New Richmond County Board of Commissioners Chair Jeff Smart struck a familiar tone in his first statements in his new position when he charged local media with the responsibility of helping with the county’s efforts to recruit industry to the area.
In the course of condemning the recent lawsuit filed jointly by Hamlet, Dobbins Heights, and four local residents at the Board’s monthly meeting on Monday, Smart shifted to address members of the local media and how we cover this fight over a new industry looking to come here.
“Lastly, let me address our local media outlets in Richmond County: I kindly ask you to print the truth and the facts of every situation that you choose to follow. I’m asking you to highlight the positives just as you do the negatives,” Smart said, reading from a prepared statement. “It’s very important in our industrial recruiting process that our future industrial partners be able to see the positive things that are going on in our community.”
Our stance on this issue remains what it has been throughout the tenure of the current leadership of the Daily Journal: progress cannot come at the expense of the truth. Journalism suffers when reporters take any potential “outcome” into account during the reporting process because to do so would inevitably lead to a manipulation of facts. Whether or not Richmond County’s industrial recruiting process is successful depends on the actions of its leaders, not on the media who covers them.
We hope that other media, whether local or those from other parts of the state that may turn their eye on Richmond County, will take the same stance.
This attempt to direct blame for any hiccup in Richmond County’s economic development on those who report the news echoes rhetoric often used by Smart’s predecessor: Kenneth Robinette, as well as rhetoric used by other members of the Board and county administration in recent memory. With so much change — four new commissioners, with the longest serving now Don Bryant, who has 10 years on the board — it seems much remains the same.
The most explicit example of this was when Robinette blamed the Epicenter festival leaving the county after a year on the Daily Journal’s supposedly negative coverage, which amounted to noting that the festival’s organizers publicly apologized for traffic delays which, according to the Highway Patrol, could have been avoided had the organizers heeded law enforcement advice. Under our mandate as a newspaper, we also packed the paper with testimonials from fans and pictures of some of the biggest crowds of people having the time of their lives that Richmond County has seen in years at this festival.
Community journalism cannot afford, neither morally nor as a business model, to direct its coverage in any direction other than towards the truth. To do so would be to sever the trust of the readers who we aim to inform.
We cover the goings on in Richmond County, and — by definition — doing this effectively means writing about the “positives” and the “negatives.” It’s ridiculous to suggest that we do not cover the “positive” things about Richmond County, and this accusation seems to only be leveled when we happen to cover something that may reflect poorly on those in power.
If any elected officials have an issue with the facts of an article, our email inboxes and phone lines are open. But to date, we have received no such factual complaint about our coverage of the lawsuits nor the rezoning. So, this vague insinuation of ill will on the part of the media can only be taken as a scare tactic intended to chill our coverage of the issues at hand.
Readers can rest assured that we will not be deterred from our mission of bringing them the truth, no matter who is in office.
