Putting media abuse in perspective
I’m honored to be an elected member of the Lowell School Committee and serve my community. But that’s what it is: community service. My passion for excellent schools, my teaching experience, and my willingness to speak out and work hard to better educate our children are qualities that make me good at the job. I have no other agenda. Come election time, voters will have the opportunity to demonstrate whether they believe my efforts have made a difference or not, and that’s fine with me.
Regarding the assistant superintendent vote that has caused me excessive, repetitive trashing from our local paper (more than a month of articles, editorials, and columns; four days this week alone), what is the motive behind all their ink? The leadership at the paper will tell you they want excellent schools, but they do not want to pay for them, nor are they willing to acknowledge when the schools make progress. Instead, they gleefully headline the challenges and social problems that impact the education of our children and claim it is all the schools’ fault, while bashing us for attempting to keep quality leadership as if it doesn’t matter. They will tell you they protect the taxpayers’ interests, but they do not provide objective, balanced, or even accurate reporting. As Dick Howe writes here, they even continue to trash former Supt. Baehr because she wouldn’t kowtow to them. (Count me in that category as I have been consistently ink whipped since being ungrateful for their endorsement last fall.) They have also been exceptionally critical of City Manager Lynch—expelling reams of paper about his contract extension and emphasizing negative stories but not once mentioning he hasn’t taken a raise or providing fair coverage of the many positive results of his leadership—all because of a personal friendship with his predecessor.
Our media leadership has forgotten the ideals of the fourth estate, and this is a disservice to our community. Maybe they’re tempted to heighten conflict and sensationalize news to combat declining readership, but blatant abuse of the power of the press to punish some, protect others, and promote your own agenda is unethical and harmful. (Too bad they can’t be voted out.) Then again, if they had their way, we’d have an appointed school committee to increase accountability and voter interest. Right. Any guess who would want to do the appointing?