The Senators' Dilemma

Our Senators, Clinton and Schumer are in a real dilemma these days. The Washington Times framed that dilemma well in the Op-Ed piece (the likes of which you will never read in our "beloved" Wellsville Daily Reporter); Pink Meat for the Anti-war Left. What is this great dilemma? Why how to best surrender and retreat while fervently hoping, and doing all they can to insure, that America does not win in Iraq. It is shameful that unscrupulous individuals like our two senators can be elected to such high office. More shameful, is to think that Charles Schumer actually carried Allegany County in the '04 elections. But, is that really such a surprise? when our local paper openly campaigns against our President and undermines America's war effort at every opportunity.


Just some food for thought.

I Finally Did It!

Well, I finally did it. I cancelled my subscription to the Wellsville Daily Reporter. It’s been a long time coming and I have given them every benefit of the doubt over the last two years, but enough is enough. The hate filled editorial cartoons and the unrelenting anti-American (yes I said “anti-American”) propaganda (read pro-Spitzer, pro- Schumer, pro-Hillary, Bush bashing) “content” presented without even the pretense of balance finally got to me.

Here is the email I sent them together with John Anderson’s response.

Dear John and Duke,

Please cancel my subscription to your paper effective immediately. Over the last couple of years I have given you the benefit of the doubt and hoped that you would clean up your act. Over that period of time I have never seen such hate filled ed cartoons and the one about our outgoing governor was the last straw. John lied to me twice about trying to balance the page some and that coupled with the overall pour editorial quality of the paper has led to my decision.

It has been truly sad to watch the downward slide of a once good local paper.

Again, cancel my subscription effective immediately, do not continue it until the current subscription runs out, I will expect a refund of the balance of my account in the near future and will also expect no further cc charges for further fees.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

K Richard Helms
(address and phone number included in the original)

John’s response:

Oak got your e-mail. Thank you for sending it to both of us. As you know, my
hands are tied in terms or cartoons because of the service we purchase.
-
John

By way of additional comment: I have my doubts about the truthfulness of John's response here since he refused to print either of my last two letters raising my concerns, while promising both times (with no results) to address the issue.

Enough said, If you’re fed up too let me know and if you have cancelled or plan to cancel your subscription also be sure to send me a copy of your email/letter and I will post it here.

Thanks for listening to my rant, let me know what you think.
Dick

An open letter to The Wellsville Reporter

While the Daily Reporter does an outstanding job of reporting on local and area news that keeps us up to date with what is going on hereabout, I do have one long standing gripe. Over the last few years the editorial cartoons published are really heavy left, often to the point of hateful. In fact the last few Cheney toons have really crossed the line from satirical humor to expressing outright hate for a fine man. I wrote to the paper about my concerns last year and while they did not publish my letter I was able to talk with John. I was told that there were very few ed-toons available from the only MSM (read "we hate Bush") souce they used so they printed what was available. Therefore, I gave them some alternative sources for conservative ed-toons to balance the page and while things did get a little better for a while, the situation is now worse than it ever was.

Over the last few months I have again been tracking the ed-toons and they are running 10 to 1 anti-administration. Now I know that the paper's readership does not run 10 to 1 in the "we hate the President" camp, it's probably closer to a 4 to 6 ratio. I also know that there is a debate in journalism as to whether the editorial page is to reflect readership opinion or drive readership opinion and above all I understand that it is their editorial page. However, there should be at least a reasonable attempt to reflect the views of those of us that don’t hate our President (and Vice President) but believe him to be an honorable man that is doing the right thing. I hope that the Reporter will take these thoughts to heart and bring a bit of balance back to the paper.

I am again tracking the ed-toons and will be posting the results here from time to time.

This post was updated February 20, 2006