Why should I trust the media?

Tony Metivier faces primary challenge in Queensbury - again

The Front Page

Afternoon Update

Saturday, June 12, 2021

By Ken Tingley

The email contained fighting words as far as I was concerned. 

“This is just another of the many reasons people in this country do not trust the media,” it read. It contained a link reporting that Lafayette Square had been cleared in June 2020 not so President Trump could walk to the church across the street, but to put up a fence. 

The story was cable news click bait for days. And frankly, I’m still not sure what point the president was trying to make by having his photo taken in front of a church. I responded with a link of my own, saying here are a dozen or so reasons why people SHOULD trust the media. The link was for this year’s Pulitzer Prize awards.

I include the link here so you can see the stories that were honored and the difference they made. The work was not about politics. It was about righting wrongs. I suspect you have not heard about many of the stories. It is that quiet investigative journalism that is so important to our country and that is often ignored.

Consider the following:

• The Boston Globe (I mistakenly reported The Associated Press in an earlier version of newsletter) was honored for uncovering a systemic failure by state governments to share information about dangerous truck drivers that could have kept them off the road. The reporting led to immediate reforms and made the nation’s highways immediately safer for all of us.

• The Atlanta Journal Constitution was honored for explanatory reporting for its “exhaustive examination , powered by a pioneering data analysis of U.S. Federal court cases, of the obscure legal doctrine of `Qualified immunity’ and how it shields police who use excessive force from prosecution. It uncovered a failure in one of our institutions.

• The Tampa Bay Times was honored for its local reporting exposing how a powerful and politically connected sheriff build a secretive intelligence operation that harassed residents and used grades and child welfare records to profile schoolchildren. Those are the types of abuses of power that newspapers regularly expose.

• A team of organizations from The Marshall Project, AL.com, Birmingham, the Indianapolis Star, the Invisible Institution in Chicago did a year long investigation of K-9 units and the damage that police dogs inflict on Americans, including innocent citizens and police dogs that led to nationwide reforms.

• The New York Times was honored for its sweeping coverage for the pandemic, but more specifically how it exposed racial and economic inequalities, government failures while filling the void with information that helped local governments, healthcare providers and businesses be better prepared and protected. In other words, they made a difference and saved lives by giving the public information that was not forthcoming from our government.

• Buzzfeed was honored for its use of satellite imagery to identify a vast new infrastructure built by the Chinese government for the mass detention of Muslims. I would imagine most of us had not even heard about this coverage.

• The Los Angeles Times for its editorials on policing, bail reform prisons and mental health that repeatedly reviewed the Los Angeles criminal justice system.

These are just the winners. These are just some of the reasons why you need to read a newspaper daily, if not over your breakfast table, then online. It is why you need to understand that the “media” is more than the talking heads arguing on cable news. That the news you receive on Facebook is meant to affirm what you already believe and not challenge what you believe.

Newsrooms across the country have been gutted and fewer and fewer organizations are able to do this type of work. That should really worry you.

So yeah, you should trust the media. You should hold it accountable, too, but it is still the last line of defense between us and the bad guys. Unfortunately, many of the bad guys are elected.

Tony Metivier will face another primary in Ward 1 in Queensbury on Tuesday.

Primary Day

I was surprised, but not shocked that Tony Metivier is once again being challenged for his seat on the Queensbury Town Board.

Metivier had been serving quietly on the Town Board since 2008, but in late 2016, Metivier was ordered by the county’s Republican Party chairman to vote to change the town’s law firm to a more Republican-friendly practice.

Metivier refused. He has face a Republican challenge ever since. When will the Republican Party leadership let this go? Thankfully, Metivier remains a popular representative in his own ward because of the independence he has shown, instead of Republican loyalty. It is what we should expect from all elected representatives.

I hope all the Republicans in his ward show up at the polls and support him again on Tuesday. We need more representatives who will stand up for the people instead of their party.

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