netted him millions of dollars in tax breaks.”
The existance of the proposal cannot be misreported, nor can the intended beneficiary Hackerman be a misnomer. Hackerman’s history and the quality of his political connections can only be exaggerated. The two messages here that could be duplicitous are a) that the ‘ban’ was extended to the reporters for the entire reason of shutting them up for being right, and b) that Hackerman’s assumed involvement is in fact quite evidence of corruption. There is a faint sense of fairness in this case: the ‘ban’ might have been for erreonous and deceptive reporting, and that Hackerman is indeed sufficiently innocent (as is the state).
Unfortunately, the affair itself, and the reactions to it by the governor, seem very suspect. People are, and should be, furious.
Sun backed in lawsuit challenging Ehrlich ban [The Baltimore Sun]