(WXYZ) - “Pay to play,” they call it. If you want to land a lucrative contract with the City of Detroit, you’ve got to pay the right people. Now, Steve Wilson has found some city council candidates have been playing that game to help get elected.
WATCH STEVE WILSON'S REPORT IN THE VIDEO PLAYER ON THE RIGHTVoters would have been none the wiser, until one of those candidates had the courage to speak up.
It’s Karinda Washington’s second run for city council. She lost in ’05, even with great endorsements, but she’s trying hard again. It’s not easy trying to stand out in a field of more than 160 candidates, especially, she says, when even some media have been infected with the “pay-to-play” approach that’s already corrupted city government.
Karinda Washington/Detroit City Council Candidate: But somebody has to stand up just for the sake of being right. Just telling, just doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing, that’s what this is all about.
In community rooms and church halls across the city, candidates are struggling to make themselves known to voters.
Kenneth Donaldson/Detroit City Council Candidate: Oh, it’s definitely a challenge if you don’t already have a big name.
Even a well-connected associate director of Detroit’s Black United Funds is finding it’s hard to make real headway with just a few voters at a time.
Wilson: Would some television exposure give you a leg up?
Donaldson: Oh that’s what we need more than anything!
Jai-Lee Dearing/Detroit City Council Candidate: Definitely, but with the economy the way it is, it’s hard to fund raise.
Yet some are getting on TV.
Mildred Gaddis (from The Mildred Gaddis Show): Two of those candidates, and I’ve got to say two of the very competent ones in the race, are joining me here on the show today.
And this is a prime example of what Karinda Washington says is so wrong.
Washington: It is valuable to have an interview, however I feel that the lack of integrity comes in when an interviewer asks for money in exchange of the interview.
The “interviewer” is Mildred Gaddis. She’s the veteran Detroit broadcaster who’s made a good name for herself on her very popular morning radio program
Inside Detroit. A couple of years ago she came to WADL to also produce and host a half-hour weekly television broadcast. Channel 38, long known for its TV preachers, has added new programming to branch out and build an audience, but the station doesn’t give Mildred Gaddis a paycheck for her television work.
Lewis Gibbs/President, WADL-TV: She is compensated by who she gets on the program, commercials that she runs, interviews that she does, those people pay Mildred Gaddis to be on her block programming time.
That’s right. Gaddis, who insists she’s a journalist, interviews for her meet-the-candidate series only those who will pay her to interview them and provide a couple of commercials. That’s why Charles Pugh and Delicia Taylor-Coleman are sitting on the set there.
Charles Pugh/Detroit City Council Candidate: We were asked if we wanted to come on the show and we paid $1,000 for the appearance on the show.
Mildred Gaddis (from The Mildred Gaddis Show): This man is awesome and you know him, you’ve seen him on television for years, native Detroiter, Mr. Charles Pugh. How ya doing?
Pugh: Hi.
Wilson: The average viewer would think they were watching a news information broadcast and yet you paid to be on it.
Pugh: Yes, from our perspective it was a commercial or basically an infomercial for our campaign.
And Pugh, who left his job as a TV journalist, knows what’s wrong with this picture. Nobody mentions to viewers it’s an infomercial, an appearance the candidate paid for.
Wilson: And you didn’t care whether it was labeled that way or not?
Pugh: It would have been nice to have been interviewed that way.
Washington: The viewer is thinking that here’s a journalist, here’s a leader in our community who’s interviewing candidates…I think when listeners know that people paid a thousand dollars, they will look at those interviews totally different because here you are, you paid money in order to get an interview.
How could the station, licensed to use the public airwaves in the public interest, allow that to happen? First, the station manager, says:
Gibbs: Exactly what Mildred Gaddis gets from the interviewee is something I think you need to take up with Mildred Gaddis because I’m not aware of the arrangement she has with the interviewee.
And less than two minutes later, he admits he knew this:
Wilson: Those who go on the air were those who would pay, true?
Gibbs: Fair statement.
We’ve got plenty to take up with Mildred Gaddis face-to-face when I’m back at 11 to continue. And we’ll name other broadcasters in town who will also take your money to put you on the air, hoping nobody’s the wiser.
If you have a tip for the Action News Investigative Team, contact us at wilson@wxyz.com or at (248) 827-9466.
