It appears the reporting on the May 9 County Council meeting was heavily one-sided and clouded by what could be personal political biases, slanted in a way which veils the truth to anyone who wasn’t in attendance at the proceedings. The story on the decision of County Council to defund the Community Liaison Department serves as a clear example. This story does a lot to try and establish why the Council’s decision may have been a bad one, but provided no information as to how it may have been a good one.
The stories used emotionally charged verbiage and phrases in describing the decision, such as: the Council “killed the Liaison Department,” or, “not a single Council member,” offered a second on a motion to reconsider. It even took to pointing a finger at the new members of Council by alleging that they all “initiated the defunding.”
The article never mentioned the many calls from the public for Council to find and eliminate waste in its budget, nor did it quote anyone on the arguments for the elimination of the Department, or why the discussion was ever even brought up in the first place (it’s my understanding that Council questioned the need for the Department at their first budget work session, and discussed it as a duplication of services).
I’ve heard there are two other providers for this service, SC Works and WIOA, which operate with no direct cost to the County, offer almost identical services, and reside in the same building as the Liaison Department! These facts were somehow conveniently omitted from this article.
If arguments from one side of an issue are represented in the press, to be fair, they should also provide arguments from the opposing side as well. Anything else isn’t reporting, it’s editorializing.
Please leave the editorializing behind and return to higher standards of reporting.
It’s a newspaper’s job to report the news, not to spin it.
Pat Williams
Winnsboro
