Lazy Journalism Could Help Defeat Library Millage

Here we go again.

In today's Morning Scum, their best reporter, does a lousy job of telling the public what is going on. Come on, Mark Ranzenberger, follow the money. Didn't you learn anything in journalism school?

Mark's story this morning makes it sound as if some citizen movement has arisen to fight taxes. The headline of the story even makes it sound like there was some big rally somewhere where hordes of local citizens rose up in arms to defeat the library millage.

So where was this rally, Mark? How many people were there? Tell us the truth. There was no rally, was there, Mark? This is not a citizen movement at all, is it Mark?

All you are doing with this story, Mark, is reporting what people are saying. That's really lazy journalism. The moneyed interests in our community have controlled local politics in the same way they have done it nationally. They complain that they are paying too much in taxes and crush the projects that are needed by those who have the least.

So tell us, Mark, who is this Todd Lawrence Oliveiri, who is pretending to be a champion of the people? Is he some downtrodden poor soul suffering under the crushing high taxes caused by our local library?

Or is he a 48 year-old Republican who lives at 805 Canal St. in a comfortable neighborhood on the west side of town close to the CMU campus?

And where is all of the money coming from to pay for a political consultant and the high-priced campaign being launched to kill our local library?

Don't you remember, Mark, that the role of a real journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable?

You are letting the comfortable get away with not just a pack of lies about our library, but you are comforting the comfortable.

Get off your lazy butt and get over to the courthouse and do some journalism, Mark. Follow the money. Or do we have to do it ourselves?