Why did you do it?
That was the subject line this past weekend in an email from a frequent reader of WendellRobinson.com offerings. What the reader was referring to was a post we put up mid-last week on the Silent Majority titled “The Deal that’s Holding Cuyahoga County Hostage,” and she couldn’t understand why I decided that the piece which came to us from an anonymous source was worthy of publication. I’ll let the reader speak for herself:
How can you who recently ran under as the Republican candidate for county commissioner think it’s proper to print such a thing? Have you no shame? Whatever happened to party loyalty? It’s obvious that there’s no truth to the story or the writer would have put their name on it. It’s bad enough that you put that on your site, what’s worse is that I’ve two copies of it e-mailed to me from other parts of the country. You’re not only hurting us locally, you’re exposing our dirty laundry to a national audience. You should apologize to your readers and to Sally and Bob.
What’s interesting is that this was the only negative piece of email I received. What’s unfortunate is that it came from someone I’ve known for quite a while and it’s apparent that I’ve disappointed her. To answer her question, I sent the following reply:
We posted the story because the source is credible. I’ve known the writer for quite some time and when I originally received the draft of the piece, I made some inquiries about the allegations. In most cases the information checked out, and on the parts that we could not receive confirmation, the piece was edited to reflect this.
Occasionally we do post anonymously attributed material and in this case, the writer asked that we keep their identity private. Given the nature of what they do for a living, we agreed.
As for hurting the party, that was not the intention at all. First and foremost the intention was to get to the truth. If our party has difficulty with the truth, then we have a very big problem.
I make no apologies to Bob or Sally. I am concerned though that Sally is simply being a good soldier in this fight and the Chairman is less interested in how this affects her than he is in protecting his own interests.
The question I would ask of you is “What’s more important - the party, or good government?”
By posting that piece, I think you can see where we stand.
