Accountability or Bias?
Leave it to Mr. Armstrong to insert the following on an editorial piece that is ostensibly on housing:
Armstrong would be better served to stick to the one issue he seemed to want to write about but couldn't quite get to in the editorial -- dismantling Community Development and starting over with a new department run by other department heads. It's not old and tired and it is worth talking about. Or is it?
- The 6,453rd bash on Mayor Blum for using city email for campaign purposes. If you can't see that Armstrong has some kind of vendetta going here --- you aren't paying attention. His mentions are old and tired and this has nothing to do with the subject matter.
- Yet another bash on Janet Wolf -- what do campaign signs have to do with the rather radical notion of dismantling Community Development? This is the new old and tired mention that we will likely see a few hundred times before election day in November.
- What's up with the direct, press release-like quotes from Secord doing in an editorial? Will Wolf be able to have direct quotes in future editorials? Wouldn't that be fair and not show bias? I'm not sure I've seen many candidates for public office get free space like that in the past...
Armstrong would be better served to stick to the one issue he seemed to want to write about but couldn't quite get to in the editorial -- dismantling Community Development and starting over with a new department run by other department heads. It's not old and tired and it is worth talking about. Or is it?
posted by Sara De la Guerra | 6/22/2006 06:26:00 AM
Our Community Guidelines ask that you use the Blogger/Open ID login or the
more private Name/URL option when making comments. Comments using "Anonymous" will not be published. For more info, see choosing an identity.
7 Comments:
Thanks Sara for keeping the lights on. A interesting sideline to the whole e-mail issue, Travis's guy, Joe Guzzardi, used County e-mail several times during the campaign to solicit support. It isn't that had to check it out. They are still out there, plenty of people still have them in their mailboxes. When Joe went ballistic during the whole campaign sign fiasco there where more than of few of us who thought he was protesting a little too much. As far as Travis showing up at the fire station with a camera and pretending to be a Wolf supporter, well............
I don't think Travis understands that the entire administration of both the city and county boards could all be found guilty of some type of campaign violation.
Once you are elected into office, no matter how hard you try to follow the letter of the law, you or your staff inadvertantly or blatantly, use your office supplies and materials in your quest for re-election. Whether it's using your publicly owned telephone, computer to surf the net, etc, it happens. You'd have to throw out every politican every election year to assure that that type of behavior doesn't occur. And that's impossible. It would be nice to see Travis take on the whole system and not be so highly selective in who he outs as violators. And be less of a mouthpiece for his favorites!
As far as the housing fiasco, I agree CD should be folded into an existing and accountable department, and the current workers of CD should find employment elsewhere. Taxpayers shouldn't be forced to fund sloppiness, especially in such a lightening rod issue department like affordable housing. dd
What is really amusing is that some people just can't let go of the fact that the election is over. There will be another election in November. That campaign will start later this year. In the mean time why not think about something other than an election that ended last year and an election that ended a couple weeks ago?
I'm waiting for Travis to release what I know to be information he has about candidate Guzzardi's use of County email to promote his own candidacy----cause I just know Travis is at his core a fair and noble man who would NEVER selectively criticize one candidate and ignore the same or worse misdeeds by another...would he? would he???
I'm not surprised by the fact that Armstrong continues to use his column to trash the people he doesn't like, but I am surprised at his lack of professionalism in going about it. There's no need to rehash what he did in this recent editorial, but I find it hard to believe that his childish repetition and vindictiveness is not an embarrassment to the management of the News-Press. It's hard to think that anyone could be comfortable with Armstrong being the public face of the News-Press. He's evidently on some type of crusade, but it's really dumb.
I wrote to Jerry Roberts last year after he wrote a column explaining how the news section is separate from the editorials. I didn't find that true then, and I don't now. The fact that the Wolf campaign signs got a front page article this week is a statement of the NP's editorial stance being given prime space that's not warranted by news value. And how many times did the NP (as well as the editorials) cover the city budget using reserve funds in past years? Now that they've passed a balanced budget, where's the news coverage? The News-Press did the same thing with the Goleta City Council and their budget. What is newsworthy to the News-Press is only that which advances their own positions.
Sara, can you please reference which editorials you are commenting on?
And hey, thanks to Joe Guzzardi for the honest open post. I would like to see a topic posted here regarding the fact that Guzzardi won the Eastern Goleta Valley vote.
Joe - thanks for coming forward and clearing up the email usage myth - I appreciate the explanation and will be sure to pass it along to others. I had not thought of that aspect when contacting potential political supporters.... My apologies! dd
Post a Comment
<< Home