Media cowardice
The recent debate in City over the political leanings of the Democrat
and Chronicle is amusing but totally misses the real failing of that
newspaper, a failing which it unfortunately shares with much of the local media
(Metro Ink, January 8).
It
matters little whether the D&C or
any local news outlet speaks with a liberal or conservative accent when the
real problem (and shame) is that they tend to speak without saying anything.
Our
local media mavens clearly have the “courage of their subscriptions”
when it comes to establishing their editorial and news policies. In other
words, they will not write or broadcast anything that might offend advertisers,
local business leaders or, in the case of public broadcasting, their corporate
sponsors.
Our
media have forgotten that their first allegiance must be to the local citizenry and that they have an obligation to
keep that citizenry informed as to what is really
going on locally by diligently looking behind the scenes and by
investigating and reporting on political and financial skullduggery regardless
of who gets burned. But sad to say, in Rochester this just ain’t happening. Let
me point out two blatant examples.
In
January 2002 the telecommunications company Global Crossing went belly up and
filed for bankruptcy. Having taken over the old Rochester Telephone Company
just two years before, the Global Crossing crash became the largest bankruptcy
to directly impact the Rochester area and resulted in the loss of tens of
millions of dollars of local shareholder investment, millions of dollars in
local employees’ 401k savings and severance payments, and hundreds of local
jobs.
And
yet rather than digging into this steaming pile of corporate wreckage to
uncover what went wrong, who was responsible for shafting the locals, and
whether the failure was avoidable, the D&C contented itself with running a few stories based on company press releases and
wire-service stories from cities that had experienced far less economic
destruction than Rochester, plus a sprinkling of ex-employee human-interest
stories.
While
a cynic might conjecture that this lack of curiosity in the collapse of Global
Crossing might have had something to do with the fact that the chairman and CEO
of Gannett, the D&C’s parent
company, had served on Global’s board of directors, I will assume that this was
simply a coincidence.
And
not to be outdone by the D&C, our
public “news” radio station WXXI-AM, despite having been repeatedly
asked to investigate Global Crossing in the interests of its local membership
and listeners, has so far steadfastly refused to broadcast any in-depth report
on this financial debacle and has remained deathly silent for over a year. How
this silence squares with their motto, “AM 1370: Keeping Rochester
Informed,” I leave to the management of WXXI to explain.
As to
the second example of local media lethargy, in June 2000 Frontier Telephone was
taken over by Citizens Communications. Now, in just 14 months, three
individuals have served as the head of Rochester’s local telephone operations
and one after another have left the company for “personal reasons” or
to “pursue other opportunities.”
Although
such a turnover is clearly an indication of a major managerial malfunction, and
the stated reasons for their leaving are well known corporate code words for
“fired,” both the D&C and WXXI have so far managed to restrain their journalistic integrity and have
scrupulously avoided investigating what’s going wrong at Frontier. Instead,
they have fallen back on their standard operating procedure of simply
regurgitating the company’s PR handouts.
So
the bottom line is this: If the local media refuse to fulfill their public
obligation to investigate the background causes of local news stories and
instead elect to operate as if they are simply a bunch of stooges on the
payroll of the Chamber of Commerce, why should we give a proverbial “hoot
in hell” whether their editorial position is conservative, liberal, or
based on the political philosophy of a fortune cookie?
Michael J. Nighan, Crosman Terrace,
Rochester
Manhunt
Thousands of children, women, and elderly will be dead.
Entire families will be destroyed. American servicemen will be killed. A
country will be decimated. All this to get one man. The United States
government is not very good at getting just one man. Where is Osama bin Laden?
Don Franklin, Chelmsford Road, Brighton
Population transfer
I have recently received two very disturbing e-mails from
members of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron. CPT is a group of
courageous people, committed to nonviolence, who serve as human-rights
advocates, witnessing to human-rights violations. They have had a presence in
Hebron since 1995.
Their
documentation of the violence perpetrated against Palestinians in the occupied
territories, primarily by Israeli military, but increasingly by militant
settlers living in the illegal settlements of the occupied territories, serves
to enlighten the free world to the activities which are not usually reported by
Western media.
The
first e-mail, “Population Transfer,” describes a systematic practice over the
past few months of enforced curfew, essentially a 24-hour-a-day “house arrest,”
which has resulted in closed shops, areas closed to automobiles and often to
pedestrians, and to a large extent, an evacuation of residents from the old
city.
Over
2500 shops have been closed, some for as long as two years. Israeli soldiers
now commonly search Palestinian homes without cause, often in the middle of the
night, and frequently ransack the homes, destroying personal items, urinating
and defecating on the floors, spreading terror in the lives of the inhabitants.
Children are harassed going to school, sometimes beaten. (CPTers now accompany
children to school in order to offer protection.)
The
second e-mail describes the ongoing and escalating cycle of retaliation and
counter-retaliation between Israelis and Palestinians. The writer describes
massive land confiscation and settlement expansion, with fear and anger
increasing on both sides. He asks simply and pleadingly, “Can anyone in the
world intervene to halt this growing tragedy for both sides?”
Recently
the national news reported that some 30 to 60 Palestinian-owned shops in one
village were destroyed by Israelis, ostensibly to make room for the “wall” that
will separate the two peoples, in order to protect Israelis from Palestinian
violence, which is, of course, in response to Israel’s occupation.
I
fear that while the rest of the world focuses attention on Iraq and North
Korea, the “transfer” and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland
is occurring. It is an outrage. While government officials safely sit in
comfortable rooms, designing a “solution,” Sharon moves forward with his plan
to eliminate the Palestinians from their own land.
“Can
anyone do anything to stop this?” Does anyone even care?
Elaine Johnson, Sutherland Street,
Pittsford
Writing to City
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This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2003.
