This morning I learned, via Elsie Hotpepper, that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has made a 180 degree turn in its covering of the Tarrant Regional Water District board controversies.
You can read this turnaround yourself in an editorial in today's Star-Telegram titled Uncomfortable times ahead for water district.
Basically the Star-Telegram opined that the people spoke, turned out in record numbers, elected Mary Kelleher with the most votes of any candidate.
And that the other board members need to get on board.
The first 5 paragraphs of the Star-Telegram editorial give you a good idea of how big a change this is in the Star-Telegram's coverage of this issue...
The main thing the four multi-term members of the Tarrant Regional Water District board of directors must remember about recently elected member Mary Kelleher is that she won.
In fact, she won the May 11 election handily, pulling in more votes than any of the seven candidates in this year’s race for three spots on the board. Board President Vic Henderson and now-Vice President Jack Stevens were re-elected to the other two seats.
If that’s not enough to make the veterans respect the rookie, they should note that 59,889 people cast ballots in the water district election this year, up 61 percent from the 37,286 who turned out in 2010, the board’s most recent previous election.
That means a lot more people were interested this time around, and Kelleher’s place as the top vote-getter signals great voter interest in her message.
That message, voiced by Kelleher and two other candidates who were not elected, was clear. Putting it mildly, they said the TRWD has some explaining to do. Voters need to know more about how the board and the district operate, and they want to know whether it’s the most effective and efficient operation it can be.
Just like with Al Capone, weak is not what you are going to get when you are not kind to a well regarded person like Mary Kelleher.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram antidote known as the Star-Telegraph made note of today's Star-Telegram editorial in a blog post titled Who is the Tool?
In that blog post the Star-Telegraph summed up the issue quite succinctly with...
Mary has been flooded, railroaded, threatened and bullied. She's not going anywhere and neither are the people that elected her.
That's a fact, Jack.
In the Star-Telegram editorial's last few lines, they remind you who they really are. Sure they tell the board she won, and deal with it, and stop acting your like your on a playground (all things they shouldn't even have to say!).... But then they tell Mary to forget about that record number of voters who put her there. It's better to go along to get along. Deliberate and vote. If she doesn't people might think she has an axe to grind. Well she does! She's been clear on that. She won't vote until she's convinced the secret sub-committee meetings where all the real decisions are made open and following the law. Until then voting on ANY item that was brought to the main board through this secret process would be the exact opposite of what she was voted in to do. So the Star-Telegram comes off a little schizophrenic... Reading this editorial and thinking the Star-Telegram has changed their tune shows just how beat down we are by this "news" organization and how little it takes to impress us.
ReplyDeleteJAB-----I think I was so surprised to read something that seemed sort of fair and balanced in the Star-Telegram, that was seeming not to be spouting the party line of the good ol' boy network and the 7th Street Gang, that I overlooked that last part of the editorial where the Star-Telegram turned patronizing with the advice that Mary must tow the party line lest she, God forbid, be perceived as having an axe grind. Or as one might state it in a more sophisticated part of the planet, a point of view to advocate. Lord knows we can not have people advocating points of view that are at odds with the corrupt status quo. That is just not the Fort Worth Way, it took me over a decade to learn....
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