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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us September 30, 2004 A recent clash between Tom Giordano and Philip Lang made the headline recently and provides an interesting debate on the role of newspapers in political coverage. By means of debate, the following is one side, against our coverage, and our response, which we think was the right move. Also, the letter that sparked the story starts the debate. Open letter to the City of Ashland I am Tom Giordano, candidate for Position 5 on the Ashland City Council. I received a disturbing letter from Philip Lang informing me that if I continue to run for City Council he will "make public the entire affair" of my past violation of the Fair Practices Act when I served on the Planning Commission in 1997. Although I appreciate Mr. Lang's offer to allow me to withdraw my candidacy before going "public with this information". Since I will not withdraw from the council race, I thought it prudent to take this opportunity to explain my view regarding this incident. Mr. Lang is correct that I was cited and fined by the Fair Practice Commission for Conflict of Interest; however, it is my belief that the City was equally if not totally at fault. Serving on local government boards and commissions requires long hours and much criticism from all sides. People who volunteer for these positions do so because they believe in service to their communities. I have served on many committees, boards and commissions both in California and in Southern Oregon. I have never been accused of any inappropriate behavior and would never knowingly violate an ethics code. Unfortunately for me, ignorance is no excuse for the law. Prior to this incident, my normal procedure if a potential conflict of interest occurred was to announce the conflict to the panel on which I served and excuse myself to sit in the audience. I did no know of recent changes in the Ethics Standards that required the official to leave the room. In fact, none of the City staff or other commissions knew of this requirement. The City provided no training or information concerning the ethics of government officials either to me or any other appointed member. Because of my violation, the City now provides educational meetings to commissioners regarding the standards and practices of appointed officials. Since this incident, I have been appointed to both the Historic Commission and the Building Codes Appeal/Demolition Board. These appointments were given because the current Mayor and Council recognized my years of experience in citizen involvement and my professional qualifications. Unlike Mr. Lang, I hope the citizens of Ashland will understand that this incident was not intentional and will support my candidacy for City Council. Tom R. Giordano Ashland Con Tidings' coverage is 'reprehensible' Tom Giordano's decision to air Phil Lang's threatened blackmail backfired. The front page story the Tidings chose to run as an airing of laundry - a "violation of the Fair Practices Act," quotations from Lang about "violation of trust" and charges of lack of character - must have made Lang very happy, but neglected the fact that there is no real substance to Lang's charges. Featuring the controversy, rather than really examining the substance of a charge of potentially great consequence in an election, I think showed a lamentable lack of journalistic responsibility. I served on the Planning Commission with Tom. I, and everyone else who has served with Tom on various civic bodies, can testify that he epitomizes the trustworthy, honorable public servant. The sin that Lang uses for blackmail is one that neither Tom, the city attorney, the planning director, nor the rest of us knew: that it was not enough to declare a potential conflict of interest regarding pending deliberation, and step down from the deliberating body, but that one must then also leave the room. To use the "leaving the room" omission, a lapse being committed by all members of Ashland's civic bodies, to attack Tom as Lang did, and to later blackmail him about it, speaks I think, more to Lang's character than to Tom's. It's reprehensible that the Tidings' love of controversy has not only helped Phil Lang make a non-molehill into a mountain, but probably has damaged Tom's candidacy for office. Hal Cloer Ashland Pro Responsible journalism isn't easy reporting As the chill in the morning air lets all know autumn has arrived, so too the rancor in recent letters and calls speak to the reality of a emotional political season. Almost daily the Ashland Daily Tidings is getting calls or letters attacking us from both sides about our coverage of this story or that story, most politically driven. We make an easy target because we put thousands of words into print each day and emotional readers can focus on a small slice to make their determinations about us. When we heard that a city council candidate was being asked - Mr. Giordano felt it was more akin to blackmail - to remove himself from a public campaign, it's hard not to feel the responsibility of the job we do, namely get to the bottom of it as best we can and report both sides of the story. Yet no sooner does the story run than we are accused of simply writing for the "love of controversy." Had we ignored this story, we would have been rightfully accused of lacking the spine to report the news objectively. Perhaps the greatest misconception is that controversy drives our business success. For major newspapers, that may be true, and in an era where newspapers had a virtual monopoly on news, that was surely true. The turn of the century muckrakers certainly earned the moniker. But in those days, most cities had several morning and afternoon newspapers that competed against each other. The modern newspaper market competes against a variety of news sources that rarely include a rival paper. Thus the need for headlines is balanced with the cancelled subscriptions that inevitably result from hurt feelings stemming from those same headlines. While business success is surely part of the entire company's equation, the newsroom must operate independently of those factors. In our newsroom we have one goal that guides our stories: "Get it right, then print it." That goes for stories we don't like, and for stories we do; the stories that cost us readers, and the stories that could gain us some. We try not to take sides except for our editorials, which are clearly labeled as such. Our reporters have no input or say on our editorials to help ensure that they fight to remain unbiased on the toughest of subjects. As a staff we are confident in our ability to report the news, even though at times we make our mistakes - just like the New York Times or the USA Today. We don't leave it up to readers to decide what is a story and what's not. If that were the case, we'd never have any stories that shed light in a dark place of crime, abuse or other problems in the community. But we do leave it up the readers to form their own opinions about those stories. In this case, Mr. Giordano felt he was quietly being pushed out of a race for an overblown charge. We felt it's important that voters knew what was going on and form their own opinions. 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