Bob Jones, a former reporter, anchor, and news director, submitted this lengthy comment on yesterday’s analysis of conflicts created the general manager of KGMB-KHNL serving as a director of Central Pacific Financial and Central Pacific Bank.

The matter of Rick Blangiardi’s two paid jobs as the KGMB-K5 general manager and director of Central Pacific Bank doesn’t have an easy yes/no answer. I presume the people he works for said it’s okay. He’s not the Hawaii News Now news director. One sure hopes he’s not telling news director Chris Archer what to cover and what to ignore about local banking issues such as CPB’s shaky financial condition.

But there’s room for conflict of interest. Years ago at KGMB after we’d done unflattering stories about First Hawaiian Bank, McDonald’s, and JCPenney (and lost some of their advertising), our general manager told me he’d rather not see ANY more business stories on our news. He didn’t order me not to run them and it became a moot issue because no similar stories arose. I’d have run them, however, if they had and accepted any consequences. I’d sort of been put on notice. Plus, I’m an ornery, independent journalist and I’d hope Chris Archer is, too.

I’d rather the operators of media did not get that heavily involved in other businesses. Many of us objected to the late George Chaplin, Advertiser editor, sitting on community and business boards. But he was the direct boss of the news. Blangiardi is more like Rupert Murdock. He’s a businessman who happens to have media but mainly sells advertising and lets others run the newsroom.

And in the Chaplin case, he sat on things like the symphony board for free and to do community service. Blangiardi, you say, got paid $36,000 plus stock options last year by CPB and gives to the firm’s PAC. That’s pretty heavy-duty involvement.

But maybe not a serious conflict-of-interest violation. Just, perhaps, the appearance of that to those who want to see it.

That last sentence jumps out at me.

In an era where established media are desperate to retain (or regain) credibility, this kind of “appearance” of conflict, if you want to call it that, is certainly damaging to public perception and public trust.

Think about the business reporter looking at CPB. He or she picks up the bank’s annual report, quarterly report, or most recent call report from the FDIC, thumbs through on the first pass, notices that the station’s general manager is a director. Normally, you look through those lists of directors with an eye towards possible sources. Do you suppose that reporter is likely to put a call in to the general manager to dig for inside information? And, is so, will they be constrained in asking hard questions? Or, looked at the opposite way, how likely is the general manager to look at the station’s reporting and urge that reporters dig further into the health of this significant local bank? The general manager, of course, has a fiduciary duty to the bank as a member of its board of directors. That is likely to mean that he is legally constrained from urging more in-depth probing. And if you were the news director, do you push reporters to get their noses into your bosses’ business? There are many troubling layers to this.

So I can’t agree that the appearance of conflicts is just in the eye of “those who want to see it.”