This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
Gov. Kristi Noem’s state-affiliated social media accounts were deleted without explanation over the holiday weekend. Our Dakota Political Junkies look at what was lost when the accounts went dark.
We talk about evolving communication channels for politicians and whether Facebook accounts can be documents of record.
Plus, we take a look at how political leaders communicated with the public about the June flooding.
Michael Card, Ph.D., is a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of South Dakota. Jon Hunter is publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader. He was inducted into the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2022.
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The following transcript was auto-generated and edited for clarity.
Lori Walsh:
Before the break, I spoke with our state geologist to understand the science of southeastern South Dakota's June flooding.
Now, we're going to talk a little bit about its politics.
Our Dakota Political Junkies are going to take a look at how government officials respond to information they receive from scientists, and we'll look at how those leaders communicated with South Dakotans in the flood's path.
And how they have, of course, been criticized for their communications during the disaster.
Michael Card is a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of South Dakota. He is seated across the table from me in SDPB's Kirby Family Studio in Sioux Falls now. Dr. Card, welcome back.
Michael Card:
Thanks for having me here.
Lori Walsh:
And joining us on the phone, Jon Hunter, publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader and inductee to the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame. Mr. Jon Hunter, welcome back as well.
Jon Hunter:
Hi, Lori. Thanks for the invitation.
Lori Walsh:
All right. Let's talk a little bit about social media accounts first and then let's move into a little bit of flood disaster response and communication.
Jon, I want to start with you a little bit from the media side of things. When you cover the way political leaders communicate, the social media thing is — it's not new, but you've been around before there was an X account for a governor.
How did governors used to talk to people when it came to something like a flood disaster and how have you seen it change over time?
Jon Hunter:
Well, I think it's been a dramatic change, especially for Governor Noem. The difference is that really she and her public relations office or outreach office really want to say, "We're going to tell you what we want to tell you. We don't want to respond to questions."
So she doesn't like press conferences. Really if you call in to ask the governor questions, they'll be deferred. If you call to cabinet positions, they'll say, "You need to submit your questions in writing. We might get back to you."
But they have, in fact, and I'm not sure these are the exact words, but basically said, "If you want to know anything, just go to social media and we'll tell you what we want to tell you." And that's a big difference.
I think there are naturally citizens of South Dakota and small newspapers and radio stations and TV stations who want to be able to ask their leaders questions, maybe something that might be uncomfortable, might be something that's not going well rather than a very positive public message that can be sent out on social media.
So Governor Noem has chosen this path and it gets hard on citizens, harder at least on the media trying to get answers on behalf of citizens.
Lori Walsh:
Meanwhile, more than 750,000 people were following the combined X and Facebook of Governor Kristi Noem's official social media accounts. And then those accounts recently just went dark over the Fourth of July weekend. Mike Card, there's a new account. Ian Fury with the governor's office said, "Follow the governor here on social media." Her personal account was still active.
Do we have any idea what happened?
Michael Card:
Other than what you just described is the one account is gone. The Kristi Noem account is still there with nearly half a million followers and there are 13 followers on the governor's office largely because there are press releases there. And so there is little new information. I think there's actually 13 news media and one person.
Lori Walsh:
It's increasing quickly as people find out about it.
Michael Card:
That was yesterday.
Lori Walsh:
It's a huge drop. Does it matter?
Michael Card:
Well, I think what Jon mentioned is what really matters, and that is that the governor's office is filtering what news they wish to give out. I think we all understand that is that if you're an elected official, you'd like to give your side of the story. What it doesn't necessarily provide is an answer or a response even to what the citizens want to know as filtered through the media. And usually the media have thought about these and have more access to information, do a far deeper background, look at what the issues are and what might be related to what. So I'm probably one of the rare people that believe we do need the press. Of course, here I am talking to two press people.
Lori Walsh:
It's a friendly room for that. Yes.
Jon Hunter:
You don't have to convince us.
Lori Walsh:
Go ahead.
Michael Card:
The public wants to know and the public has a right to know. I think when we start to limit the information that's given and limit access to our elected officials, democracy suffers because you have to be able to know in order to participate in the process of democracy.
Lori Walsh:
And we have no way of knowing, Jon, why this decision was made because the governor's office will not answer that question. They just say, "It's over here now."
So we don't know what happened, and we try not to speculate on this show. I don't want to get into a five-minute, "It could be this, it could be that," but that's frustrating, Jon, because nobody knows why it happened and it could be newsworthy why it happened. There are scenarios in my mind that would say would be a newsworthy thing that the public would need to know, but it's silence. It's a complete no answer.
Jon Hunter:
I agree with you, Lori. I think you're very accurate in that. It's probably newsworthy again if someone gives up that number of accounts or followers and we don't know what it is now. So silence is very frustrating.
It isn't necessary. There's no reason you can't speak about this unless it's something embarrassing or in some senses I'd say it's better to be silent than to tell an untruth, that it's for this reason and that's not the reason. So I'm hoping we'll still find out that there's merely a delay and we'll hear in the next few days or whatever that there's a reason for it. But it is frustrating for the citizens of South Dakota.
Lori Walsh:
Mike, what were you going to add there?
Michael Card:
I was just going to say I think one of the rationale for a little bit of citizen discomfort about the entire response to the flood is that things changed so fast as Tim Cowman noted. And lo and behold, as things change fast, information gets to the elected officials and the officials in charge respond slowly. It goes as fast as it can, as he noted previously. I don't have the exact quote, but he said the models in a flood like this aren't very accurate at the moment. Sometimes there are errors. And so in terms of helping out the McCook Lake folks, they may not have had the information there.
Lori Walsh:
I want to get to that. I have one more question about the social media thing, which is relevant to McCook Lake citizens and some of the questions they were answering. And I think one of the things Tim Cowman said is that this was such an extreme event that sometimes the models can't keep up with something that they haven't seen yet. And so that increased the challenges that they were looking at, that the analysts were looking at as the flood was unfolding.
But, Jon Hunter, the archive disappears. And we don't think of social media being a reliable archive. It's not like a public archive, but it is a very useful way to scroll back and say, "She was here on this day. And on this day, she said this. And here is tape from this interview because she is posting it." And that's all erased.
Now if the account goes dark and people are piecing it together from other places, it went dark after people had pieced together where she was at during the flood event. I'm not saying those are related.
I'm just saying that happened in late June and then over the Fourth of July, the social media accounts left their public view. But Jon, what do we lose when a governor's official account disappears like that as far as access to any kind of history and archival footage that we might be inadvertently starting to rely on?
Jon Hunter:
Well, I think it's a huge loss, frankly. And again, you can document it. It's part of, I think, really a broader issue of open records, open documents, open meetings that go on.
And if you choose to hide certain documents or erase them or shred them or whatever that is, I think there's a loss there. Now, I'm not saying every document and every conversation, every email should be made public, but these are things that were made public. And they were made public for a reason. This is the governor's official thing. This is not her personal one or a campaign one. So it was released for a reason, whether it was I was here or I'm promoting this. You can still promote yourself on official channels.
And then it gets erased. It is a big deal. And it's not like we're finding or we're looking for documents that never existed. This is stuff that was once made public and now is gone.
Lori Walsh:
Mike, I'm thinking of Alexander Heffner's book, "A Documentary History of the United States" where he has the founding documents and famous speeches. And then in the most recent version, he starts adding tweets because this becomes the documentary history of the United States. And in the introduction, he eloquently discusses the decision to include certain tweets in "A Documentary History of the United States."
As a political scientist, does that blow your mind as much as it blows mine?
Michael Card:
Well, I think the other side of it is our laws haven't kept up with technological changes. And Twitter or X, and I still call it Quitter ... Twitter. Boy, was that a Freudian slip?
Twitter since Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that she's going to call it Twitter, so I figure I can too. If that is the official account and it's made because she's a governor, that should be a public record. And our record retention laws don't cover much in terms of social media.
Lori Walsh:
All right. So let's talk about flood response and some of the criticisms that Governor Noem is taking very publicly from media outlets and citizens about how she warned people when she warned people and what she was doing when she wasn't warning people. Jon Hunter, you wanted to begin with this. Let's just say right up front, it's so easy to armchair quarterback things, but when you look at the timeline, do you think there are some valid criticisms about where she was and where you would normally expect a governor to be?
Jon Hunter:
I would love to refer to another journalist here. Terry Wooster wrote a column in the last few days about governor responses to natural disasters. And he said he didn't see the Noem one up front because he's not an active journalist right now, but he was at a front-row seat for governors Janklow, Rounds and Daugaard.
And he saw them in those situations and he said there's a broad range of possible ways to respond to it. Janklow was very much out in front. Even his statue in Pierre has him with a bullhorn pointing at something. And he loved to go there and he would bark orders and so forth. He was very active.
Governors Daugaard and Rounds were more behind the scenes, but Terry did say that they were in the Emergency Operations Center from 6 in the morning till midnight, and they were working with people and making decisions. In other words, they had a different style than Governor Janklow, but they were still involved. They were still there. And Terry ends his piece. And I'll get into my own thoughts in a second, but Terry ends the piece basically saying, "Disasters are when South Dakotans need a governor the most, no matter what their crisis management style."
So I think most South Dakotans would have preferred a different response out of Governor Noem. In other words, yes, she did do the press conference there. I don't think they're expecting any governor to lift sandbags or to drive a backhoe or something to help that. But somehow you want them to be engaged, to be there, to maybe put an arm around someone who has lost a home. I just think it seems to be more of an active thing rather than being in another city or state.
Lori Walsh:
All right. She did a press conference on Sunday, left the state, did some events, one including a fundraiser in Tennessee. She returned to South Dakota for press conferences on Monday and Tuesday. So it's not as if she did nothing.
We need to go for now, but I think there's more to say. Oh, that clock is hurting me today. Mike Card, Jon Hunter, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate your time.
Michael Card:
Thanks for having us.
Jon Hunter:
Take care.
