Opinion: Questions Recorder coverage of former school issue

Published: 1/11/2023 10:38:40 PM
Modified: 1/11/2023 10:35:32 PM
​The Recorder is once again blatantly and shamelessly taking sides in its coverage of the apparently endless controversy over the former Heath Elementary School.
In your front-page story of Jan. 9, you report that our Selectboard received “roughly 30 emails from residents denouncing the board’s decision to call [the former school] the ‘Heath Community Center’.” You cite these at considerable length. You do not cite even one email in support of this decision. I am reliably informed that there were several, including mine.
Sheila Litchfield may believe that in its renaming decision, the board “attempts to deny Heath’s historic past,” but that is only a belief and is unsupported by any facts. Noy Holland may still believe that 18 Jacobs Road (the former school building) is “a property that townspeople neither want nor need.” But the “townspeople” have expressed themselves unambiguously on that subject, voting not once but twice at town meetings not to sell the former school.
I find it disheartening that some of my fellow Heathans appear to have adopted the Trumpian view that if you don’t like the outcome of a democratic election you question its legitimacy and that of its consequent policy decisions on the sole basis of fact-free assertions. But I find it dismaying, to put the matter no higher, that my local newspaper seems to need yet another refresher course in Journalistic Ethics 101. That lesson is: in reporting a local controversy, dig hard to get facts and opinions from both sides. In its coverage of this issue, the Recorder continues to fail its readership.
Donald Freeman
Heath

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