Journalists’ Roundtable: 3-3-23

We were joined by Mark Brodie of KJZZ, Camryn Sanchez of Arizona Capital Times and Bob Christie of Capital Media Services.

Top stories include:

• Election integrity hearing

What happened during the hearing?

“There was some pretty out there conspiracy theories, including that elected officials were being bribed by the Sinaloa drug cartel,” said Brodie. The governor and others were included in this theory; however, Brodie noted that GOP leaders in the state legislator were also included.

“It seemed like a race, like a walking backwards type race, to see who could move away from this the fastest,” said Brodie.

Aren’t these individuals supposed to be vetted better than this?

It was noted that they were supposed to be according to the speaker and Senate president. “The real question is why did they let this Scottsdale realtor unravel completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories for forty-five minutes with nobody calling them on it?” said Christie.

“I do think it’s interesting to talk about who does believe in this conspiracy theory. Definitely there are people who follow President Harris, Senator Rogers on Telegram; we’ve been watching the comments. Some people think that they’re now being gagged or that they’re being bought off, and that they revealed something but now they’re being forced to take it back, but it’s the truth,” said Sanchez. She also noted that some individuals are definitely taking this seriously.

How do you keep something like this from happening again?

“It really hasn’t happened to this extent up until now. When you’re having a hearing like this, you should have a decent sense of what they’re going to say. After this particular speaker finished, Senator Rogers referred to her as brave just before a day or so she kind of said, ‘Well maybe this wasn’t the right place to do it,” said Brodie.

“This isn’t new, I mean we’ve had this since the cyber ninjas and all the hearings last year in front of the legislature, and the hearings about Yuma county. All of that was relatively without any factual background, it was allegations. This I think the allegations were so far out there that even those who believe there was a problem with the elections were taken aback,” said Christie.