By CRAIG MEDRED
The story behind the story of the presumed death of former Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium CEO Andy Teuber now in the news is looking more and more like the plot line for an episode of the long-running TV franchise”Law and Order:”
A newlywed, 20-something, personal assistant ends up in a sexual relationship with a 50-something boss paid an outrageous $1 million per year to run a “non-profit corporation.” The newlywed is soon a divorcee.
The million-dollar man, meanwhile, turns his back on her to marry someone else, and the company for which she is working decides she isn’t such a great employee and proposes to cut her salary from $89,000 per year to $60,000.
She quits and writes a scathing letter to the company’s board saying she was coerced into sex with the boss. He immediately resigns. Her letter is given to the state’s largest and most influential newspaper.
Pandering to the #MeToo movement, the newspaper embraces her narrative and runs with it, ignoring the divorce and the pay cut, which might suggest to some readers possible motives for her to screw the boss big time.
His reputation in tatters, he takes off in his helicopter to retreat to his old hometown on an island in the Gulf of Alaska, crashes and disappears. Suicide? An accident fueled by emotional trauma?
Nobody knows, but a right-leaning news website in competition with the state’s left-leaning newspaper headlines “‘He said, she said’: Was this a case of journalistic murder?”
All that’s missing here is the suggestion that Teuber’s death was neither an accident nor suicide, but a murder. And a good screenwriter wouldn’t have any problem inserting into the story characters and/or entities who might want him dead.
I won’t do that because this website is dedicated to journalism, not fiction, though the two seem to get harder to tell apart by the day. That said, it’s obvious Law and Order could have used this for an episode, and John Grisham might have managed a whole book.
If you’re the ANTHC facing all this stuff hitting the fan, the best thing you could hope for is that the former chief executive officers dies and just sorts of fades away. Better that than the possibility accusations against him spark a bunch of people to start asking questions about the young woman’s suggestion of past sexual harassment or abuse within the consortium.
Or even questions about the fat salary paid the dead man. ANTHC pay has come under enough fire in the past.
But ANTHC is not the subject here. The subject is the story behind the story behind the story, which is about journalism.
Sniff test
In the old school, there was a fact-finding rule called the “sniff test.” It was a pretty simple rule.
If somebody said something that just didn’t jive with normal actions, behaviors or customs, a journalist had a responsibility to check out the claim. Teuber accuser Savanah Evans, 27, made one such claim.
“Evans and her attorney, Jana Weltzin, said they were not aware that Teuber was engaged or had gotten married,” the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica, a New York-based news organization engaged in a business relationship with the Alaska newspaper. reported after being delivered a copy of Evans’ letter to the ANTHC.
Read more at CraigMedred.news.
“………But ANTHC is not the subject here. The subject is the story behind the story behind the story, which is about journalism………”
I agree with the role of journalism (or, more accurately, the absence of such until the point of public collapse), but there are actually more subjects (scandals) in this story than can be accurately counted. That’s why each successive day brings out more information and opinion. I’ll bet there are several more million-dollar-per-year public dole executives in this state with administrative/sex assistants who are feeling rather queasy at this point, and we’ll never know until yet another Maria Athens or Savanah Evans pops up. Or like the priest scandal, especially the Anchorage chapter, and how so much information spilled here upon national exposure, especially the roles of the media, courts, and police, almost as if everybody except Joe Sixpack knew everything until it had to be spilled at the very end in order to pin it all on as few culpable souls as possible.
Insert ADN here:
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” Mark Twain
The Alaska delegation to Congress needs to pay attention here because Alaskans are not going to keep this race curtain up much longer! The executives that enabled this to go on WITH TAXPAYER MONEY need to resign and leave the state right now! Everyone who lets this sort of financial fiction continue, including elected officials in Juneau, need to pull down this fiction. The health care managers portrayed here waste taxpayer money while hiding behind the race card. Letting it continue will pick away at our institutions and our democracy. Finally, this Teuber’s family members need to consider relocating if they abided and abetted this waste of our federal money; I don’t give a good God damn if they have lived here from time immemorial of if they had sex with Rhode Island red hens. We who work and pay taxes have been made the fools too long. Again, the Alaska delegation to Congress needs to pay attention; and no, I don’t think for a minute that Al Gross or Alyce Galvin would have put a stop to this, but if Lisa, Don and Dan don’t put a stop to it from Sitka, to Juneau, to ANC, to Bethel, to Fairbanks then we certainly need different people.
Who had access to his MRI hangar, did he have cameras in it.
As Pandora’s box is slowly opened, a lot of people are realizing that they really don’t want it opened all the way.
Last chance to just let it go, let it go, let it go………………….
This is what the native hospital has become since the new management took over, it’s like “As the stomach turns”. It’s not about healthcare, but more into social programs.
Him hiding is possible. But, it be really weird living that way no one knowing your second identity is not your first. But, his responce interview to the letter did say he married and starting a New Life and he does have money for travelling. What people around him failed telling him, he will never have a New Life without Christ. Knowing how strong the currents of Alaskas waters are I believe he was swept up and carried thousands of miles away into the deep where bottom feeding marine animals we never seem live like my own relative never to be seen agian with only his turned over boat found. Both men went off distraught into a storm. His choice to fly and disappear or die is not ADN’s fault publishing the story they must obviously seen hard evidence before running the letter. Democrat controlled newspapers have a history front paging scandals where a Native leader is the subject, still Native leaders support the Democrat Party.
When one has access to millions of dollars, the possibility of faking death isn’t beyond belief…….
The investigation by the feds on the crash will be a whitewash (racist overtone intended). Salacious relationships sell news, so we will be drowned with it – people do sinful things and hurt others, um… duh. Net result: a lot of hot air and no real meaningful reform anywhere. Anybody remember the former representative from Kiana who resigned – was it just three years ago? Nothing changed – and I’m not even remembering his name this AM… – and having met him (he was actually a nice guy) to boot. It would be wonderful if some real good would come from this.
Dean Westlake.
I hope we learn that one or more federal taxpayers got this guy. It would have been entirely justified. Any of us with relatives in the other 49 states need to help them alert their people in Congress about the graft that the dole has become here, the huge dollars people reap from US taxpayers.
All non profits should pay taxes. The heads of these organizations should be paid minimum wages. What a scam they are.
Yep. Foremost among them are churches. All BS.
It would of been responsible of ADN to at least investigate and tell the whole story before rushing to destroy someone and maybe making them distraught. Not that this whole relationship was a good idea, and So much for a lot of people making it out like she was some poor little single mom. It appears as though she was newly married during all this, then got divorced, maybe because of all this. Was there a trade up in mind? BTW: where’s the application for the Million/year job, I just happen to have a pen handy.
Non-Profit organizations are where the Socialists employ Capitalist profit -making strategies, while still trying to look humanitarian and magnanimous. Another false idiom of the Left. This million dollar boss was all about being a pretender. Nothing here. All made-up drama. Next real story, please.
Instead of getting woke…….he went to sleep.
Great comments on non-profits. They are virtue signaling money machines. I don’t mind them except the way they are trotted out as something ethically superior to a regular Corp. They are not. At best they are equal. At worst… well.. see said example..
“Virtue signaling money machines”
I can’t think of a better description for churches. I will use that from now on.
Ladies: If you don’t want a fellow to sexually pursue you then don’t dress non-professionally or try to look all fancy. No normal male will back off from a come-on, if they still have their facilities. It is up to the ladies to holler or run for help if they feel something bad is happening. I am so sorry for the Man and his new wife and former children, for this incident and hope that further light can be shown upon it so everybody doesn’t look so bad. A man can’t help it if he is so handsome and smart and successful if the ladies won’t leave him alone.
I could not agree more.
Some can. Who are you to talk. Are you a woman?
I just can’t grasp if you are a relative of a senator why would you go to the adn instead of the very respected senator?
Just following the purchase of ADN by the Binkley Family, the ADN received a huge grant from Soros-funded organizations for “Investigative Journaislm”.
Wonder how much investigating they are doing with all the $$$$. RE article online and on ADN that verifies this.
I still say she found out about the new wife and lost her mind. She spent all weekend typing up her three page letter and instead of trotting herself down to the first floor to HR, she lawyered up. She had every opportunity to go find a different job, to tell him NO, to get a sexual assault exam. Take your pick. But to go to a lawyer and ADN tells me that this was personal. If her supervisor wasn’t Teuber, who wrote her evaluation and got her moved to another department? It wasn’t Teuber because he wasn’t in charge of her. She has a kid and has been through a divorce. She knows how things work. Too bad.
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