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The below Letter to the Editor was sent out 3-27-2011 and was censored out by the Ithaca Journal. Letter to the Editor of The Ithaca Journal One example of the Ithaca Journal mixing propaganda and news appeared in the March 15 issue of this paper. Sally Marx is a Spencer-VanEtten school district employee who writes a column in the IJ. About half of her March 15 column was propaganda for a school bus vote that took place that very day. There was thus no opportunity to refute her false claim that the bus purchase will not result in a new tax burden. She lived for years in a tax-exempt house; so perhaps she does not realize that any spending in the school is paid for by taxes that the rest of us pay. To her, the new spending is "a no-brainer." I had an 83-year-old neighbor who lost her home when she was unable to pay her school taxes. Ms. Marx is not showing any concern about the consequences of her agenda. Nowhere in her piece was there any mention of her being on the school distristrict’s payroll. The Ithaca Journal should, at a minimum, have a requirement that would disclose their reporter’s affiliation with school bureaucracies and their teacher’s union connections. Rainer Langstedt
THE ITHACA JOURNAL PRINTS MORE PROPAGANDA, BUT STILL NO DISCLOSURE THAT THEIR CORRESPONDENT IS PROPAGANDAIZING FOR HER EMPLOYER. Rainer Langstedt to Bruce Estes, Managing Editor and General Manager of The Ithaca Journal dateThu, May 26, 2011 at 5:18 P Further to my letter to the Editor (attached) which I sent out on 3-27-2011 but which was not printed. Your reporter Sally Marx had again in the IJ issue of May17, 2011, page 8A a propaganda piece in favor of more spending. There was again no disclosure of her membership in the teacher’s union. The article is clearly a propaganda piece; there was even no mention of the enormous size of the tax increase (almost 9%). Do you think the readers of IJ would need to know the size of the tax increase before they make a decision? There was no mention of the reckless spending that is going on. www.langstedt.com/newpage140.htm Your article had unfounded speculation and scare tactics on the effects of a contingency budget. There was, no attempt to balance facts, or mention at all, about what happens to the elderly, who cannot afford the unrestrained spending. How about a mention of my former neighbor Martha Purje, whose fate Sally Marx did not mention even that she was familiar with it? www.langstedt.com/newpage94.htm My question is do you have any standards for your reporters? If so, are distortions and propaganda endorsed by the IJ? What about disclosing conflicts of interest of your reporters? Best regards Rainer Langstedt Exuses, Excuses Estes, Bruce to me show details May 28
Hello Mr. Langstedt: Your letter of 3-27 was rejected because it contained a factual inaccuracy. Sally Marx is not a reporter for The Ithaca Journal. She is a columnist. The Journal carries a variety of columns from Ask Amy and Bill O’Reilly to local columns such as Sally Marx’s town talk column on the Spencer Van-Etten community. Columnists are expected to provide commentary and opinion. I hope this answers your question. Bruce Estes The Ithaca Journal A Gannett Newspaper
SO, THE DISPUTED WORD IS CHANGED, THUS REMOVING THE EXCUSE FOR NOT PRINTING THE LETTER. 6-2-2011 Thank you for your response. A corrected version (ONE word) of the letter has been re-submitted for publications, so there is no excuse for rejection now. I am one of the long-time owners of your employer, and I have been wondering how the 70% decline in share piece came about. That question you did answer. If one neglects to respond to the customers for two months as the Letters to Editor did, you will certainly have less business. The questions that you did not answer were: Do you have any standards for your reporters (columnists)? If so, are distortions and propaganda endorsed by IJ? What about disclosing conflicts of interests of your reporters and columnists? Regards Rainer Langstedt
THE ITHACA JOURNAL ADMITS THAT THEY PLACE OPINIONS IN THE NEWSPAGES PRETENDING TO BE NEWS!!!!! THEY ARE STILL COVERING UP THE FACT THAT SALLY MARX IS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE SCHOOL DISTRICT! STILL NO DISCLOSURE OF CONFLICTS OF INTREST, OR ANY ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS. 6-7-2011 Reply |Estes, Bruce to me show details 4:56 PM (22 hours ago) Hello Mr. Langstedt: Perhaps I was unclear in my last e-mail to you regarding the role of a columnist. Reporters and columnists serve different roles. Ithaca Journal columnists are expected to offer opinion in their columns. This is the nature of columns. Bill O’Reilly offers his opinion on national issues. Outdoor columnist, David Henderson, expresses opinions about hunting and fishing that readers may applaud or jeer. Opinion may also be found in the town talk columns such as Sally Marx’s Spencer-Van Etten Town Talk. Town talk columnists are expected to write columns on their communities and offer opinions on the news and events in their hometowns. Reporters, in contrast, avoid reporting their opinion in their news articles. Reporters, unlike columnists, are expected to strive for objectivity and avoid personal or professional affiliations that might undermine that objective. I hope this additional explanation answers your question. In reading your most recent submission, I find it contains a factual error that requires me to reject it. You state: "There was thus no opportunity to refute her false claim that the bus purchase will not result in a new tax burden." There were at least two opportunities for you to respond to Sally Marx’s March 15 column on the day it was published. Both could have been done via your home computer. You could have posted a comment to the Marx column via the instant access feature on the Journal’s web site. This feature allows readers to quickly comment on the local news articles, letters and columns appearing in the Journal each day. Local news articles, letters and columns appearing in the Journal are also included at www.ithacajournal.com Readers of those web articles can post instant comments to those articles, letters and columns. You’ll have to register to do that. Click on the "register" button that you will find at the end of the web article, letter or column. That will take you to a registration site similar to the one I have pasted below. A second way to instantly respond to the March 15 article would have been to use the "Your News" feature on The Journal’s web site. Click on the "news" tab found on the www.ithacajournal.com home page. Scroll down the pull down menu to "Your News" and follow the prompts to post "Your News." See the second sample I have pasted into this message. Readers often use either the instant access feature or the "Your News" to comment on Journal content as it appears on the Journal’s web site. The vast majority of the reader feedback on local news articles, letters and columns appearing in the Journal each day comes from these two features. This is particularly true for feedback responses that have some urgency to them. A much smaller number of comments arrive as Letters to the Editor. Thank you for writing. Bruce Estes The Ithaca Journal 607-274-9242 JUST LIKE THA ITHACA JOURNAL THE PRAVDA HAD PROPAGANDA ALL OVER THE PAPER. To Bruce Estes June 10, 2011 Thank you for your reply. It is clear, that you will not print the article, but I find your most recent excuse goofy. Sally Marx’s column appeared the day of the vote. Therefore there was no possibility to get a correction printed before the people, who were mislead by the article, voted. You go on and on about sending in some kind of protest to the Internet. That certainly would not have in any way undone the damage that was caused by the propaganda that you printed, because the people who read the propaganda would not get the correction before they voted. The only way to undo the damage would be to have a retraction published in the same paper before the election. Sally Marx should, as a minimum have been identified as a school employee, then, and in every other column where she calls for more school spending, or writes about school issues. Thank you for clarifying that bias and propaganda is not restricted to your opinion page. It is all over the paper camouflaged as whatever. In younger years I used to read Soviet newspapers. Same thing. Regards, Rainer Langstedt
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