Let Each Reporter Tell His Own Lies

Dad with Elvis, circa '69 or '70. Elvis holds the Honorary Lieutenants badge my father presented to him.

I believe it was Norman Mailer who rhetorically asked: "Freedom of the press? Let each reporter tell his own lies! Now that's freedom of the press."

Denver's former police Chief Art Dill passed away recently and the Denver Post provided a nice story about the memorial service, written by the reporter, Claire Martin. However, part of Ms. Martin's reporting advised that, "...Dill became acting police chief in 1970. He was formally named chief two years later." This fact provided by Ms. Martin was in error.

I advised Ms. Martin of her error by emailing the following: "Per your stated policy that, 'The Denver Post will correct all errors occurring in its news columns,' please be advised that the September 15th Denver and the West section on page 3B re: Former Police Chief Dill Eulogized, note the following: '...Dill became acting police chief in 1970. He was formally named chief two years later.' This is factually in error. George L. Seaton was Chief of the Denver Police Department from January, 1968 through June, 1972. Mr. Dill was not '...acting police chief in 1970...' and this error should be corrected."

Ms. Martin responded to my email with the following: "Thank you for writing. Are you perhaps related to the George Seaton who was chief of the DPD? In fact, Art Dill was named as **acting** police chief in 1970, with chief Seaton continuing his post as the official DPD chief. I understood, from the police department staffers who confirmed this, that an acting police chief is more or less in training to be the chief of the department. I hope this clears up any misunderstanding."

My incredulous response to Ms. Martin: "You are absolutely incorrect and I would like to know who in the Department advised you of this erroneous information. You cannot have an 'Acting Chief' as well as a Chief of the Department. That's absurd. I was there. I am his son. I know the facts. Please advise who gave you this information. Additionally, Art Dill at one point during my father's incumbency as Chief, became a Division Chief of, I believe, the Administration Division. That is NOT an 'acting police chief' position. It would be absurd to carry a titular Chief for two and one-half years while another was in 'training.' Someone has their facts wrong and this ought to be corrected. Thank you."

After about twenty minutes, Ms. Martin emailed the following: "Mr. Seaton: Two of the DPD people I interviewed said that Dill had served 13 years,including 2 as acting chief. When I first looked at the clips (now on microfiche, and listed by headline on index cards), I associated a 1970 date with the story about McNichols naming Dill as acting chief; the following story, listed immediately below and dated in 1972, was the date that I should have linked to the acting chief story. The typed index cards aren't perfect, and neither are reporters, nor officers' memories. He was acting chief for 2 months, not 2 years, before becoming chief. I regret the error, particularly because I thought that I had taken the necessary effort to confirm the dates that the officers gave me. I will write a correction."

Ms. Martin, of course, never revealed who the "people" or "officers" were whose memories were faulty and who, she claims, contributed to her shaky reporting.

My final note to Ms. Martin: "I am sincerely grateful and do respect you for rechecking the facts and your willingness to correct the error. My intent in asking for this correction was not meant to, in any way, take anything away from the memory of Art Dill, who I fondly remember as a decent and honorable man. However, so too, I did not want the memory of my father's contribution to this city to be besmirched by some notion that he served only as a titular Chief while someone else actually ran the department. Thank you."

The correction which the Post printed contained the most minimal information, saying only that Mr. Dill served as "...Acting Chief for three months and not two years."

Now, forgive me if this post seems a little trite, like: Why on earth does it matter after all these years?

My father spent twenty-six years as a Denver cop. I spent twenty-three years as a public servant in Denver. That's almost fifty years combined. And, in those many, many years of serving the people of Denver -- my tenure as well as my father's -- please believe me when I tell you that the reporting of fact by Denver's robust media has, throughout history, been pretty much a crapshoot; something more akin to what a reporter imagines to be true, rather than what are actually the facts of any particular story. And, this little incident with Ms. Martin and the Post just seemed to provide one little example of the media's slipshod approach to reporting the facts.

For your information: Elvis Presley was fascinated with cops and the trappings of cops. While my father may have given him an honorary Lieutenants badge in probably '69 or '70, after my father retired, Elvis returned to Denver and the cops fawned all over the King -- who surely was high as a kite during the fawning -- resulting in Elvis giving select officers brand new Cadillacs and Lincolns. Elvis was very generous.

One short anecdote. The day Elvis met with my father, my father came home and, laughing like hell, related that Elvis spent the day kissing one woman after another -- mostly police department clerks and secretarys -- right on the lips. "And," my father laughed, "he had the damdest, ugliest looking canker sore on his lip that you'd ever want to see."

Herpes from Elvis? Maybe. Maybe not. But, I suspect there are some pretty old ladies out there who still talk about the day they kissed the King.

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
Thomas Jefferson