A little repetition

The following is a quote from a posting on this website as of July 1, 2007 - four years ago.

"We’ll start with a quote from the editor’s column in this morning’s paper (7/1/07).

"Questions, questions and more questions.  I have them.  You have them.  With one difference.  I have a team of enquiring journalists to help provide answers, and that’s just what I want them to do. ...You can help.  Tell us what questions you may have that we may not have answered.... Be blunt, and tell us what part of the story we may have missed."  (Editors and staff were notified by email of the post.)

We re-print this because of phrasing in a column in yesterday’s paper which was headed, "News flash to city: Don’t keep public in the dark."

Reference is to the kerfluffle over the Georgia Street fiasco.  And one concept indicated in the column would seem to reveal a major problem in this city.  The author refers to public officials leaving the public "...out of the loop." and goes on to say, "Telling the public what’s going on too often seems to be an afterthought...."  (Our emphasis.)

Silly us.  All this time we’ve been waiting for those "enquiring journalists" to tell us "what’s going on."  We’ve been under the misapprehension that part of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was placed there specifically to provide protection for a news media which just might ask embarrassing questions of public officials.

In our post, cited above, we asked 6 specific questions about downtown tax and revenue situations.  This was the 6^th question. "How many TIF districts are there in the city, to what purpose does each such district divert property tax revenues from city operating funds and what is the total amount of revenue being so diverted?

Yes, we know.  That’s really 3 questions.  May we assume that technicality is the reason we never heard from the editor, or that the paper, to our knowledge, ever has directly taken on any of the questions we posed?

One further thought.  The author of yesterday’s column has apparently bought the explanation that the whole idea of using Georgia Street as a memorial area was primary and not just gingerbread for Super Bowl visitors.  We happen to think someone came up with the idea to salvage a project which, without the idea, was so obviously a waste of $12 million for additional Super Bowl "eye candy."  It’s scary to think the whole thing would have gone almost without notice if the backers had not so stupidly insisted the street name had to be changed.

When public officials set out to waste taxpayer dollars, they’ll almost never volunteer that information to the provider of those dollars.  While media management policy approves press releases being scanned for typos and then printed as news, whatever the paper is spending on "enquiring journalists" is just more waste.

Comments

[Leslie Baker]

Alleged "investigative journalism" around here is only for stories that won't upset anyone in power. Don't expect anything from the local paper, who must have ties to some person or persons downtown, as they continue to refuse to take a look at all of this. So much for the objective search for truth.