When Fox 31 Denver’s Eli Stokols left town in April to cover the presidential campaign for Politico, he told the Columbia Journalism Review that Denver reporters should “be a little tougher on some of the people that we cover.”

“I don’t know if I saw that enough in the campaign coverage last year,” said Stokols, who was one of Colorado’s best political reporters. “There seems to be a reluctance to hold people accountable for policy positions.”

What’s not to like about that suggestion, regardless of where you sit on the partisan spectrum? But how to do it?

One simple way is to not let public officials hide out and avoid answering questions. Journalists should track them down and force them to respond.

For example, State Treasurer Walker Stapleton is under fire for telling conservative radio-host Mike Rosen he did not support a proposed law to bolster Colorado’s public pension program when, in fact, he did support the legislation.

Pretty straight forward case of hypocrisy, and The Denver Post did the people a favor by reporting on it in some depth.

But Stapleton’s spokesman refused to let a Post reporter talk to our State Treasurer. Instead, as The Post reported, the spokesman “blamed the media for spreading falsehoods about the legislation.”

Stapleton is shooting the messenger, if you didn’t notice. But the messenger isn’t dead, right?

Reporters who get this type of treatment should pick themselves up, wipe the slime from their clothes, and fight back.

Stapleton isn’t hard to find. Why not confront him?

Yes, I’m talking about an ambush interview. It’s rude, and it’s abused by showboating journalists like Bill O’Reilly. But when the tactic is called for, because it’s in the public interest to hold an official accountable, reporters should go for it. And not just the reporter who’s stonewalled, but any journalists who hears about it.

Plus, people love the ambush interview. It’s entertaining, especially on video, and embodies the truth-seeking heart of journalism.

Think about some of Denver’s most memorable political interviews in recent memory. They came from aggressive reporters, with the truth on their side, who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

A couple years ago, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora) told supporters he didn’t know if Obama was born in America, and Coffman refused to talk to 9News about it. So 9News anchor Kyle Clark surprised him and recorded one of the strangest interviews I’ve ever seen, during which Coffman repeated a canned line over and over again, illuminating a side of an elected official that’s indisputably in the public interest. And it went viral, which isn’t bad for 9News.

And 9News’ contacts with Coffman’s office weren’t ruined forever, proving wrong the concerns of reporters that aggressive reporting undermines future relationships.

Fox 31 Denver’s Justin Joseph memorably trailed state Sen. Vicki Marble of Ft. Collins around the Capitol in an effort to get her to comment on allegations of racism, after she brought fried chicken to a committee hearing.

If the interview isn’t ambush-style, it can be relentless and have the same value as an ambush-style confrontation.

Fox 31’s Stokols got well-deserved national attention during the last election for his refusal, over about 5 minutes of questioning, to accept U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner’s factually inaccurate statement that an abortion-ban bill, sponsored by Gardner, was not an abortion-ban bill.

Also during the campaign, during a Denver Post debate and elsewhere, Sen. Mark Udall was similarly pressed about his focus on women’s issues, raising the profile of this aspect of his campaign.

What’s not good enough, for journalism or the public, is for a reporter to allow a public official to bunker up under the assumption that silence (or a non-answer) speaks for itself.

Jason Salzman, a former freelance media critic for the Rocky Mountain News, is a progressive communications consultant who blogs at www.bigmedia.org.

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