The hatred of David Madore and anybody opposed to the Columbia River Crossing light rail project is no longer being hidden by the Lazy C. It never really was, but it has become more blatant than ever as we see ‘crack’ reporter Stephanie Rice, thought by many to be an understudy of vitriolic, bombastic John Laird, pushing an ad put out by Forward Vancouver, a PAC set up solely to promote our lying incumbent mayor, Tim Leavitt.
Attack ad against Turlay emphasizes Madore
While there is little doubt Rice would say she isn’t actually promoting it and is merely reporting on it, nowhere does she engage in any actual journalism of pointing out the lie of the ad, David Madore not being who is behind Bill Turlay.
While Mr. Madore no doubt supports Bill Turlay, nowhere on Turlay’s Public Disclosure Commission report will you find any donation by David Madore, his company or his family.
What you will find in his reports is that Forward Vancouver has spent some $12, 672 opposing Bill Turlay, an amount exceeding that spent by Vancouver Vitality, also wrongfully claimed to be a David Madore backed PAC, supporting Mr. Turlay.
Rice almost committed a random act of journalism in an earlier post trying to demean Madore when she included, “the Public Disclosure Commission reports don’t show any donations this year from him to ‘The Madore 4.’ (Madore’s name also doesn’t show up among donors to Vancouver Vitality, which has been backing the candidates.)”
But as is expected, she negates that effort by including a screen shot from David Madore’s facebook page showing that Commissioner Madore supports the candidates listed.
That she would act surprised over his supporting candidates, something I thought every citizen had a right to do, is specious at best, considering that her employer is publicly endorsing their opponents.
While her employer is also not listed in Leavitt’s PDC reports, there is no doubt of the support of him by the paper of record in their swift turnaround from their opposition of him back in 2009, now that he flipped from the strong No Tolls position he ran on.
Rice also fails to mention that some of the images used in the ad and credited to her employer are in fact not from her employer, but were lifted from Couv.com and not credited to their original source.
It must also be noted that David Madore owns Couv.com, but that management of it has been relinquished to others, even before Mr. Madore was elected as County Commissioner.
The Lazy C, often Ms. Rice, has spared no amount of ink in smearing Mr. Madore and in my not so humble opinion, has been delinquent in their duty as an “objective journalists” in informing keeping the public informed of both sides of any issue of a political nature.
The effort to falsely paint Mr. Madore as a power hungry ogre has reached a fever pitch, while there has been no coverage of those opposing Bill Turlay that stand to profit off of the CRC light rail project.
Instead, the effort has been to link them to Mr. Madore as if he were a pariah of some sort and not the caring citizen he actually is.
The reality is, linking to Commissioner Madore is a definite enhancement, not a detriment, if you knew the real nature of both Mr. Madore and Mr. Turlay.
And who better to tell you about Mr. Turlay than those very city council members sitting next to him every week?
But, you won’t see that in the pages of or on the online site of the Lazy C.
Fortunately for them, the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics is “voluntary” and “legally enforceable.”
But, the bias displayed on a day to day basis is a large reason why many scorn journalists and media today is suffering financially.
Former United States President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.”
Henry Louis Mencken also once said, “A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.”
I see no one but those who write for newspapers to blame for such a public perception.
