News-Record.com

John

Are you planning to do anything about the accusations Bledsoe has made about Lorraine Ahearn?
He has placed a HUGE cloud on her integrity. Untill that can be lifted, how can you expect your readers to believe anything she writes?
I think you are making a big mistake by trying to ignore the problem. At least defend her. Thanks

Lorraine has done nothing journalistically or ethically wrong. Is there something specific you want to know?

I expect our readers to understand that Jerry is presenting a one-sided defense of what happened to Chief Wray from Wray's point of view. I expect them to know that Jerry will blame everything on the News & Record as he has on a variety of topics.

You want me to dignify what appears in the Rhino with a response. You think he is placing a cloud on her integrity. I do, too. But I know enough about the way he operates and the Rhino operates that there's little I could say that would remove what you call a problem. Instead, I'd just be giving it more attention.

Mr. Robinson, Lorraine's reporting in the Wray matter, which is so eloquently exposed by Jerry Bledsoe's series, is a perfect example of the argument you and I have had before.
The very manner in which a reporter uses words to convey a message tainted by liberal bias can sway the reader to share the reporter's point of view. Lorraine's "Have you stopped beating your wife?" style questions to Wray and subsequent shaky portrayal of his words and answers were clearly intended to support her previously determined conclusion, not gather evidence to reach one.
She didn't gather evidence to see where it led, she formed an opinion and went about twisting the truth to support it.
Many of us recognize the liberal bias and ulterior motives of reporters such as Lorraine, and it affects the regard in which we hold the newspaper.

John
Thank you for your response to my questions concerning Lorraine Ahearn. I just don't understand how Jerry Bledsoe ever got in a position to literally destroy your paper a piece at a time, and you can not or will not fight back. Either he is telling the truth or he is not. I guess I'm from the old school. If I'm attacked I'm gonna fight back. I hope I don't seem facetious, but I just don't understand.

jaycee, I hope you recognize that Jerry does precisely what you accuse Lorraine of doing. I hope, too, that you feel the same way about his reporting.

Wayne,
Again, what specifically do you want a response to? I'll try to answer it.

As for the attack, how would you "fight back"? He writes what he wants every week ad infinitum. Do I write a response every time? There's so much insinuation and twisting that I wouldn't know where to begin.

Here's an example from way back. Jerry wrote that the chief spoke to our police reporter about being adversarial. I daresay that every public official in town thinks our reporters are adversarial. That happens when they don't give you information. There's nothing wrong with that and Jerry knows it. But it is presented as if there is something unusual or unethical about it.

But if there are specific questions you have, feel free to ask them, here or in a private e-mail.

I don't believe Bledsoe characerizes his series as a news story; it appears to be a defensive action in response to opinionated "reporting" masquerading as "news" written by Ahearn, et.al.
Ahearn is a reporter. If her stories on the Wray matter were opinion pieces and not hard facts then she should have said so.
I don't think anyone will contradict that the N&R stories on the Wray matter are the source of information for most of the people in our community. When Ahearn wrote them from a biased, agenda-driven angle she deliberately misled the public and is largely responsible for the distorted public opinion on the matter. She claims Wray is a racist, the facts show otherwise.
I'll reiterate: Ahearn started with a conclusion and gathered information to support that conclusion without regard to the validity of her conclusion.

Bledsoe: Opinion from one point of view, acknowledged as such.
Ahearn: Opinion misrepresented as fact.

Before we go further, please cite the passages for me where Lorraine calls Chief Wray a racist and where Jerry says his work is opinion from one point of view.

That's exactly my point, Mr. Robinson. Your newspaper would be a pretty thin publication if reporters just stated their conclusions: "There was a wreck." "A building burned down." "Somebody won the lottery." A reporter can write 1000 words about something and leave the reader with the distinct impression that someone is a racist (or anything else) without ever saying in print, "He's a racist." You know that as well as I do and you're avoiding the issue by sidestepping and doing a Clintonesque "parsing" of words. The thrust of my argument with you over time has been that a biased reporter can sway the reader by his careful manipulation and distortion of the truth in such a way as to leave the reader with no other choice than to accept the reporter’s conclusion as “truth.” Lorraine's articles are a good example. I once opined that you and I could each write an article about an event from two opposing and biased viewpoints and a reader wouldn't know we were talking about the same incident.
Lorraine's overall tone and point was that Wray had "secret police" targeting black officers. That black officers were targeted when white officers weren't. That black officers were the focus of Wray's administrative investigations. That black officers were being punished. That the families of black officers were being followed by the "secret police," a term it appears Lorraine invented to add drama and substance to her reports.
In the same vein, it's apparent to the reader's that Bledsoe is writing from Wray's veiwpoint. Bledsoe quotes few participants other than Wray. Bledsoe points out that many other players in this farce refused to be interviewed by him. Bledsoe stated in print that he wrote this series because he questioned whether Wray was, in fact, a racist as he was being portrayed in the news media. (I can’t give you an exact cite on that, but it was early on in the series.)
Did Lorraine use the phrase, "Chief Wray is a racist."? No, I don't think she said that directly. What she did was pen a clever series of biased articles that led the reader to the inescapable conclusion that Wray was a racist, which was Lorraine's intent all along.
You know well the power of the press in shaping public opinion of events. We rely on the news media for information on any news event we don't personally witness. The manner in which an incident is reported generally shapes our opinion about what happened.
When reporters provide us with unbiased facts we can form an unbiased opinion. When they supply us with information that reflects their bias and prejudices, our opinions are affected.
I’ve always believed the job of a news organization was to report the news, not invent it.

OK. What I drew from that is that you read our stories and decided that Lorraine was suggesting the Chief was racist. And you've now begun saying she claims he's racist. Huge jump, to me.

And you now say it's apparent to readers that Jerry has a point of view that's based on opinion. I agree with that, although I interpreted the meaning of your earlier comment differently. I suspect that you're approaching the Rhino series as fact and our reporting as not. That's your prerogative. I disagree.

By the way, we didn't invent the term secret police, despite what the chief thinks.

Not exactly, Mr. Robinson.
I did read Lorraine's articles and felt she was sensationalizing the "facts" to lead readers to her conclusion, which is that Wray was a racist leader. She'd be a fool to come right out and say it, but she doesn't have to if she crafts her stories to lead the reader to that conclusion, which she's done very well.
I read Bledsoe's series as a "my side of the story" recount of events.
So I would characterize both as "opinion" though Lorraine's is masquerading as a news story, which I feel should state facts, not try to sway the reader with a distortion of facts.
Anyway, we've beat this horse enough. I think we've both stated our positions clearly.

It is fun, though. Thanks, jaycee.

Well that was childish and boring.

Hardly the kind of fun things I expect from a newspaper. Yeah, I don't get enough fluff (fun) from television or your newspaper (you have whole sections devoted to fluff - Life, Sports, Comics, TV...) and put fluff features on the front.

But of course fluff is easier than news.

If you really think feature writing is "easier" than daily news writing I challenge you to write in the Life section for a few months and say that again.

I've done both. Both are difficult in their own way. But to dismissively call feature writing - or what appears in the N&R's Life section fluff you really to have to be paying no attention at all.

I can tell you from having written for Life - people read that section and connect with it, when it's done well. It's probably the section of the paper that most appeals to people my age and, as JR said, is certainly the most fun to read the most consistently.

Thanks, Snake. I should point out that these were citizen contributions, and most of the things I mentioned are primarily going online. As a result, they took little staff time or newspaper space. And those items in the newspaper go into the features sections, not the news sections.

Hey Jaycee --

You should remember one thing -- news written from a fair and objective point of view will always seem more "liberal" than "conservative," because a dispassionate examination of the truth tends to reveal that liberals are essentially right. If conservatives had their way, one group of old men would control everything, and women and other types of people would have no rights at all -- sort of like in Saudi Arabia & places like that. . . .

Walter, that's hardly a verifiable point, but thanks for contributing your liberal opinion.