[Vision2020] 'Partisan Posturing' Ruins Objectivity

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (October 5, 2006) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with thanks to
Michael Hanley of Pullman -

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'Partisan posturing' ruins objectivity 

Three local self-appointed experts have been appearing in the Daily News
"Town Crier" and "His View" series lately. It seems like every week we're
administered an adult dose of jawboning and misinformation, be it one man's
hateful religiosity, another's financial or foreign-policy claptrap, or a
third's silly shilling for Wal-Mart. They have made the reading of your
newspaper fairly exasperating. 

And yet these are but editorials, and therefore opinions; one could always
skip them and concentrate on the front page, where the objective reporting,
the real journalism appears. In the Daily News, however, even this page has
become the venue for partisan posturing, at least in its reporting on
Pullman affairs. Your beat writer consistently describes anything to do with
Wal-Mart or with development in general as positive, as progress (see the
huge celebratory Weekend headline "BOOMTOWN" a week ago). In her hands, the
Wal-Mart disciple from your "Town Crier" becomes a caped crusader,
courageously combating the powers of darkness and obstruction. Those who
resist the coming of this super center, on the other hand, are routinely
tarred as nuisances, as obstacles to Pullman's grand march toward saturated
development. I personally know fewer than five people in Pullman who want
Wal-Mart to come, and a great many more who do not. The store in Moscow is
quite sufficient. Your Wal-Mart surrogate does not speak for me, nor, I dare
say, for the overwhelming majority of voters and homeowners in Pullman. Now
he's stumping for Initiative 933, a brazen giveaway to developers and large
landowners. Why should he and his fringe positions receive such privileged
coverage in your pages? 

Let me humbly suggest that the Daily News provide more objective coverage of
local issues, lest it morph into a regional print version of the Fox News
Channel. 

Michael Hanly, Pullman

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Perhaps those of you who believe that the majority of Pullman wants a
Wal-Mart super center should re-check their figures.

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Vandalville, Idaho

"Anyone that buys something at Wal-Mart or Target expecting it to last
doesn't know how to spend money."

- Donovan Arnold (October 3, 2006)