Reporters story squashed

This just in from our tip line: AM 770, KKOB, out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been accused of suppressing a story, after being pressured from Heather Wilson's campaign staff, of potential vote buying at the recent Bernalillo County Republican Party delegate nominating convention. Laura MacCallum, a 32 year veteran reporter, tendered her resignation after the station squashed her reporting on the subject.

Additional info

Background here.

A story rebutting the allegations is here.

Our take

We believe the story merits further investigation and that KKOB should have pursued it by assigning more resources to the story. It may be that the story does not pan out - that remains to be seen - but it's impossible to determine that without investigating. By stopping a reporter's investigations, KKOB seems to have been more interested in appeasing certain political power players than in getting to the bottom of the story. Again, we at Socorro News are presently not prepared to state definitely that laws (or common norms of ethics) were broken, because we have not independently corroborated the story. However, we should note that KKOB is really not a serious news service, so none of this surprises us. KKOB's business is "infotainment" and not real news.