The Detroit Free Press has more news on the scattered, and amateurish reign of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick..

I don't know if WXYZ-TV reporter Steve Wilson is good, or bad; aggressive and professional, or biased and manipulative. I do know that Kilpatrick, who has already fiddled around while his city melts down, looks even more desperate than before, by backing the airing of a city cable TV program dedicated to attacking reporter Wilson. The 12-minute video, produced by Kilpatrick's former press secretary and now executive producer for the Detroit Cable Commission, Jamaine Wilson, is titled, "Steve Wilson the Creative Reporter." It focuses on two seperate confrontations involving Wilson, one with a suburban mayor, one with a Detroit police official. Wilson is heard muttering profanity in each case.

The chairman of the Detroit Cable Commission, Jeffrey Hunt, says he asked the city-produced program be removed from rotation on government channel 10, fearing possible FCC sanctions, but he was overruled by Mayor Kilpatrick.

Whether or not the program would provoke the wrath of the FCC isn't even really the point, in my view. Airing a city-produced attack on a TV reporter makes city government, and the mayor especially, look thin-skinned, distracted and immature. The mayor could have nixed this silly, grade-school payback scheme. But instead, he's promoting it. Detroit needs a grown-up for mayor.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 26, 2005 06:22 PM

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