Letter to the editor: Please maintain quality writing that benefits our community

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Kudos to The Reflector presenting news with integrity since 1909. That integrity should be reflected in a very tall wall between opinion/editorials and news coverage.

For example, in the Jan. 12, 2022 issue, a Reflector reporter wrote this lead:  “Local left-leaning political activist groups are calling attention to what they feel are attacks on U.S. democracy as they hosted an event on the one-year anniversary of the storming of the U.S. Capitol.” Key words in this non-objective lead: “left-leaning,” “they feel.” Here’s a stab at a non-editorial lead for that same story: “Local political activist groups called attention to the storming of the U.S. Capitol in a hosted event on the one year anniversary of the attack.”

The reporter is clearly able to write a concise, non-loaded lead, for example from the Dec. 22, 2021 issue of The Reflector: “One of Washington’s lawmakers who represents much of North Clark County won’t step down from her role as initially planned.”  Why, putting on his editorial, non-objective writing hat, didn’t the reporter write for that lead: “One of Washington’s right-leaning lawmakers who represents much of North Clark County won’t bail from her role as initially planned”?  Keywords the reporter rightfully didn’t use in his objective lead:  “right-leaning,” and “bail,” as those words would have immediately carried the article into unobjective territory.

Going back to the Jan. 12, 2022 story about the vigil by activist groups, it is ironic that much of the article focuses on a Republican speaker at the event (Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey) and several quotations from him, including: “I think it’s incredibly important that we do everything in our power to make sure no one ever forgets what happened on that day (Jan. 6, 2021).” Kimsey, a Republican, pointed out that the undermining of confidence in elections is dangerous. (The false claims that led to the insurrection have been well documented.)



The following words were appropriately used in the article in association with the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol: “storming,” “Capitol was breached,” “those who died,” “footage of the Jan. 6 events was painful to watch,” “peaceful transfer of power ‘was shook to its core’ that day,” etc. The profound, unprecedented, disturbing aspects of the January attack on the U.S. Capitol reveal that observant citizens of all political views would rightly recognize the threat to democracy (especially if the attack had been in any way successful in its unlawful aim to disrupt the reporting of electoral votes); therefore the dismissive descriptor “left-leaning”and the patronizing phrase “they feel” in the lead pushed the article in an unhelpful, biased and unwarranted direction.

Please maintain quality writing that benefits our community.

P.A. Pierce,

Ridgefield