Honolulu Weekly

When it comes to the face-off between Jonathan Ornstein’s go! airlines and the folks at H.E.R.O. (Hawai’i’s airline Employees Repelling Ornstein), it gets uglier and uglier every week. And now, the Honolulu Advertiser has been pulled into the fray thanks to recent claims made on the H.E.R.O.-affiliated [Dontflygo.com] website. (Mesa Air Group owns go! Ornstein is the CEO of Mesa.)

According to the website, Honolulu Advertiser’s Rick Daysog reportedly told Dontflygo that ‘his editors cut any negative references regarding Mr. Ornstein from the Advertiser’s [Nov. 19] two-page article on Jonathan OrnsteinÖ’ (Daysog wrote the Nov. 19 article.)

The information allegedly cut from the report, Dontflygo says, included any mention of ‘the recent vote of no confidence by the Mesa Air Group pilots for Jonathan Ornstein’s poor leadership.’ The accusation was repeated by Michael Uslan, a member of H.E.R.O. Uslan, a former Mesa employee, says he spoke with Daysog about the report after it was published.

Truth be told, the Nov. 19 article does not mention the vote of no confidence, nor does it mention the 68 percent decrease in profits for Mesa. (The Advertiser did print that bit of news a few days later on Nov. 21.) However, it does mention the now familiar charges made by H.E.R.O., Aloha Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, as well as the lawsuit filed by Aloha and Hawaiian against Mesa.

The Nov. 19 report also mentions that Ornstein ‘was the subject of a number of disciplinary actions’ while an employee at ’several brokerage firms’ and had his licensed suspended as a broker for two years.

Advertiser Editor Mark Platte denies the article was biased. In an e-mail, Platte writes, ‘[N]othing was purposely cut out of the article. Rick [Daysog] remembers including a line about the no-confidence vote and business editor David Butts remembers seeing it. However, it did not appear. Butts said in moving paragraphs around, it may have inadvertently been cut out. It should have been included.’

Platte also denies that Daysog would claim that his editors told him to cut information out of a story. ‘Rick would never say that because he doesn’t believe it,’ Platte adds. ‘Rick is an aggressive reporter in this town and that’s why we hired him from the [Honolulu Star-]Bulletin. I doubt that he’d work for a news organization that would cut negative references out of his stories. David Butts is an excellent editor and would never do what he is accused of doing.’

‘We’ve never had a child killed on campusÖWe’ve never had a teacher raped.’

–Hawai’i State Teacher Association executive director Joan Husted on violence at state public schools. A recent report showed that violence at Hawai’i schools was on the decline. (Honolulu Advertiser)

2nd

Hawai’i’s rank among U.S. states when it comes to the number of children who suffer from asthma (Honolulu Advertiser)