"All the News We See Fit to Print"

Last week we posted THIS regarding our efforts to bring you real information from actual source documents so you can read and decide for yourself your individual positions on the issues. Too often, facts and events can be skewed and contorted before they reach you for digestion. We don't profess to have all the information out there but we do try to locate and provide as much of it to you as we can.

Look, we'll be the first to say that publishing a weekly newspaper cannot be easy. Errors are inevitable and even awkward slips happen, like the Islander today reporting that John Cagnina was unavailable for comment on the dismissal of his ethics complaint after a previously published version of the same story included an alleged quote from him. Like that tree in the woods, if he was no longer "available" for the later published version, was there ever really a quote? But stuff happens. It seems to happen with regularity around here but it happens. We move on.

Sometimes though that "stuff" calls into question other motives. Like the Sun covering a story on the recall and providing a phone number to call if one wants to sign up, like some company newsletter asking for volunteers to organize the annual picnic. Not a proud journalistic moment. And today's edition of the Islander contains a story we reported HERE last week regarding the recent foray into public records exploration by PAR's lawyer Valerie Fernandez. As we showed you HERE, her June 4, 2010 subpoena contained requests for emails tied to numerous sources, this blog and this writer included. Particularly compelling was the inclusion of email addresses of reporters for both the Islander and the Sun, an interesting and certainly newsworthy development considering the polarized PAR and recaller-friendly positions both papers have taken publicy in either editorial opinions or "news" reports.

What we did not know at the time of our post was that a week after filing the June 4th subpoena, apparently sufficient time for the powers that be to realize the implications of a subpoena ensnaring a sympathetic fifth estate (the press), Ms. Fernandez filed THIS, a second and chastened subpoena removing the reporter's emails from the demand.

The Islander's story today regarding the subpoena(s) wholly fails to mention the June 4th subpoena and the inclusion of its reporter's email address in that original list. Its editor can argue that the story is technically accurate (relying on the amended subpoena) but the original June 4th subpoena was served five days before the publication date of last weeks Islander edition and there was no mention of it there either.

We have said before that the Islander's editor is free to do what she will with her publication. And perhaps some feel that omitting pertinent facts, not just any facts but facts that directly implicate her paper and its reporter in a litigated records request, from this week's story on the Fernandez subpoena(s) is no big deal. But it is a big deal. The episode points to larger issues of trust and accountability. What else has been excised from previous reporting and what will be chosen to be left out in the future? Might someone suspect there to have been some sort of quid pro quo attached? One hopes not but who knows? In its June 16 on-line edition published this afternoon, the Sun chose to handle the subpoena issue as, we can only suppose, a non-story since not a word is mentioned regarding their reporter being initially targeted.

Both the Islander and the Sun serve valuable and necessary purposes in this community. But the next time you begin to draw conclusions and formulate opinions after reading a local newspaper report, ask yourself if you are satisfied that you have been given all of the facts. If you are satisfied, nothing we say here is going to convert your way of thinking, and we respect that. But if not, then join the club and keep asking questions.

For well over a hundred years The New York Times' masthead has famously trumpeted the publication's slogan, "All the News That's Fit to Print." Lately around here it seems to be more like "All the News We See Fit to Print."

Bill Yanger