An open letter to Bob Urban, Editor, Times News

I would send this letter to Bob Urban, Editor of the Times News, but from past experience, I know it would do no good. Mr. Urban is probably not even in control of what goes into the paper.   In any case, I and others have complained before about the unrelieved bias of the paper.  If anything, that bias has gotten worse.  So here’s the letter I would send if I thought it would have an effect.

Dear Mr. Urban,

     You really ask your readers to put up with a great deal.  You run a weekly column by an advocate of the Tea Party, you run a weekly column by a self-styled “expert” on the Pennsylvania Constitution, your editorials by Jim Zbick are screeds of anti-Obama venom, you have not run a cartoon that was favorable to the Obama administration in the past year, although you have included some that were in bad taste or denigrating, and your national columnists can be characterized as irresponsible and uninformed.

     The lack of professionalism and journalistic ethics is evident every time you run an article extolling an act at Penn’s Peak without a disclaimer that the same company that owns Penn Peak also controls the Times News.  

     The sad thing is that many of your individual employees and reporters are wonderful and responsible people who are trying to do their jobs with integrity.  Your paper is an insult to them and to your readers.

     In the past I have put up with your shenanigans because of the obituary page, the local news, and an occasional wire service story that was played straight.  Now the bias so evident in the editorial policy has slopped over into the news pages as well.  Look at the articles relating to the Democratic Convention on September 6 and 7.  The consensus among viewers was that the Democratic Convention was well-planned and that many of the speeches were outstanding.  You may disagree, but keep your opinions to the editorials, not the news pages.

     You never even mentioned that the Chair of the Carbon County Democratic Party, Billy O’Gurek was an elected delegate to the Convention.  Amazing.

     I know it is a free country, and our free press is guaranteed to anyone who can afford to publish a newspaper or own a television station or a radio station (or all three).  Nonetheless, most media outlets try to maintain at least some balance.  You do not.  I am finished with you.

Roy Christman