Speaking Out Can Get You Canned….

Posted on | May 28, 2009 | 1 Comment

On May 27, 2009 Glen Warchol made a blog post about the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin and their lack of coverage on a story about a tanker truck that left Tooele County full of toxic waste.  This particular container had been hastily repaired with duct tape and sent off on Utah’s highways.  Yours truly wrote a column about this disaster in the making, but Jeff Barrus (Transcript-Bulletin editor) decided to not run the column was “not based on any attempt to cover up a story — particularly in favor of a company (EnergySolutions) we have editorialized against in the past — but rather to ensure we were running a diversity of op-eds on a broad range of subjects.”  In his words.

Glen asked me about the column and then made his own blog story regarding it.  You can read it here. Apparently the Transcript-Bulletin isn’t as big of a fan of free speech as one would expect from a media outlet, as this morning I received an email from Mr. Barrus indicating that my “services would no longer be required” as a columnist.

So, one must now ask, what was it in Mr. Warchol’s column that caused such a response?  The simple answer is that the Transcript-Bulletin in this case really failed in their journalistic responsibility and they were called to the carpet for that failure.

Over the course of the past several months I have written a number of columns for the Transcript-Bulletin, and have, for the most part, enjoyed my association with them.  This was the second time, however, that one of my columns was killed because Jeff Barrus didn’t approve of my selected topic.

The first of these columns was during the Utah Legislative Session and the topic was the Common Ground Initiative and the struggle for LGBT equality under the law.  According to Mr. Barrus, “I don’t feel like I can run this column. It makes excellent points and the topic is worthy of thought, but this simply is not a top-of-mind issue in Tooele County right now.”  He went on to explain that there were several other stories of more local importance that should be addressed in op-ed, such as cattle killings, mitigation fees for the county, digging into the Stockton Bar, and the Mayor’s State of the City address.

It seems to me, and maybe I’m just off-base here, that the role of a responsible media outlet is to bring issues to the attention of the people.  As a news organization, even a twice-weekly, it is the responsibility of the Transcript-Bulletin to bring these issues to the attention of the people.  None of us, even in Tooele, live in a bubble.  The actions that are taken at the state and federal level impact us all and are worthy of exposure.  Failure to do so represents a dereliction of responsibility for any respectable media outlet.

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