Just the Truth

by Gen LaGreca

  "We've been through this, Laura," Clark said, interrupting her. "Even if there was some truth to your charges, why should we be the ones to stick our necks out?"

  "Because we're a news organization!" Laura said hotly.

  "We're not," said Irene.

  "And we're not," echoed Billie.

  "I'm in a terrible situation," said Laura, her voice low, her face troubled. "I don't want to hurt the company, and yet I can't give up this case!" She looked at Sam, who nodded sympathetically. "So, I'd like you to consider spinning off Taninger News. I mean, allowing me to buy the news division from the parent company."

  She saw surprised looks on some of the faces, but not her father's, as if he had contemplated the proposition she now raised.

  Clark shook his head. "I'm sorry to inform you that what you're proposing won't work."

  "Why not?" Laura asked suspiciously. "You've already discussed it with the Feds. Haven't you?"

  "I have to admit," said Clark, "that I thought of the idea myself. I thought of Laura changing the name of Taninger News and starting a completely new media organization of her own, with no association to our family. That way, Taninger Enterprises would be rid of its biggest problem. I've had . . . private conversations with . . . people . . . in the highest places. But that won't stop them. They believe that having Taninger News untethered to the other family businesses would make Laura even more . . . unmanageable."

  "So now it's the Feds' job to manage me?" Laura hotly.

  The group listened soberly.

  "Laura," Clark continued, "they'd only go after your new company with the same charges they brought against Taninger News, so you wouldn't be out of the woods. It would be nonsense, of course, but they'd tie you up in court for as long as it took to ruin you. Millions of dollars, just up in smoke. And they'd find powerful inducements for Taninger Enterprises not to do the spin-off. You see, I know what they really want. I know what spawned this lawsuit to break up our news division, and I know how to make it go away."

  "How?" asked Bert Franklin.

  "They want Laura out of the news business. They want new programming on our network without her influencing it."

  "You mean, you went to Martin's people, and you found out they'll leave us alone if you destroy your daughter?" Laura charged.

  "You'll never understand, will you?" Clark pointed an angry finger at Laura. "You never get into their motivation and their point of view."

  "You mean their need to break up our family and our business? That's what you want to accommodate?"

  "I have a company to run, and that's getting harder and harder to do with you in it!" Clark charged.

  "You know," Laura commented, "we're all operating on the premise that the administration will win in bullying us. What if that's wrong? What if we'll win? All of our divisions are profitable right now, and my show is still number one in TV news. The pressure is real, but the support I'm receiving from my audience is just as potent, and it needs to be recognized. What if we get to the bottom of what's going on at Elections and bring it the public? If we're right, and we can expose the corruption, we'll save the country. Did you ever think of that?"

  "Yes!" Kate was jumping out of her seat in affirmation, a hot flame in the midst of cooler embers. The others were more circumspect, their faces skeptical.

  "Are we journalists? Are we an independent and free press?" asked Laura. "Or are we the lackeys of those in power?"

  "All right," said Clark. "We've all had our say. If there's nothing more, I'd like to take the vote and be done with it."

  No one argued.

  "Okay, Caroline," said Clark, turning to his assistant. "Kate, you will please move away from the table, so only the seven directors are seated here."

  As Kate obliged, she turned to her trustee, saying, "Erica, you know what I want done with my shares."

  "And don't browbeat Erica!" Clark admonished.

  Erica smiled at Kate but gave no hint of how she would vote.

  Caroline placed a small card and envelope in front of each of the directors. The card contained one simple question, with an option to check Yes or No under it: Should Laura Taninger be removed as president of Taninger News?

  "This is a secret ballot," Clark explained. "Please answer the question on the card in front of you, then place it in the envelope and seal it."

  When everyone was finished, Caroline collected the seven sealed envelopes and brought them to her place.

  "Should Laura be removed?" Caroline said, restating the question and opening the first envelope. It made a loud tearing sound in the silent room. Then, she removed the card.

  "Yes," Caroline reported.

  She placed the card on the table; then, she opened the second envelope.

  "No." She placed that card next to the other, starting separate stacks for the yesses and nos.

  She opened the third envelope. "Yes."

  Then the fourth one. "Yes. We have three yesses and one no," she reported.

  She opened the fifth one. "No."

  Then, the sixth one. "No. That's three yesses and three nos."

  The tension in the room mirrored a high-stakes poker game that was coming down to the final card. Everyone stared at Caroline as she picked up the last sealed envelope.

  Caroline broke the seal and repeated the question: "Should Laura be removed as president of Taninger News?" She removed the final card. With a hint of sadness, she gave the result that sealed Laura's fate.

  "Yes."

  Clark sighed in relief. "The yesses have it, four to three."

  Laura's face went white. She sat in mannequin-like stillness. She tried to force her mind to focus on one goal: to get through this meeting with dignity.

  Nevertheless, her thoughts wandered. While other children had to read books to find tales of adventure, Laura's childhood was filled with real-life excitements, courtesy of JT and the family business. She remembered when she was five years old, and JT took her through the paper mills. She watched in awe as newspapers were printed at breakneck speed. When she was six years old, she loved to play on the floor in JT's office while he sat working at his desk. "You're going to be sitting here in my chair one day," he had told her. Could she? The child wondered at something unimaginable. If JT thought she could do his job, then maybe . . . just maybe . . .

  She loved being around him, loved the excitement of the newsroom, loved the lively phone conversations, the people coming and going with questions to ask, decisions to be made—all of it making her childhood one thrilling roller-coaster ride. When she was old enough, she began working at Taninger News, first in the mailroom, then as a beat reporter, then in the television studio. She learned every job. The family business became inseparably meshed with her life.

  She mustn't think back. Not now! She had to get through this meeting.

  "In accordance with our bylaws," said Clark, "I will take over the management of Taninger News until a new president is appointed."

  When she'd written her first editorials, given her first news reports, had her first editing job at the television network, and then, produced her first program, JT had been proud of her. He'd given her the confidence to take on more and more responsibility. When she'd won a prestigious award for investigative journalism, he'd had the certificate framed and hung it on the wall behind his desk. Every visitor to his office was regaled with the story of his brilliant granddaughter's achievement.

  "The first decision I'm making as acting president of Taninger News is this: I hereby cancel the program Just the Truth. Its host, Laura Taninger, will not appear on the network again or have any say in its programming or operations. Laura is relieved of her responsibilities," Clark announced.

  JT had lived to see his protégée rise to become president of Taninger News. When JT was bedridden in his old age, Laura remembered how he smiled at her with the boyish optimism of youth. "I'm leaving the company in good hands," he'd said, clutching her hands in his.

  "I thank Laura for her
many years of hard work and company loyalty," said Clark with a forced pleasantness.

  The directors looked wooden, their eyes avoiding Laura, except for Irene, who gloated with satisfaction, and Kate, whose eyes became two basins filling with water and whose body stiffened, resolved not to let any of the tears fall.

  "We will work out a generous severance package," Clark said, smiling at Laura. He raised his eyebrows hopefully, as if anticipating acknowledgment of a fair deal, but she did not smile in return.

  Chapter 21

  Is the Martin Administration Rigging the Election?

  Laura posed the question in the title of her explosive new commentary, detailing her findings and conclusions about SafeVote, its mysterious contractor, and the upcoming presidential election. She contacted the major national news outlets, seeking a place that would publish her piece, but other forces were already in play to defeat her.

  Following Laura's dismissal, Taninger Enterprises issued a brief statement: "Laura Taninger is no longer the president of Taninger News. Clark Taninger will take over as the acting head of the network until a new president is appointed. Taninger News will be announcing new programming to replace Just the Truth, the show Ms. Taninger hosted."

  Zack Walker and Darcy Egan quickly released their own talking points to the media. "We understand that Laura Taninger was voted out by the company's board of directors. We've heard from our sources that the board had serious reservations about her volatile temperament, which they deemed as unsuitable for running a news organization and hosting a prime-time program. Some at the company may have also suspected that mental-health issues and psychological instability were at play."

  Zack and Darcy fed these talking points to their friends in the media. They also fed them to partisan organizations that supported the president, yet had vague, nonpartisan-sounding names like the Alliance for Democracy, Citizens for Universal Justice, and the Center for Voting Equality. These organizations communicated the same content as was expressed in the talking points to members of the media, creating the appearance that there were multiple, independent sources for the allegations against Laura, other than the mothership at the People's Manor.

  The news stories followed: "Reliable, anonymous sources cite mental instability as the cause of Laura Taninger's dismissal." No one called Laura for her side of the story. Due to the influence of Zack and others like him, it was becoming more and more common for people to be mischaracterized by faulty reporting, with the subjects, themselves, never interviewed to obtain their comments. One reporter was too lazy to verify independently the facts assumed in the story, so he uncritically posted the talking points he received. Another reporter, eager to get ahead, and wanting to please her boss, who had a merger pending that required federal approval, welcomed any story favorable to the Martin administration or unfavorable to its critics. A third reporter was a fanatical supporter of the president and gleefully eager to smash his enemies, not with arguments and policy positions, but with character assassinations and smears.

  With rumors spreading that Laura had mental-health problems, and anger-control challenges, her credibility was undercut. Editors presented with Laura's article had heard those stories and had them in the back of their minds when they politely declined to publish Laura's work. No major outlet dealing in the national news media would take on the article.

  She tried to run her commentary as a full-page paid advertisement in leading newspapers, but they refused to accept it. She tried getting her story out as a press release, but the news agencies handling them declined her submission. It's too divisive, she was told. It doesn't conform to our editorial standards, she was told repeatedly by people who refused to answer when she asked what standard she had failed to meet.

  Implicitly, Laura knew the real reason for her ostracism. Everyone knew, she thought, but no one would admit it. No other outlet wanted the repercussions that Taninger Enterprises had faced from powerful forces that could cause a world of trouble for businesses that they considered to be adversaries. All of the major news outlets had vulnerabilities with which they could be manipulated— taxes, employment regulations, environmental audits, etc. Behind all the rejections, Laura sensed fear.

  She was now radioactive.

  During the week after she was fired, Laura discovered that a change in fortune was occurring at her family's corporation.

  In a piece published on a popular online site called Entertainment News Today, she read that Irene Taninger was awarded an exclusive interview with President Ken Martin and his wife. A rare, behind-the-scenes look at their private quarters at the People's Manor would air on Taninger Entertainment. The program was expected to draw record ratings for the network.

  On the sports pages of a local newspaper, Laura found an article describing how the Federal Bureau of Building Safety was relaxing its action against the DC Slammers' new stadium. The agency decided to allow Taninger Sports to delay installation of its replacement seating until after the season was over so that the DC Slammers' new stadium could open without further delay. The reason the article gave for the agency's relenting was that it was sensitive to the undue hardship on the fans.

  Buried on one of the back pages of another newspaper, Laura read that the Bureau of Fair Trade had dropped its action against Taninger News. This reversal at Fair Trade came about just as Clark was transforming the company's news practices. He had replaced Laura's hard-hitting, prime-time news hour with a program that offered just a mere few minutes of news, before it turned to less somber subjects, such as fashion, sports, movies, and what it called human-interest stories. A preliminary investigation was completed by Fair Trade, showing no cause to pursue further any charges of monopolistic activities against Taninger News. The practices at the company were found to be properly serving the public interest.

  Even Kate Taninger was offered a pathway to reenter Collier University, according to an article Laura saw as she perused the recent online issue of the Collier Dispatch. Concerned about the future of a wayward former student, Dean Folner reached out to Kate with a generous opportunity to rejoin the Collier community, the article stated, but Kate declined.

  Of his own accord, Sam Quinn quietly continued to provide legal help to Laura in her quest for documents from the Bureau of Elections. Two weeks after Judge Marianne Rogers had dismissed the case against the Bureau of Elections—strongly advising the agency to hasten its release of the petitioned documents, or else Laura Taninger could refile the suit—the agency had not complied. Now, on behalf of Laura as a freelance journalist, Sam sued Elections again.

  A week after her firing, she and Sam had been successful in court. A new judge assigned to the case, Garrett Davidson, had allowed the suit. He reprimanded Elections for its stalling and ordered the agency to release the documents Laura requested within—yet another!—five working days.

  "That means we'll get the documents next Monday or Tuesday, at the earliest. That brings us to October 31—just a week before Election Day!" Laura said. "It gives us almost no time at all, especially if Elections finds more ways to stall or only partially comply."

  "We'll do what we can," Sam replied, sounding as frustrated as she was.

  She recollected the week's events as she stood on the street outside her row house. She looked down the block, waiting for Sean Browne's car to pull up. She had called him that day and arranged to have dinner with him.

  Lately, she had the uneasy feeling that she was being followed. The other day, she saw a man behind the wheel of a parked car near where she stood to hail a cab. When she got into the taxi, she noticed that the car started out after them. She thought she noticed the same car stopping down the street, behind where the cab was dropping her off. But it was dark, traffic was heavy, and the black car she suspected resembled many others on the road, so she couldn't be sure. Now, waiting for Sean, she wondered if the man who seemed to be talking on his phone in a black car parked near her home was the same man whom she thought was following her the o
ther day. He was parked in one of the several residential driveways on her block that saw little activity, making them ideal places for watching people. When Sean arrived, she strained to see the man in the parked car behind them. She saw the car pulling out. Was it following them? The vehicle soon merged with other traffic before she could be sure it was tailing her.

  When they were seated in their usual table at The Waves, Sean kept his menu closed, leaned back, and savored the sight of her sleek auburn hair falling onto a pink sweater, the soft curves of her body under her clothes, and the translucent brown eyes looking at him.

  "It's been a while since we've done this," he said, his pleasure at their meeting obvious.

  "I guess it has."

  "It was about a month ago when you had cocktails with Senator Taylor, and I picked you up at the bar afterwards and took you here. We used to get together for dinner more often than that."

  "We did."

  "Laura, I know you're going through a terrible time."

  "I am."

  "I wasn't sure if I should call you, granted my new position."

  "Do you feel your work for the president is . . . compromised . . . by seeing me?"

  "Darcy hasn't yet said anything about my dinner dates. So I guess I'm still on my own for that." At the mention of his supervisor, he looked down worriedly. Then he looked across the table at Laura, and his doubts vanished. "I have to say, I was glad you called and suggested this. It seems like old times."

  "Except we're not the same people we once were, are we, Sean?"

  "My feelings haven't changed."

  "Things have changed radically for me, as you no doubt know."

  "I'm very sorry about your job," he said, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand sympathetically. "How are you holding up?"