KOA's Rosen, Independence Institute's Oliver failed to ID Jones as a conservative political activist

Summary: Radio hosts Mike Rosen and Amy Oliver had guest Brad Jones of the "news" website Face the State on their respective programs to discuss Colorado political issues, but they failed to note that he is a conservative political activist with connections to the "free-market" Independence Institute think tank. Colorado Media Matters repeatedly has noted that Jones' website frequently engages in distortions that advance conservative viewpoints and denigrate liberal positions or political figures.

On their respective March 7 and March 10 broadcasts, Newsradio 850 KOA's Mike Rosen and 1310 KFKA's Amy Oliver hosted founder and managing editor Brad Jones of the "news" website Face the State, but did not disclose his work as a conservative political activist. Oliver, who is director of operations for the Independence Institute, also did not disclose that Jones is a former research associate and current collaborator with the "free-market" think tank.

Face the State describes itself as "the 'go-to' news resource for Coloradans interested in state and local politics." As Colorado Media Matters pointed out, Jones defended Face the State's journalistic practices in a February 6 Rocky Mountain News guest column and in an article published in the February 7 issue of the weekly Westword, which stated, among other things, that "Jones resents the insinuation that he'd sacrifice accuracy and journalistic credibility if given the chance to spatter political opponents."

However, as Colorado Media Matters repeatedly has documented, Face the State frequently publishes misleading headlines on its aggregated news articles, uses the noun "Democrat" ungrammatically as an adjective, and engages in other distortions that advance conservative viewpoints and denigrate liberal positions and political figures.

On his March 7 program, Rosen introduced Jones to talk about Initiative 61 without disclosing Jones' conservative activism.

From the March 7 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Mike Rosen Show:

ROSEN: This Colorado Civil Rights Initiative is currently in the process of marching to the ballot so that in November you'll be able to vote "yea" or "nay" on it. And this too-clever-by-half, underhanded, cynical attempt by liberal groups to neutralize this Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, which is initiative number 31, has taken the form of something called Initiative 61. This is the undermined, underhanded attempt to neutralize Initiative 31. It uses the very same language that Initiative 31 uses, and then at the very end adds a suffix to it that in essence would offset the very thing you'd have voted for if you voted yes on Initiative 31. What Initiative 61 wants to do is maintain the status quo of racial preferences.

We had Jessica Peck Corry on the program and Brad Jones to talk about this. The state Title Setting Review Board has taken a look at the wording of Initiative 61 to determine whether or not it violates the single subject rule and whether it could stand on the ballot along with Initiative 31. So that if voters voted for both of these, there'd be some question as to what the result would be, and one assessment was that whichever one of these -- since these are fundamentally contradictory initiatives -- if they both passed, whichever one of these got the most votes would be the one that would prevail. In any event, the Title Setting Review Board has analyzed this and offered its ruling. We've got Brad Jones from Face the State to explain just what the Title Setting Review Board has done. Brad, thanks for joining us this morning.

JONES: Thanks for having me on, Mike.

Similarly, introducing Jones on her March 10 broadcast, Oliver stated that "you've heard him on KFKA a number of times," but she did not mention his website's agenda or his ties to the Independence Institute.

From the March 10 broadcast of 1310 KFKA's The Amy Oliver Show:

OLIVER: I'm pleased to continue my legislative update as we touch base with Brad Jones, who's the managing editor of Face the State. Also, you've heard him on KFKA a number of times; he's filled in for me, also used to have his own show on Saturday. Brad, welcome to the show; thanks again for being on.

JONES: Thank you, Amy.

OLIVER: You have an interesting article in "The Buzz." Which, of course, is one of my favorite sections of your website, 'cause it's stuff that I won't find other places necessarily. Explain what this pro-affirmative action ballot question was, and why it was rejected by the title setting board. This is actually a pretty interesting story, and there are two ballot proposals, I guess, that are involved here, really.

—C.K.