Fair and accurate?
It seems that C-VILLE missed one in the “Cheap Shots ’05” story [December 20]: The “Fox Bias in News Reporting” Award to C-VILLE Weekly.
C-VILLE’s coverage of the last year’s Charlottesville School Board issues and the City Council’s ultimate responsibility for the fiasco bordered on biased propaganda for the leadership of the Democratic Party. A clear example of C-VILLE getting it so wrong is the Cheap Shot indictment of Jeff Rossman, “winner” of the “Bill O’Reilly Modesty in Politics” Award along with Rob Schilling, for purportedly making statements indicating that the City Council “has been using appointed school boards to bolster a racist agenda… .”
Jeff Rossman did no such thing in the course of the Scottie Griffin fiasco or during the elected school board referendum. I don’t recall Rossman ever making a statement claiming to be a “defender of local African-Americans.” Rossman’s reference to paternalism had nothing to do with race, but was about the anything-but-transparent control by a few party leaders over issues affecting our schoolchildren. As far as I understand, it was more about City Councilors who called parent activists “troublemakers.” The reference to Dixiecrats was about a small group of party leaders making decisions in smoke-filled backrooms with little or no transparency rather than trusting the wisdom of the citizenry.
Jeff Rossman was a significant supporter of the Democratic Party this year and for C-VILLE Weekly to attack him for his stance on the elected school board—as well as C-VILLE’s biased coverage of these issues —indicates that conservatives like Fox News are not the only ones engaged in propagandistic tactics (and this from a liberal).
By mistakenly focusing on Rossman, you missed the real story last year—accountability for the $290,000 Griffin fiasco and the cause of the populist embrace of the elected school board. Or maybe that’s the point. Focus on Rossman and we take the focus off accountability of the policy makers. The referendum for an elected school board was a bipartisan initiative and won with 73 percent of the vote. You are not making things better with this kind of reporting. C’mon, C-VILLE, get it straight. No more agit-prop a la O’Reilly, please.
Walt Heinecke
Charlottesville
Jeffrey Rossman chimes in
While I was touched to have been awarded the “Bill O’Reilly Modesty in Politics” Award in your last issue, I don’t believe that I deserve this honor.
You say that I have been given the award for “racial pandering” during the elected school board campaign. As evidence, you offer a quote of mine (which, incidentally, you misquoted) that I gave to The Hook shortly after the referendum passed.
The quote was about paternalism, not race. Some of the arguments made by opponents of an elected school board were indeed paternalistic. Voters rejected these arguments on November 8.
Contrary to what you insinuate in your award nomination, I never uttered the word “Dixiecrat,” nor did I accuse anyone—Democrats, Republicans, or Inde-pendents—of being racist.
Having set the record straight, I would like to close by nominating your paper for the “Jayson Blair Award for Imaginative Reporting of the News.”
Jeffrey Rossman
Charlottesville
John Borgmeyer responds:
In the November 17, 2005 issue of The Hook, Rossman stated: “To me this is the last nail in the coffin of traditional southern Democratic Party paternalism here in Charlottesville.” “Cheap Shots” omitted the words “traditional southern” inadvertently.
Mind your House of Mouse
In the “Cheap Shots ’05” issue of C-VILLE, you accuse Joan Fenton and Bob Stroh of trying to turn the Downtown Mall into Disneyland, specifically citing:
-Their sponsorship of an additional crossing for vehicles
-Their support of increased fees for street vendors
-Their desire to remove the newspaper boxes
The Downtown Mall survives on successful local commercial ventures, which nourish the Mall economically and socially. One additional vehicle crossing does not destroy the pedestrian nature of the Mall. Easy access to the Mall businesses will help keep the Mall viable.
In regards the increased fees for the street vendors—it is the small business that creates and defines the Downtown Mall. An extremely conservative estimate of expenses of a small store would be $35,000 in rent, utilities and advertising annually. If revenues fail to cover those expenses, they close. If the street vendors cannot cover $100 per month in fees, then they must learn the same lesson in market economics as the rest of us.
If your paper depended on advertising revenue from the street vendors, you would cease to exist. If the Downtown Mall depended solely on street vendors, it, too, would fail. I doubt that you have sought the perspective of the business owners who provide your forum and your existence.
Removing the newspaper boxes? While I don’t object to the boxes, their removal hardly seems to qualify as “Disneyfi-cation.” Could it be that this proposal strikes too close to home?
It seems that it is you who wants to be in Disneyland. It is naïve to assume continued success for the Downtown Mall without allowing Mall business owners the tools of that success. Unless you prefer that the small businesses close and the national chains move in. That would indeed be Disneyland on the Mall. Then would you be happy?
Steve Metz
Three Monkeys
Charlottesville