yellow journalism
yellow as in gutless: the lengths to which the sun editor(s) will go to insert bias into otherwise and absolutely innocuous situations is galling. first disclosure, i am a neighbor of greg page who i have found always to be conscientious and respectful to an almost fault, and that is not to say i have any dog in the political fight(s) the sun is trying to document and/or invent, but just to say that first-hand experience calls certain things into immediate question. second disclosure, the axe i'm grinding against said sun bias is long-standing owing to the repeated incidents of such, many of which i have tried to document here.
anyway, in sunday's "the column", amidst what we can only hope are accurate portrayals of various highly-charged political situations in chelmsford and lowell, there is an almost throw-away blurb about a conversation purportedly to have been held between the new city mayor's aide and our own "statehouse delegation", as if said group sits together at recess and can be contacted en masse with universal and consistent perspective on the conversation, let alone be contacted directly and not via politically-motivated intermediaries as would perhaps, say, for the sake of argument, relay direct quotes of such conversations to a sun editor that may or may not represent what was actually said.
so the lead line of the three-paragraph snippet of "journalism" contains the charged phrase "rocky start", (though albeit left-handedly modified by the weak journalistic term "apparently"), and the payoff "proof" is a quote attributed to the mayor's aide that "but this is what the mayor wants" as somehow representing a smoking gun of political malfeasance through which vague misfortune must inevitably follow.
HUH?
can someone please tell me if it is, first of all, even possible to make a single simultaneous contact with all of senator donoghue, representative golden, representative murphy and representative nangle at the same time?
can someone please further tell me if, it if it is first of all NOT possible to make simultaneous contact with all of senator donoghue, representative golden, representative murphy and representative nangle at the same time, which seems absolutely logical to conclude, if it is even possible to have direct conversation with any one of the four regarding their schedule if not through a political intermediary much the same as mayor murphy relies on aide page to make the inquiries?
but, most of all, can someone please tell me the emotional age of a state politician who would find the phrase "but this is what the mayor wants" coming from a city official, mayor or otherwise, as the basis for establishing a "rocky start" to whatever it is that needs to be finished?
first of all, i've never found any of our state delegation, individually or en masse, as having anything but a mature and respectable emotional age, which is unlike my experience with the editors of the lowell sun. the way i see it, at WORST, some aide to some single one of the four state congresspeople may have found the imprimatur of an aide to a city mayor to try to ask for an appearance to be unseemly, and said aide to that single one of the four state congresspeople may, on the basis of which, then find it compelling to go whining out of school about it to the local news rag's local news ragger(s) with whom they may feel a certain sort of emotional age kinship. but did anyone ask donoghue, golden, murphy and/or nangle if they even knew about the request, and, if so, have an opinion about it, let alone have the opinion that it crossed some line into "rocky start" territory? can we at all be concerned about the thinness of skin that might be offended by something as completely inane as all this?
i get it. the state folks can't be here on tuesday. i'm thinking the city mayor's aide gets it too.
what i don't get is what the sun doesn't get about the simplicity of that?
anyway, in sunday's "the column", amidst what we can only hope are accurate portrayals of various highly-charged political situations in chelmsford and lowell, there is an almost throw-away blurb about a conversation purportedly to have been held between the new city mayor's aide and our own "statehouse delegation", as if said group sits together at recess and can be contacted en masse with universal and consistent perspective on the conversation, let alone be contacted directly and not via politically-motivated intermediaries as would perhaps, say, for the sake of argument, relay direct quotes of such conversations to a sun editor that may or may not represent what was actually said.
so the lead line of the three-paragraph snippet of "journalism" contains the charged phrase "rocky start", (though albeit left-handedly modified by the weak journalistic term "apparently"), and the payoff "proof" is a quote attributed to the mayor's aide that "but this is what the mayor wants" as somehow representing a smoking gun of political malfeasance through which vague misfortune must inevitably follow.
HUH?
can someone please tell me if it is, first of all, even possible to make a single simultaneous contact with all of senator donoghue, representative golden, representative murphy and representative nangle at the same time?
can someone please further tell me if, it if it is first of all NOT possible to make simultaneous contact with all of senator donoghue, representative golden, representative murphy and representative nangle at the same time, which seems absolutely logical to conclude, if it is even possible to have direct conversation with any one of the four regarding their schedule if not through a political intermediary much the same as mayor murphy relies on aide page to make the inquiries?
but, most of all, can someone please tell me the emotional age of a state politician who would find the phrase "but this is what the mayor wants" coming from a city official, mayor or otherwise, as the basis for establishing a "rocky start" to whatever it is that needs to be finished?
first of all, i've never found any of our state delegation, individually or en masse, as having anything but a mature and respectable emotional age, which is unlike my experience with the editors of the lowell sun. the way i see it, at WORST, some aide to some single one of the four state congresspeople may have found the imprimatur of an aide to a city mayor to try to ask for an appearance to be unseemly, and said aide to that single one of the four state congresspeople may, on the basis of which, then find it compelling to go whining out of school about it to the local news rag's local news ragger(s) with whom they may feel a certain sort of emotional age kinship. but did anyone ask donoghue, golden, murphy and/or nangle if they even knew about the request, and, if so, have an opinion about it, let alone have the opinion that it crossed some line into "rocky start" territory? can we at all be concerned about the thinness of skin that might be offended by something as completely inane as all this?
i get it. the state folks can't be here on tuesday. i'm thinking the city mayor's aide gets it too.
what i don't get is what the sun doesn't get about the simplicity of that?
posted by kad barma at 11:22 AM
3 Comments:
Don't hold back, Kad.
Regards — Cliff
As it turns out, this was a meeting that the entire delegation had already agreed upon at a February 3rd meeting with the mayor. Never mind that Greg never said this or anything remotely disrespectful.
The classic dilemma that anyone in the public eye faces is how, and whether, you choose what to respond to.
In this case, it was not a misquote, a quote out of context, or something otherwise misunderstood. It was, instead, PURE fiction.
Frustrating, yes, but I didn't react more strongly, I think, because even though it was conjured out of thin air, it didn't *go there* (if there is the jugular).
Still, to people who read and believe the Sun, I'm either a bumbler or the next coming of H.R. Haldemann.
Because this seems so minor -- never mind the lack of truth -- it shall blow over. But I don't know what I would've done/how I would feel if it were something more substantive, or personal.
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