LOCAL TABLOID PULLS NO PUNCHES; AGGRESSIVELY ENTERS THE ARENA OF ADVOCACY JOURNALISM

This newspaper continues to alienate working families

Rochester, N.Y.--  Just recently, The D&C editorial page has stepped up its assault on anti-labor and anti public worker editorials and news reporting. Despite their efforts to break unions and paint public employees as blood sucking sea serpents, The D&C continues to misinform its readers and silence their critics.  Their business agenda is more imperative than reporting the objective truth. 

It is important to understand the difference between news coverage and editorializing. These definitive journalistic lines continue to be blurred.  To editorialize is "to express an opinion or point of view." The Editorial Board at the D&C has never, and will never be bound by expectations of journalistic objectivity. They are singularly motivated by profit and have a specific business agenda in mind-- to sell newspapers.

To historically understand the deplorable labor management relationship of Gannett Newspapers and its workers, is to understand how naive it is to think they will ever see things from anyone else’s perspective or purport a level playing field when it comes to the company's revenue and livelihood.  During the first part of this century, employees at the D&C continued to work more that 14 years with out a contract.

After repeated attempts to email and talk civilly about our working family concerns, our phone calls and emails sometime go unanswered.  A token letter gets published every once in a while. 

In their special supplement (Fed Up With Albany) on March 21, selecting four public employees they choose to give 150 words in print is hardly fair and balenced.  Fair and balanced reporting no longer exists on these news pages. The editorial pages have gone over the top by pummeling labor unions and working families. Have they forgotten who their subscribers are? Shouldn't that concern them? I assume most educated readers will see through these desperate efforts and stop advertising, stop subscribing and stop reading their drivel.

Let me give you another example. In a story authored by Aaron Wicks of the Smugtown Beacon, he reports that no note was attached to the brick throwing incident at Monroe County Democratic Headquarters, but a subsequent update reported a note that quoted Barry Goldwater: "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." Additionally, it was implied that there might be a connection between the brick thrower and opponents of mayoral control: brick through window of MCDC, Joe Morelle Chair of MCDC, Joe Morelle supports mayoral control, ergo brick thrower must be an opponent of mayoral control.  The D&C editors have waffled a bit, but I get the sense that they support Bob Duffy's attempt to seize mayoral control of city schools.

The D&C clarified the details of its story by reasoning that Morelle implied that it was probably one of his mayoral control detractors. It causes one to wonder why the D&C was so quick to accept Morelle's speculation as the most likely explanation.

In Wicks' words, he says that this is impeachable logic -- and it's shoddy journalism that presented it to the public as a reasonable assumption. Wicks titled the article, "The Great Brick Caper: How the D&C Subtly Spins the News."

Additionally, I believe the labor community continues to place way too much emphasis and value on print media and especially the editorial page of this newspaper. It is clearly reflective of the age demographics of our older citizens.

According to my sources, the daily print news isn't even in the top three when it comes to how the general public gets their information and news. Frankly, folks in the age group that regularly read the D&C aren't likely to change their opinions about public employee unions anyway. I visited a communications class at St. John Fisher College one afternoon last December, and not one of the 30 students in the room read a print newspaper that day.

In today's Sunday edition of the newspaper (3/28/2010), they continued to hammer away at the local state delegation, trying to hold them accountable to their words when asked if public employees should sacrifice during these tough times. How many times do we have to tell our communities that we are sacrificing and have always had the best interest of our neighbors in mind? We have agreed to concession after concession, created a Tier V retirement system, state workers took early retirement buy-outs, we have negotiated away cost-of-living pay increases, and the list goes on. Anti-labor forces like the D&C will not stop until they can open up our contracts, raid our pensions and destroy workplace democracy altogether.

And, there is one other thing I personally take offense to-- when the editors of this newspaper call public employees a "special interest group." Those are code words for anyone you disagree with.

To be perfectly frank, when are 300,000 CSEA workers of New York State a special interest? It is in everyone's particular interest that we continue to keep the state operating because we are the ones that are plowing the roads, getting criminals off the street and staffing your community hospital and libraries.  We are the ones who are actually doing the "work."  Why are we blaming the custodians and clerical workers when we should be focusing on electing capable Albany lawmakers?  Isn't that where the D&C is saying the dysfunction is?

Public employees are the public's investment-- we continue to work "more with less" and still find a way to deliver the high level of services our communities expect. Our resources have been already stripped to the bone—as we speak, we are working with skeletons crews all over Monroe County.

It's time the general public begin to see the thinly disguised anti-labor advocacy efforts of this newspaper. It has become the personal sounding board for the right-winged Center For Government Research, the anti-labor UnShackle Upstate folks and for the Rochester Business Alliance's Sandy Parker.

The working families of this community deserve a better newspaper, a newspaper that understands the complex issues and gives everyone an opportunity to tell their story so readers can make educated decisions on public policy. It's not happening with the D&C-- but then again if they continue to pursue this destructive path, they will print their way into oblivion and irrelevance.  I for one, have lost complete faith in their ability to serve our needs as our area's daily information resource.  It's too bad most people have resigned themselves to the fact that they are the "only game in town."

If you want to read advocacy journalism, can I make a suggestion?  Try reading City Newspaper or the Smugtown Beacon.  At least they do not pretend to be something they are not.

Written By Ove Overmyer.  This editorial reflects the opinion of the author only.