Have you seen the "new, upgraded" Rockwall County News? If not, you should pick one up because it is one of the finest examples of a far right-wing rag as I have ever seen. Just take a look at the editorial page. Before, they actually printed letters to the editor, even ones that were hostile to the status quo in Rockwall. But, now that it is time to get on the bandwagon to get Ralph Hall re-elected, they can't have any rational debate on important issues or disagreement with his umbilical attachment to anything King George wanted to do. And you won't read about Jodie Laubenberg and Bob Deuell's subservience to Tom Craddick's agenda. That agenda would be a carbon copy of the one pushed by governor Rick "Big-hair" Perry. You know, the kind of things like taking away from poor kids by cutting CHIP and leaving a million dollars in federal money on the table or giving the saved money to rich peoples kids as school vouchers, or best of all, giving our highways away to a company in Spain.
Debate or commentary on such vital issues to Rockwall citizens has been replaced by commentaries from three wing-nuts: Bill O'Reilly specializing in hate speech, Walter Williams spouting race-baiting nonsense and Congressman Ron Paul off in the ozone of no laws. But of course this is balanced with....no, not Frank Rich, no, not Paul Krugman, in fact you are not even close. Instead the page is filled with four right wing reactionary political cartoons. Keep leafing through and you come to page 6 where the top article is a column in large letters entitled "On Gods Word". Keep going and all you get to read about is Rockwall kids, more Rockwall kids and Rockwall kids and sports.
I do not object to Born-again Christian theology, the right of right-wing commentators to spout nonsense or Rockwall's great kids. What I do object to is a lack of fairness or anything remotely resembling objectivity. In other words if you want to see a pitiful rehashing of the worst of the mainstream media mixed with support of Rockwall's kids, it is great. However, if you want to see a discussion of why Ralph Hall voted against sCHIP, or Veteran's or restraining domestic spying you won't find it in the Rockwall County News? You won't find any questions asking when the county commissioners knew Ray Sumrow was stealing county funds.
You won't find any debate about why the county commissioners couldn't convince voters to back the bonds for the fancy new courthouse located on the area's most expensive real estate either. I could go on, but we all know what is going on in this town and county and it isn't pretty. Too bad we have no local published news sources to defend us. I guess we will just have to do it ourselves person to person and on the internet.
1 comment:
The new owners of the County News must be congratulated. They took what had become an awful newspaper and made it even worse.
For a growing community like Rockwall, the quality of our media (and the information we as citizens receive) is abysmal.
Post a Comment