The N&O's coverage of Jim Black and the lottery led to some eyebrow-raising activities last week by main characters in the controversy.

Black, speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, was refusing to speak to reporters for The N&O. At one point, he wheeled out of the legislative garage after he spotted two N&O reporters waiting at his parking space. Later, encountered by a reporter at the State Fair, Black said The N&O's coverage has been distorted and misleading.

In a letter to the editor Wednesday, one of Black's appointees to the state Lottery Commission accused the paper of "tabloid-style opinion journalism." The letter from Kevin Geddings said, "I respect your strong opposition to the implementation of the N.C. education lottery. I am in awe of your ability to destroy a person's reputation via innuendo and selective reporting."

That's the kind of language that perks up a public editor's ears, so I tried to reach the aggrieved parties to get them to expand on their concerns. Black did not respond to my messages asking him to elaborate on how The N&O coverage was distorted and misleading.

Geddings, a Charlotte public relations professional, did talk to me. His grievance, he said, was that the coverage made it look like he was somehow unethical and deceptive, when he actually had tried to be forthcoming with The N&O about his dealings over the lottery.

"The problem is the general image, that it comes out that somehow I am ethically suspect," he said. "Hey, if I have some financial interest in the lottery, you guys ought to nail me to the wall. But that's not the case....The key to this is disclosure. I think I have worked very hard with you all to put all this out there."

The paper reported in two stories about Geddings' relationship with Alan Middleton, vice president of Scientific Games Inc., a lottery business expected to bid for the North Carolina contract. In the first story, reporting Geddings' appointment by Black, Geddings acknowledged that he had been friends with Middleton since the 1980s and that Middleton had sublet office space from him at one time.

In the subsequent story, The N&O used records from a court case to report that Geddings and Middleton were more than friends, that Middleton had been a subcontractor for Geddings in seeking public relations work. That story said both men previously had denied having a business relationship.

In the phone interview with me, Geddings said that second story incorrectly made it look as if he were hiding something from the reporter. He said he felt he had been open about his friendship and lease arrangement with Middleton and didn't think it necessary to disclose specifics of the business deal to N&O reporter J. Andrew Curliss. "I can see from his perspective how that might seem not honest," Geddings said. "I wanted to be open, but he never asked specific questions about that."

Curliss says he asked Geddings specifically whether he and Middleton had ever sought public relations work together, and Geddings said no. He phrased that question deliberately, Curliss said, because he already was aware of documents detailing their relationship.

So did The N&O use "innuendo and selective reporting" in describing Geddings' relationship? I'll let you be the judge of that.

In writing his letter to the editor, Geddings was mad at The N&O for an editorial saying he shouldn't be on the Lottery Commission. "The paper is trying to limit the success and effectiveness of North Carolina's new education lottery by aiming tabloid-style opinion journalism at the lottery in its early formative stages," he wrote.

I've stated this before, but it's worth restating, that the editorial and news-reporting sides of the house don't work hand-in-hand. The editorial writers don't tell the reporters what to cover, and reporters and editors don't feed editorial ideas to the opinion staff.

It is noteworthy that Geddings is a public relations professional. He told me that he had advised Black before his appointment was made that Geddings' relationship with Middleton would raise questions in the press. The speaker, Geddings said, was not concerned about that.

Here's another piece of PR advice that he might share: It seldom benefits a politician not to respond to questions from the press. Black's clam imitation is not helping his case with the public.

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