Opinion: Running press releases is not bias


At various times throughout my tenure as your humble Home in Henderson editor, I have taken some minor heat over press releases that I run from North Carolina state and federal politicians.

I’ve been called an “idiot”, a “loving reporter”, and faced the insinuation that I’m a hack for the political party to which these elected officials belong, namely the Democratic Party.

(The article for which I was called a “loving reporter” was Etheridge visits E.M. Rollins Elementary. The congressman came into my classroom during his tour. It have been wildly inappropriate for an adult to start peppering an elected official with aggressive questions in front of a class full of fifth graders, teacher or not. Further, I would have almost certainly lost my job on the spot, and rightly so. When I’m on my day job, I’m obligated to be politically neutral. It would also be disingenuous to teach my students to respect the office if I “dis” the man who holds it. Kids are concrete thinkers; they don’t make the fine distinctions at that age.)

The office holders’ party affiliation is not my personal doing, nor can I be held personally responsible for the paucity of Republicans in elected office in and from North Carolina. I would run press releases no matter what party they belong to, as long as they send them — even the Nazi Party, if they were duly elected by a majority of eligible voters and sworn into office according to our laws. I wish, for example, our North Carolina senators, one of whom is a Republican, would send me press releases. I’ve asked. I’ve also invited local Republicans to submit to the site. You can lead a horse to water, but trying to drown them will get you stared at in church.

In the short view, I suppose I can understand why some might jump to the conclusion that this is the result of a personal political agenda on the part of the editor. The press releases that I run are very partisan, and they reflect the views and agenda of the elected officials for whom they were written and distributed.

Republican press releases are no less filled with partisan rhetoric — at least from the point of view of their political opponents.

I am not the author of these press releases. Perhaps that is unclear to some readers. Although I edit press releases, I do not edit them for content. I don’t call the offices of the politicians from which they come for a quote, nor do I call their political opponents for the other side of the story.

Exactly how would you expect me to pull that off, what with having a full-time career, a family, and at least one major cardiac event per calendar year? And how am I going to do that effectively from Henderson when the major players are in Raleigh and Washington?

Secretary: Congressman Butterfield, you have a call from Jason Feingold of Home in Henderson.

Butterfield: What! Put him through immediately! The president and the Joint Chiefs will just have to wait.

You get the picture.

Well, Jason, my critics will say, maybe you shouldn’t print press releases at all if you can’t do all of that.

Maybe you’re right. But let’s think about that for a second.

If I don’t print the press releases, where exactly will you get the information they contain? Even though they are partisan, these press releases contain factual details about the activities of our elected officials that are hard to find in other places without time-consuming information hunts.

Or would you prefer that our delegations operate in an information vacuum, free from the scrutiny from their constituents because the tone of the press release does not agree with your political palate?

Home in Henderson believes that the attention. although far from ideal, is ultimately a good thing. These politicians know that Henderson and Vance County are watching them, and perhaps that knowledge will influence their actions to our betterment, or at least not to our detriment.

If you trust yourself to be able to sift the facts from the propaganda in a press release, then it’s specious to assume that every other reader will take every syllable as if it were gospel truth. And of course you have the opportunity to give an alternate point of view in the comments underneath the press release. That is, after all, what the Home in Henderson experiment is all about.

We’re going to keep running the press releases. Feel free to read them, or not, or to offer another point of view, or not. Even better, light a fire under an official who is not getting the HiH spotlight and get them to send their press releases.