Joseph Addison:
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
Small Town Oregon Mayor Comes Under Fire For Not Being “Conservative” Enough
A True Homie
Sara Bristol was born in Grants Pass, Oregon and went to grade and high school here. Sara comes from a family who believed in community service. She saw their rhetoric in action as they worked tirelessly for, and with their neighbors, to make Grants Pass a great place to live. Sara saw volunteerism and public service firsthand and has spent her life following their example. Sara’s father, Mike Murphy, once served as Grants Pass mayor.
College Break
During summer break from college Sara worked as an intern at the Daily Courier in Grants Pass, where she met future husband Chris Bristol. Sara followed her heart and left school in Colorado to return to Oregon. Back in Oregon, Sara continued her studies at Southern Oregon University, where she graduated with a degree in Journalism. Sara and her new husband, like many young couples, were destined to leave their hometowns due to job considerations.
A Call To Service
The young couple and their two children moved first to Portland and then to Yakima, where Sara and Chris both worked at local newspapers. Despite her growing work and family responsibilities, Sara still felt the call to serve her community. Supported by the ideals of independence, transparency, fiscal responsibility, and honesty, Sara decided to run for a city council position in Yakima, WA. No surprise this spirited dynamo won easily.
A Big Move
A big job change for Chris was coming and it would bring Sara and her family back to Grants Pass. Leaving Yakima was hard, but coming home to Grants Pass was an exciting prospect; and as always, the family leaned into the move and all the changes the move promised.
City Government
It wasn’t long after moving back to Grants Pass that Sara saw real problems in the Grants Pass city government. She became quite alarmed at what appeared to be a city government run by a crowd of bullies who were playing fast and loose with taxpayer money. After her father’s years as Grants Pass mayor and her experience as councilperson in Yakima she decided she had to run for Grants Pass mayor. As an independent, unaffiliated candidate she won handily.
Recall Petition
Recently, a group, providing the address of the local Republican committee office as their headquarters, attacked Sara’s performance as mayor. Suzanne Barber and several Republican precinct workers began collecting signatures for a recall election. The reason for the petitioned recall, according to the petition is Sara Bristol’s insufficient conservativism.
Independent and Unaffiliated
Grants Pass voters wanted an independent and unaffiliated voice at City Hall, that’s why Sara was elected. Standby our mayor. Vote No on the recall, September 12, 2023. At a time when our national headlines are filled with vitriol and hate Sara wants to be sure that divisiveness does not contaminate our local government. Sara believes in calm, transparent, confident leadership, not hysterical extremism. Join Sara to turn back a small but vocal minority.
SUPPORT SARA BRISTOL AT THESE COMMUNITY EVENTS:
Friday, August 25, 2023: Anne Basker Auditorium at 6 pm
Saturday, August 26, 2023: Josephine County Courthouse at 12 Noon
Tuesday, August 29, 2023: Fruitdale Grange at 6pm
I had several advantages going for me when I called writer, author, editor, publisher, D. S. Mitchell to ask her for an interview. The first big advantage is that I have known Darlene Mitchell for nearly forty years, the second was I wanted to do a story about her. I hoped our long term friendship and my appeal to her vanity would seal the deal. So after a few hiccups we got together at her home in beautiful southern Oregon and I started asking questions. Here is the result of that interview.
David: When we first met you were an RN. How and when did you decide you wanted to abandon the bedpan for the ink pen?
Darlene: You’re funny. It wasn’t like that. I’ve been writing short stories and bad poetry since I was a young kid. I spent my school years in advanced creative writing classes, encouraged and mentored by a number of wonderful teachers along the way. But, so few writers find success that I chose a “reliable” career. Professional nursing was a sure paycheck, not a hope and a prayer. My mother said a hail Mary on that choice, thankful that the four years of college she paid for wouldn’t be wasted on a low paying unpredictable career as a writer.
It was like something from a cold war spy novel. A national government, without a great record on human rights, tricks a commercial airliner from another country into landing there, claiming there was a bomb threat. Absurd as it sounds, this is exactly what happened to Roman Protasevich. Protasevich is a Belarusian journalist and dissident critical of Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko. The critic was taken, with his girlfriend Sofia Sapega, from a Lithuania bound Ryanair flight on May 23rd. Lukashenko was no doubt angered by the reporting of Nexta a news outlet founded by Protasevich and Stepan Putilo that has focused recent coverage on anti-Lukashenko rallies after the disputed election in 2020.
The hijacking event was met with shock around the world. Many news outlets seemingly uncomprehending that such a thing was even possible. As though dogs had suddenly started reciting Shakespeare in Latin. It seemed like a relic from a different age, as though time runs in a neat line, drawing a straight path from then to now. Letting one take comfort in the idea that the badness has past. The sad truth is, history is more a set of ever repeating cycles, with little indication as to when things might come back around. The mentions of the Cold War and Soviet tactics disturbingly apt.
Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair, and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with honesty and integrity. There are four fundamental principles at the foundation of ethical journalism and the Society encourages their use in practice across all media.
Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting, and interpreting information.
Ethical journalism treats sources, subjects, colleagues, and public members as human beings deserving of respect.
The highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public.
Ethical journalism means taking responsibility for one’s work and explaining one’s decisions to the public.
Journalists are supposed to be impartial. A basic course in every journalism school is ‘journalistic ethics.’ Students with other educational backgrounds who want to write journalism are also encouraged to take a course in ethics. This was the path I took after my degree in History. Sadly, it can be difficult to tell sometimes whether mainstream reporting has lost its sense of ethics or if it ever had any at all.
During the continuing coverage of the Derek Chauvin Trial on CNN I have heard the defendant called a “murderer” and the incident called “murder” in connection with the case. Not in the metaphorical sense or that of potentiality, using qualifiers such as “alleged” or “accused” but as a statement of fact. Except the trial is ongoing and Chauvin hasn’t been convicted of anything yet. To refer to him as a murderer as a statement of fact is at best a gross breach of professional ethics and could be grounds for a defamation case if he is found not guilty.
Take Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic school student seen in the notorious video in which he seems to be smiling and mocking a Native American elder. Sandmann, who is a minor, received multiple threats of violence and death after publication of the video. Some of those threats came from high-profile celebrities, who faced no backlash, or legal ramifications, for making such threats against a minor. Turns out everyone got it wrong. The inflammatory chants were apparently coming from a group of Black Hebrew Israelites off to the side of the school group. And, the elder had gotten into Sandmann’s face, rather than the other way around. Sandmann and his family sued several media outlets including CNN and The Washington Post for slander and defamation.
The root issue in the case of the “Covington Kids” was that mainstream news outlets were reporting information that was going up online without checking it. A clear, and dangerous violation of the trust the public up in them to be a impartial and reliable media source.
The Court of Public Opinion can be a powerful force in society, possibly turning dangerous when applied to actual court cases, particularly in terms of jury trials. A factor brought into sharp focus by the case of the Central Park Five. There was a wide-spread fear of black youth crime in New York in the late 1980s. The problem magnified by the news media, which could also can be said to be a contributing factor to the guilty verdict. In addition to such outrage as full-page “ads” by Donald Trump demanding the death penalty. Five African-American and Latino youths ended up falsely convicted of raping a female jogger, during a string of sexual assaults in Central Park in the summer of 1989. The youths served sentences of six to twelve years, only to have their charges dropped and records expunged when someone else, a known criminal confessed.
One of the most egregious cases of mistrial by media is that of the West Memphis Three. A trio of teenaged Metalheads with the misfortune to live in West Memphis Arkansas in 1994. The teens were convicted of murder. This was done toward the end of a media driven Satanic Panic. A stupefying case of mass hysteria, almost on par with Salem, which saw everyone from elected officials, to media outlets and parent’s groups believing that there was an organized Satanic conspiracy gripping America. Geraldo Rivera stated on his show that there were “over one million Satanist in America,” Not least because the news media were reporting on utterly debunked claims such as *backmasking and Satanic Ritual Abuse, most of which were associated with Metal music at the time.
Such reports directly influencing the jury when they found Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelley, Jr. and Jason Baldwin guilty of the killing of three young children the year before. Echols was sentenced to death. Misskelley Jr. was sentenced to life plus to twenty year sentences and Baldwin was sentenced to life. All on evidence so flimsy as to be considered laughable, much of which revolved around the three dressing in black and listening to Metal. They we’re essentially convicted of being Metalheads.
At least that was how it was suppose to be. In an interesting case of fighting media lies with media truth, Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky produced a trilogy of documentaries on the case. Those productions included, Paradise Lost, Paradise Lost: Revelations and Paradise Lost: Purgatory. Each film was strongly critical of the case, and make it abundantly clear that Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin were basically railroaded by a system dead-set against them. The three were released in 2011 on plea deals which basically amounted to time-served, their convictions still standing, despite new physical and DNA evidence points to two other men.
The media and its influence are incredibly powerful, and need to be held to account. If not by their parent companies or advertisers, then the public they seek to influence and manipulate rather than inform. If you are wondering why you should trust me, when I am part of the media myself, keep in mind I am not a journalist. I’m a historian and I have a firm grasp on how bad things can get.
Definition:
*Backmasking is a recording technique where by a sound or message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. Backmasking is a deliberate process, whereas a message found through phonetic reversal may be unintentional. Wikipedia