Viewpoints
Are There Two Logjam Creeks?
By Eric Muench
August 17, 2009
Monday
Sitnews is a valuable addition to the local news and opinion
exchange. I appreciate its publisher and her great source of
information of all kinds. Its continued accuracy and impartiality
in news articles is important to us all. That is why I write
this critique.
On August 13 Sitnews published
a make-believe "news" article entitled "Breaking
the Logjam on Logjam", in which spokespeople for the Southeast
Alaska Conservation Council, Audubon Alaska and Alaska Wilderness
League extolled the virtues of a "proposal" they had
just made to the Forest Service. On August 14 the Ketchikan Daily
News published a real news story entitled "Logjam sale appeal
filed" which gave some background to the timber sale and
identified SEACC's supposed proposal as an appeal to a Forest
Service decision that had been made after months of public review
and comment. A stranger could be forgiven for not understanding
that the two articles concerned the same issue at the same Logjam
Creek.
Unlike the Sitnews story, the Daily News quoted Forest Service
and timber industry people as well as SEACC, thereby allowing
readers to understand that, at the least, there are more than
one set of facts and opinions involved in the matter.
Fortunately, at the end of its article the Sitnews reader was
given the Source of News , which was SEACC. But presenting the
views and claims of SEACC and its allies, long known for advocating
wilderness and opposing the timber industry, as the sole source
of information on this story was, at best, sloppy journalism.
Sitnews had allowed itself to be used for an incomplete and inaccurate
news article. I hope the publisher is more careful in the future.
Thank you.
Eric Muench
Ketchikan, AK
About: "47 year southeast
resident who does not want the national forest system policies
dictated by the national environmental industry"
Received August 16, 2009 -
Published August 17, 2009
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