since our previous gannett/town talk post here went over so well with gannett corporate here, here & here we decided to spotlight another instance of how gannett and the town talk suppress news to manipulate public opinion. for what purpose gannett and the town talk do this with respect to the city of pineville, louisiana is unclear, for now.
on thursday, 15 november 2007 the town talk posted a story captioned 'pineville police catch alleged gang of scam artists' see link or screen grabs here and here.
in that story, the town talk trots out former state capitol bureau reporter and twenty-seven year town talk veteran robert morgan. while it appears that any town talk reporter, staffer and even the person who writes the obituaries could have done justice to the story it appears that town talk editors chose mr. morgan due to his experience and ability so they assigned the story to mr. morgan with a mission to sex up the pineville city government.
this must be the case because only sixteen days previously, on 30 october 2007, town talk reporter karina donica filed a story 'former police captain files pineville suit over records' [screen grab here] about how retired pineville policeman kenneth johnson had requested pineville police blotter records for september 2007 (although ms. donica doesnt bother to explain to her readers that the records requested by capt. johnson were police blotter entries) and was denied those records by the city of pineville through its attorney mark vilar.
so therefore, if it is the city of pineville's position which mr. morgans own "news" paper had only a few weeks before reported that the pineville police blotter isnt public record, it would seem that the first question that an honest reporter would have had for pineville in this instance, is why are these arrests a public record and not the other and also why is pineville pushing this as a news story? something is just not adding up.
of course the answer could be that the town talk reporters and editors dont bother to read their own "news"paper.
perhaps now that media general owned kalb is finished beating maj. mike slocum over the head they can find their way across the bridge and ask these questions. dont hold your breath.
