To the editor:
The recent character assassination and school board-bashing by another area newspaper, of a retiring school administrator at the Hopewell Valley school district, for accepting a request by his previous employer to close out some complex referendum projects after his retirement, is an unfortunate example of pandering to an easy stereotype, that of citizen outrage over public officials engaging in “double dipping,” benefiting from multiple government employment and conflict of interest activities.
This one-sided coverage of the situation has tarnished the reputation of a career public servant without seeking to learn the economic benefit of the arrangement to the public schools concerned, as well as to the taxpayers of the district. By relying primarily on the complaints of an outspoken critic of the school board and that person’s generalizations about public concerns over the situation, in its coverage, its editorial and an editorial cartoon, that newspaper has practiced careless and harmful journalism, not befitting a newspaper’s responsibility as a watchdog of good government. I believe that kind of coverage of a public issue contributes to the polarized, anger-driven kind of debate that has come to dominate much of political discourse today.
Carl Swanson
Hopewell Township
First it was Melissa Weeks trying to muzzle citizens from exercising their freedom of information rights. Now an elected school board member tries to tell a local paper how to cover the news! Why is the school board trying to undermine freedom of the press? Got a beef? Write a letter, sure. But don't try and squash our free press, Mr. Swanson. It's what our boys in Iraq are dying for.
Posted by: John Maloney | October 25, 2007 at 12:22 PM