Making It Stick

Is the local newspaper a font of disinformation flowing for whatever reason I cannot discern or should I suppose its purpose is to work the readership into a kind of foaming frenzy in order a) to produce evermore emotional letters to the editor, and b) to evince an evermore self-fulfilling prophecy of anxiety and ill humor across the community?

Today we have two examples, the first is a woman who writes calling for schism of the American Catholic Church from the Roman Catholic orders based on such either sloppy or slimey charges as the rehearsed one that the new Pope Benedict was once a member of the Nazi youth, when indeed it is established fact that he was a) forced into that brood and b) resigned from it at his personal peril.

Why would a newspaper permit such a letter a) to go unedited (the offending text deleted) or b) to be published at all? (Consider this question with and to be a rhetorical sorrow.)

The second offense is, in fact, less with the newspaper than with those who have slyly managed to draw the newspaper into an ill-humored debate among tragic people: local teachers who would prefer not to reach out to the parents of their students vs the public school administration, probably one administrator or an unyielding school board. (This also probably means that the superintendent/administration of the school has offended the principle of open communications for which someone of note should now speak, but failing which, I will.)

A former school teacher (permanent NYS certification in both social studies and English) who moved out of public school into public university and then state government, I feel prepared to weep for this mistaken groupthink, argued by those who claim that because it is "not in the contract" they do not, should not have to do it -- do not have to reach out to the parents of their students-- thereby throwing aside the potential for nobility and integrity, the healthy point of view that to reach out, to communicate, to encourage communication, will solve problems even before they arise because to reach out will build emotional connections and grow intellectual investments between those so related.

But it appears the paper either a) supports the teacher-ly -- that is union -- p.o.v., or b) find this non-debate worthy of coverage as if it were wholly legitimate instead of a kind of scandal within the public education system in this state or that school system. The reporter or editor miss the point -- a point at which they could do some good for both the school system and the community at large; the teachers miss the boat; and the innocent reader -- it dismays me to believe it -- will miss the object lesson.

May we be saved because we save one another.

A Newspaper

A newspaper has every right to align itself politically with one or the other side of partisan debate. And an obligation to cover the news evenhandedly -- that is, without cosmeticologically covering the face of the favored persuasion in order to magnify the mirrored acne of the other.

How do we exercise a fair test for this? We read. If within a month there stands one projectile vomit of vituperative excoriation against one side with nary a single outburst against the other, the reader may fairly determine that the fix is in.

That is my read of the local major daily over the course of the past several months. If it continues, I will do my part to make it clear and make it stick.

It is a curious matter to me: over recent months, and not for the first time, I have reached out to both the cartoonist and writers at the paper when I thought they had done something well. Indeed, I did so in one case because it was astonishing to me that the cartoonist saw anything from my perspective as an alert observer of the passing scene: his persuasion, and it seems his assignments, are nearly always directed at tearing down those who are making considerable efforts to build up what I would favor.

It is this that deserves further attention from each such newspaper: that the differences among elected officials are not mere stonewalling and petty argument. If a newspaper publisher or any of us out here in Real Lifeland would like to test that proposition, ask whether when you vote you are expressing a will to have someone represent your preferences from the vantage of the office sought after. If the answer is "Of course!" then, I assume, you would have that person fight for your interests. If so, then none among us has a grip on reality should we stomp around grimacing when electoral winners are at odds, or when one or both of them employs every parliamentarian tool and house rule at hand to achieve the end effect sought after.

Newspapers have a lousy track record making this phenomenon understood by the public, a lousy track record of not worsening matters by flagrantly beating up on the system in order to sell papers (as mistinct from explaining dynamics).

This is true because newpaperfolk and reporters in particular are notorious for being both overworked against unreasonable deadlines and outright tired -- and lazy, as a result. Thus it becomes easier and faster to do dirtywork than to serve one's calling with the integrity the public reasonably and rightly expect and depend upon.

We "out here" are not stupid and word is spreading. Faster and faster.

That is to say, MediaWatch (Eric Burns, host) has three weeks in a row -- and that is a minimum count -- addressed the impact weblogs and alert bloggers are having on the news industry, both electronic/broadcast and print. What it seems to come down to is this: they are running scared.

They ought to be. As I wrote above, if we out here among the People are not particularly sophisticated about the news business or experienced in communication sklls, we are not stupid. But we are fed up.