Von Pinnon: We chose to report audit findings without reaction

Talk about it

Ever since our Tuesday exclusive on the state insurance department’s financial exam of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, two main questions have surfaced about our reporting:

1. Why, if it was illegal for the report to be made public before a two-week waiting period by both the Insurance Department and Blue Cross Blue Shield, did The Forum have it? And, just because we had it, why was it not illegal for us to have it or report on it?

The report was leaked to us by someone who had it.

While it may have been illegal for that person to disseminate it, we are allowed to report on anything we know. The Supreme Court guaranteed those First Amendment rights as a result of the famous Pentagon Papers case in 1971.

In that case, top-secret documents about the start of the Vietnam War were leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post, which began publishing them until government officials tried to stop them with a court injunction. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the newspapers and their role in upholding the First Amendment.

The contents of the Pentagon Papers are widely believed to have changed public sentiment toward the Vietnam War and ultimately U.S. involvement in it.

Most news agencies would never knowingly break the law in order to report something (we’re afforded no special rights that citizens aren’t), but there have been rare cases in which news agencies have broken the law to obtain information they feel the public must know for their own safety and well-being.

2. Why did we not contact Blue Cross Blue Shield officials for their comments or explanations about the exam before we published its results?

In hindsight, we probably should have contacted both Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm and Blues officials for comments and more information.

That said, we felt our readers ought to know the results of the audit before hearing reaction to it.

Historically, disputes between Blue Cross Blue Shield officials and the state insurance regulator are commonplace and often turn political. Both parties, upon knowing we know about their disputes, have a history of calling quick and sometimes-dueling press conferences to help shape the message in their own desired form.

In fact, the day news of this exam broke in our paper, both parties quickly mobilized to do just that.

There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, we expect it.

But in the case of this exam, though conducted in conjunction with the Insurance Department, it was clear auditors and examiners approached it from a politically neutral position, something auditors and financial examiners do well.

So, rather than contact Blue Cross Blue Shield officials or the insurance commissioner for their comments or explanations of the exam before its contents were publicly known, we chose to report from the exam itself, unsigned at that point by Hamm or the Blues.

Von Pinnon is editor of The Forum. Reach him at (701) 241-5579 or mvonpinnon@forumcomm.com

Tags: blue cross blue shield, north dakota, matthew von pinnon, health, columns, opinion