Speak up when it's not your backyard

GREENSBORO, NC -- There is a letter to the News & Record today in which writer Spence Miller complains about the News & Record's lopsided coverage of the Hobbs Road/Friendly Avenue rezoning which, if approved, would accommodate expansion of commercial development into a residential neighborhood. The development would, reportedly, include a Trader Joe's grocery store.

Miller is right to complain. The News & Record has a very long history of slanting its reporting, often not so subtly, when it decides to abandon its role as a news organization and become, instead, a champion of some project or development. I can remember lopsided reporting as far back as the coverage of the FedEx cargo hub, some fourteen years ago, when information in support of the hub was put forth as unassailable gospel while the concerns of neighbors were misrepresented or challenged at every turn. That's what happens when the News & Record chooses boosterism over reporting and it's a choice it makes time and time again. Even now.

Miller is right that the News & Record has, as he put it, "confused the issue" surrounding the rezoning threatening his neighborhood. The N&R has once again decided to cheer-lead instead of report with clarity. One need look no further than Jonelle Davis' recent front page puff piece stuffed with Trader Joe's employees, public relations consultants and out-of-town fans singing the praises of the chain and lacking any substantive reporting of the reasons for the objections to the rezoning to see what the News & Record is doing.

Their cheering continued yesterday with a "report" about a seemingly grassroots "pro" Trader-Joe's group that failed to explore who is behind the group or what their interests might be.

So, yes, Miller is absolutely correct, the News & Record is engaged in "lopsided journalism," as he wrote. Here's the thing though: If you wait to speak up about lopsided reporting only until it affects your backyard it will never change. The next time Miller sees neighborhoods being unfairly overwhelmed by News & Record boosterism, he should speak up even if it is not his backyard under threat — just as I am doing now on his behalf on an issue that does not affect my neighborhood. We have to stand up for each other, not just ourselves.