The Angry Citizen ©

While I still have received no contact I did find the paper had been miraculously delivered at about 1 pm.

Nothing else has changed in my belief that the Macon Telegraph is stonewalling and hoping I will get tired of beating my head against their stone wall. But that simply won’t happen.

Now off to look for falsehoods, errors, and omissions in the belatedly but finally delivered paper.

The Macon Telegraph
Knight Ridder

Editors and Mr. Kilgore,
Mr. Laffoon
Ms. Schlatter
Ms. Dalton

Is the Macon Telegraph so petty as to disrupt our subscription in payback for my complaints about Charles Richardson’s column?

My paper did not arrive on Sunday and I can get no response to my requests for redelivery. I have tried both the 1-800-679-6397 and I sent an E-mail via the website that included both an email address and phone number. Both of these were done before 9:30 am with a request for redelivery. As of 11:30am I still have received no paper or contact.

I will continue to criticize your paper and Knight Ridder for failing to provide a clear path for addressing citizen concerns about errors in your paper. I have some familiarity with the concept of Public Relations and pledge to do my best to hold you responsible for your mistakes. I would encourage you to reflect on the experiences of those media outlets that have attempted to rely on stonewalling as a tactic. It seldom works. The correct response from a public relations perspective is to either admit the error and correct it or show that the accuser is wrong.

I have provided you with links to my sources for alleging that Mr. Richardson used a discredited rumor and a false argument in his October 4th column. So far you have still failed to respond in any fashion.

John Kraus
The Angry Citizen

http://angrycitizen.net/angrycitizen/

The ongoing saga of

Lil’ Charlie Richardson

and

The Seven Tenets Of Journalism

Or

How To Lie To The Public

And get away with it with a little help from your editors.

The Seven Tenets according to Knight Ridder:

1. Storytelling: Well-written. Well-packaged. Well-edited.
2. Trust: Reports the news accurately.
3. Watchdog: Gives the information needed to hold our leaders accountable.
4. First & Only: Does a better job than any other source in helping readers understand the news.
5. People Like Me: Understands what’s of special interest and importance to people of the area.
6. Utility: Provides practical, extremely relevant information.
7. Ease Of Use: Well-organized. It’s easy to find the information readers need.

These are all well and good. They represent a high and noble goal. Unfortunately the newspaper published in Macon Georgia often fails to live up to these ideals.

A key component is missing from this idyllic view and that is accountability with a clear path for responding to criticism or allegations of error.

To date I have sent requests for corrections to the Managing editor and to the editorial page with no response. Think “Dan I’d Rather not tell the truth” type stonewalling.

The next step is to move the discussion to the parent company.

{Personally I find it a hoot that the “story” ranks higher than the truth.}
Read the rest of this entry »

It has become obvious that the Macon Telegraph is not going to issue any correction of Charles Richardson’s column of October 4 2005. This column has several factual errors that are used to excuse New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin while attempting to shift the blame to FEMA Director Michael Brown.

Mr. Richardson repeats an disproven allegation that Joe Albaugh and Mike Brown were “college chums”.

I provided the Telegraph with a link to a New York Times correction of this error when it was used by their columnists Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and Frank Rich.

Mr Richardson also asks a rhetorical question — “Has he planned the agencies response to other catastrophes”.

FEMA’S bio of Mr. Brown reports that he led the response to 164 presidentially declared disasters including the Colombia shuttle diaster in 2003 and the Florida Hurricanes in 2004. While the actual amount of “planning” he did can be debated it should be obvious that Mr. Brown was not the rank neophyte that Richardson seems to indicate.

The complete text of my requests for correction can be found here:

http://www.angrycitizen.net/angrycitizen/irresponsible-journalisim/

This request was sent to the Editors at letters@macontel.com

I also sent it to Ms. Sharrie Marshall at smarshall@macontel.com

So far I have seen no retraction and have received no response.

I guess Thomas Jefferson was right in his evaluation of the veracity of newspapers.

http://www.angrycitizen.net/angrycitizen/jeffersonian-commentary/