Readers – what few are left — continue to bemoan the lame, liberal news and opinion offered by a shrinking local daily newspaper.
While full coverage of the news, with little opinion, is offered by the Daily Record and Jacksonville Business Journal the only other options are the local TV stations, which offer stories badly written and edited and often salted with liberal opinion.
It is a sorry state of affairs for Jacksonville residents who want to know what is happening in the city. Especially at a time when local politicians are tightly controlling the flow of information.
Here is a take one reader sent to Eye on Jacksonville:
“Review of the “news” in A Section of the 12-7-20 FTU.
“P 1 Local Covid death update; photo of field goal causing the Jags 11th consecutive loss; AP story quoting Pearl Harbor survivors.
“P 2 75% of top 1/2 page conclusion of the Pearl Harbor story; one column conclusion of Covid story rounds our the local news with a “correction of a previously published story.”
“P 3 38% of top half – AP story about Covid testing in California – three columns and a photo, 12% of top half AP story about “radiation of diplomats in Cuba and China. The bottom half of the Page 2 ads.
“P 4, 5, 6, 7 full-page ads for hearing aids.
“P-8 top half – USA Today staff story reporting on Covid vaccine – “darkest days” are ahead; the bottom half ad. That is the first section of the TU today. Exactly one local story, one photo from the Sunday football game – the winning field goal for the Vikings and the loosing field goal for the Jags.”
Another sent his complaint to the local paper as a letter to the editor that likely will not be printed.
“The Florida Times-Union is now on the record for not informing the public of two major stories that have serious implications for the country. The first is Congressman Eric Swalwell and his relationship with a Chinese spy. This story has been out there for four days and nothing from the Times-Union. The simple reason for this oversight is that Swalwell is a Democrat and the Times-Union, being wholly owned by Gannet Publishing and the USA Today crowd, publishes only news that fit their agenda, their narrative. That agenda and narrative is Democrats are good and Republicans are “deplorables”… If the name was changed from Swalwell (D) to Nunes (R), it would be a different story altogether. Swalwell had a spy in his congressional office and you don’t want anyone to know.
“Then we come to Hunter Biden now being under investigation by the IRS, the Justice Department and the FBI. Seriously? You don’t want the public to know this? Once again, it is very much in evidence that the Times-Union is just another tool of the Democratic Party. Management at USA Today knows Biden and the family are deeply involved with funny money and the Chinese, yet they feel they have the right to deprive the population for knowing the facts.”
He went on to say in his note:
“It is truly horrible how the media is complicit in driving the narrative of what they feel the public should be aware of (or not so in this case), in addition to having a serious hand in screwing us over in the election! I hope that we can flood their in-box with letters of protest. Again, not that it will do any good more than likely, but at least we’re not just laying down like a beaten dog.”
For decades the local morning paper offered calm, deliberate and complete coverage of local news, and conservative opinion kept separate from the news stories. It also had a mix of liberal and conservative syndicated columnists. Its sister paper, published in the afternoon, offered more aggressive coverage of the news and also a balanced mix of opinion.
The paper reached its nadir, perhaps, when it published an editorial begging the federal government for money to bail out the newspaper business.
As far as we can discern it offers no conservative opinion to balance its far left stance.
It may be that the costs of printing and delivering a paper product in these times is insurmountable, even with an online option. But at least two local companies seem to be doing so, not to mention several local papers printed for neighborhood consumption.
You would think large companies with ample capital could do as well – if they understood the role of journalism.
