Sen. Al Melvin, Rep. Frank Antenori, Rep. David Gowan and Rep. David Stevens, clockwise from top right.
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- 8:39pm — May 20, 2013
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Tucson-area state legislators Sen. Melvin and Reps. Antenori, Gowan and Stevens don’t seem to be fans of the Star. They sent the paper a letter saying “The bias of the Arizona Daily Star editorial board makes a fair and balanced discussion impossible. As a result, we will no longer participate with the Star’s editorial board.”... Read more»
Sen. Al Melvin, Rep. Frank Antenori, Rep. David Gowan and Rep. David Stevens, clockwise from top right.
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6 comments on this story
This sounds to me as if the legislators are saying, “We have viewpoints that are not being agreed with and we do not have arguments strong enough to change minds, so we will just stop talking.”
I consider it to be the political equivalent of a child taking his toys and going home in a passive aggressive fit.
My capacity for being annoyed with the Republican legislators is virtually bottomless. I agree with one comment over at the Star to the effect the party simply has no idea how to balance the budget.
Wait a minute, they do have an idea: Cut Taxes. To quote an old Russian proverb: To the man whose only tool is a hammer, the whole word is a nail.
I’ve commented on this here elsewhere:here
Just a quick note for clarification—the Arizona Daily Star’s Editorial Board has not received any letter from Rep. Antenori or the other Southern Arizona elected officials who declined to answer questions about the state budget, at least not as of Friday evening.
Thanks,
Sarah Garrecht Gassen
Editorial writer, Arizona Daily Star
Jeez, what an awful place the Star must be to work these days. Cries of “liberal press” will likely keep coming regardless of what the editorial board does, while the Joe Burchell/Rob O’Dell Republican metro message machine continues to grind out the narrative and keep the comment section lively.
I just got off the phone with a progressive who canceled her subscription last year after absorbing too much Scarpinato in particular, and too much nonsense in general. She said the paper seems to have already lost the critical audience newspapers need in order to be taken seriously, and that what’s left will demand it increasingly turn toward what it’s essentially already become: the pulp/web equivalent of an angry talk show.
It’s sad. I grew up in Tucson when the Star was a real newspaper.
Hilarious - they are talking about the paper that endorsed Kyl and McCain, right ?
Just how “left” or “right” someone is is relative, depending upon where one is sitting, and this letter says more about how far “right” the legislators are as it does the Star’s position on the political scale.
It’s not the opinion on the Star’s editorial pages that bothers me. I tend to avoid editorial pages because usually there’s nothing to learn.
It’s the agenda-driven news articles that bother me. Having been involved as a source in one that turned out to be an attack piece that lacked balance and promoted lies as fact, and having experienced nothing but arrogance from the editors to whom I complained, clear up the food chain to the publisher, I lost all respect for the Star as a newspaper.
When I was a reporter and editorial writer at a daily, the people I worked with took pride in doing their best to be objective, ethical journalists. Apparently a line has been crossed since then, and agendas, both liberal and conservative, have become more important than fairness.
The result is a lack of credibility and trust. It is no surprise to me to see people dismissing the Star as an unreliable medium. They are reaping the results of low ethical standards and a high level of arrogance.