“When a reporter sits down at the typewriter, he’s nobody’s friend.”
— Theodore White, American political journalist, historian and author
We recently published an article regarding solar on the front page of the Wednesday, April 20, 2022, Ledger Independent that had some biased leanings in it.
It is not the position of the paper, or its leadership, to do such things outside of the Opinion page. As publisher, I take ownership of having allowed that to happen and I want to go on record that we have no biased for or against solar within our community. It’s our responsibility to report facts, and facts alone as it concerns this issue within our community. I believe we missed the mark with this article.
It should be noted that we as a public media entity don’t win either way. I’ve heard from several people expressing their dissatisfaction regarding the article and its placement. With respect to that, I’m sure the article made those who aren’t in favor of solar happy. However, it’s not our job to make anyone “happy,” our job is to provide local news and information in an unbiased and un-opinionated way. Sometimes that’s hard, and let’s face it, we all have implicit biases and opinions. They just shouldn’t appear on the front page of our newspaper.
When we write something we put our name on it and it is there for all to see, we must stand by both the good and bad when it’s written. We are human, just as those of you reading this, and we will make mistakes. Ours are harder to take back once they’re out there for all of you to see. It’s my hope that you’ll see this as our way of acknowledging when we could have been better, trying to look forward, and working on doing our best at bringing you local news and information in an unbiased way.
As always, we love our readers and their passions toward our community and issues that are important to them. I’m amazed when I hear people say, “no one reads the newspaper anymore.” I guess that’s true until it impacts something they’re passionate about. I want to thank our loyal readers for never letting us down.
