What are the standards for the Victoria Advocate?

This is a follow-up to my coverage of the shameful behavior of the Victoria Advocate’s relatively new owner, Carpenter Media Group, dealing with properties in Alaska.

There is more to the Alaska saga. Not only has the story of these brave journalists gone viral and international, but the Alaska Press Club has sided with the reporters and editors who stood for real journalism ethics. The press club’s Oct. 13, 2025 statement minced no words, calling out CMG for violating “ethical journalism standards.”

The statement, and some of the news coverage, noted that the CMG bosses rationalized their interference by claiming the story failed to meet its standards. And that brings us to our local CMG-owned newspaper. The lead story on the front page announced that DeTar Health System will have a new chief executive soon. The story left out why the previous CEO left, a tidbit that’s important for the context. Readers should have been reminded that Bernard Leger left to semi-retire in his home state of Louisiana. That would have made it clear Leger jumped and wasn’t pushed and no cloud of possible shame covered his departure.

So, with a bit of irony, let’s evaluate the Victoria Advocate’s standards. If you look at the third paragraph of the story, it’s lifted word-for-word from DeTar’s news release.

Same for the last paragraph of the Advocate’s story.

Reading those two paragraphs in the Advocate gives the clear impression that the reporter talked to Dr. Stevens and Brett Maxfield. But did she? The Advocate has shamelessly published content from others in the community and properly gave the authors a byline. So, why not just run in the news release that way as the paper has done for others? Or, what would have the shame been to publish the news release with the standard attribution of “staff report?”

I have to wonder why the cub reporter wasn’t given the guidance to call DeTar and/or Dr. Stevens to go a little deeper. Or to ask Maxfield if he’s led at a teaching hospital and what insights he might have to bring to Victoria. She could even have been guided to properly add to the attribution “in a news release,” which would have absolved her of appropriating the copy as her own; or, if a competent editor might have made the same modification while explaining the reason for doing so. Instead, I am left to wonder what the Advocate’s or CMG’s journalistic standards are now that not only accept as poor journalism, but also would put a cub reporter’s reputation at risk like this because this is plagiarism.

I’d like us all to keep in mind what the Alaska Press Club wrote in the penultimate paragraph of its statement, “We should not accept these actions by Carpenter Media as normal. They threaten the ability of journalists to serve as watchdogs for our communities.”