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10/01/2007 - Worth Noting Criticism
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Dear Editor:
In the piece by Christine Vestal here, http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=244208, called "Worth Noting: Judge calls Illinois statehouse feud "ridiculous", your writer makes the following statement:
In the dirty tricks department, the Ohio Republican Party admitted to a massive public records request that has Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and his staff sifting through millions of emails, The Plain Dealer reports. The GOP’s director said the request — made by an intern who did not mention her connection to the party — was meant to show whether the Strickland administration could follow up on its pledge to make public records more available, according to the story.
The Plain Dealer link is no longer available, so I can't verify some of the trivial assumptions (like Ohio Republican Party "admitting" solely based on a connection to an "intern"), but I must the major assumption is that a public records request constitutes "dirty tricks". I'd like you to explain how this is so, and particularly how this type of writing meshes with your mission as 1) being done by professional journalists 2) being an indepedent product of Pew, I believe a 501-c-3, which claims the mantle of "public service." The writing suggests to me a bias against Republicans generally, and also an unprofessional linkage of the use of public records laws to "dirty tricks", a linkage that helps no one in the media and public regardless of whatever the real and perceived intent of the request was (in Michigan, the state FOIA explicitly forbids courts and public bodies from inquiring into motives of the requestor because its such a subjective inquiry).
The writing also damages the reputation of the Pew Charitable Trusts, to the extent that it suggests that the organization is nothing more than a shill for certain political views and parties. There's nothing wrong with that necessarily, if you're open and up front with your biases and mission.
Truly,
Chetly Zarko
PS - A second review shows the article is filed in "Commentary," but that's not clear from the page itself, which I was drawn to from an outside link. I'd recommend posting "Commentary" on the page, rather than the words "Top Story" which appear on the page. In addition, as to commentary, good commentary typically backs its conclusions with reasoning and evidence. The conclusions of the writer still suffer from that failure.
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By Chetly Zarko
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