The Washington Daily News has Become the Indefensible | Eastern North Carolina Now

But the larger question remains to be asked: Should they be taken seriously at all?

    Okay, I get it. I need to do what you tell me to do, and be more amenable to your loyal readers, whom you control. The Washington Daily News has spoken - their editorial entitled "Questions and Answers," January 27, 2011 - and in their voice of a petulant child, they lectured me that I should consider myself accountable to their readers.

    At the heart of the matter is that the Washington Daily News has formulated a policy that stipulates that they reserve the right to: take my quotes, as if I spoke them myself as truth, rearrange my words, drop all context associated with those words, and print them in their publication in any manner that suits them to achieve their desired maximum effect. They did exactly that in their January 9, 2011, hit piece on me, "Board barraged by BRHS comments," which I subsequently refuted in my rebuttal published that same day in Beaufort County Now. As a politician who takes his job and his message seriously, I will not allow it to be parsed at the discretion of a publication that would rather manage their competing message by manipulating the truth, than reporting it.

    The Washington Daily News' most recent editorial admonishing me, as shown below this article as an image file, remains maniacal in message, inasmuch that I must allow myself to be "held accountable" by their readers: By allowing them to continue parsing my comments as per their policy. When one entity loses the trust of another, and the offended party offers a bridge to continue the relationship, a reasonable person would assume the offending party would take that opportunity to rebuild some element of trust. Not the WDN. In the voice of that petulant child, who believes they have grown more powerful, well beyond their years, by a special knowledge that somehow evades other more reasonable people, they choose the path of the ignoble bully. Well, I won't be bullied - not by them.

    In an era where Representative Gabby Giffords and 19 others were gunned down in Arizona by an unhinged boy with a gun, and a deranged Clay Duke shot up the Bay District School Board in Florida, in the past month, one questions: Why the Washington Daily News would recklessly parse my comments to inflame an already incendiary situation? I suppose it was to satisfy their ever-apparent agenda, which is now far afield from their original charge as a journalistic entity. This agenda, which they are hell-bent to drive forward, has led Delma Blinson, Editor of the local Beaufort Observer, to label the WDN's visible activities as "Advocacy Journalism."

    After re-reading the "Petulant Child Lecture" revealed here below, I would like to coin my own personal phrase, "The End Justifies the Means Journalism." In that image file below, the WDN editorializes my purpose, with great veracity, in this one short paragraph:

    "As per his usual tendency, Deatherage, like his idol Commissioner Hood Richardson, is taking aim at anyone who disagrees with him, including a media outlet that had the audacity to quote him accurately."

    If they quoted me accurately as they so petulantly expressed, then they insinuate that my protestations are the musings of a liar. Well, because I am at least smart enough to know we all can't be correct in the perception of this reality, somebody must be lying here.

    In that same aforementioned quote, the WDN accused me in one sentence of: "Bearing false witness against my neighbor," and committing the blasphemous sin of "Idolatry" ... and yet, I still do not believe that they actually care about my immortal soul. I believe their "Petulant Child Lecture" was more about casting aspersions toward me and away from them, and probably for good reason.

    Considering when all this crude behavior of this locally organized Mob was going down (when this calling-all-county-commissioners campaign was organized), I immediately noted the abnormal, rude, slanderous behavior, and the threatening of my physical person immediately in e-mails to a number of people to keep a chronological and empirical record of this antisocial behavior. I also told family and friends, just in case something happened. My son, Stanhope, sat on the front row at the Jan. 10 Beaufort County Board of Commissioners' general meeting, as an extra measure of security. When I queried Betty Gray, during break at that same meeting, as to 'why she parsed my comments that I candidly told her,' and 'didn't she believe that the fact that I was threatened, or at least that I refuted the lies spread about me, who started them, and why the larger story.' At that point, she became extraordinarily flustered, and when I left to join my fellow county commissioners, she muttered under her breath, "Jackass." Brandia Deatherage, a real journalist for BCN, heard the entire conversation, and remitted to me the "Jackass" comment. The comment doesn't bother me; rather it signifies, along with those very flustered moments for Gray, that I briefly invaded that space where truth lives.

    That rare moment of truth was fleeting; for currently, the Washington Daily News asserts that they do have the journalistic stones, and "audacity to quote him (me) accurately." As I said before, somebody must be lying here. They certainly have the opportunity and the motive.

    What credible publication would recklessly take comments out of context just to inflame an already incendiary situation with the Gabby Giffords shooting and the Florida School Board shooting only days and weeks earlier? Well, the Washington Daily News did it, and now they believe they should bully me into submission because I am calling them out into the harsh light of reality. The aforementioned means employed to justify their bullying signifies that the WDN does not care particularly for the personal safety of public officials ... or most definitely this public official.

    Over the next few weeks, months, or whenever I can find the time, I will explore the Washington Daily News' actions of openly subverting the truth as they meander to explain events that they cannot fully understand to readers who really don't want to know the truth. It is mystifying to me how common curiosity, which is inherent within most intelligent humans who want to know that truth, is openly devoid in some sectors here in Beaufort County. We may not be able to do anything to effect the outcome of the Washington Daily News' brand of "The End Justifies the Means Journalism," but we can at least endeavor to shine a light upon it.

    Here below is the "Petulant Child Lecture" - not quite editorial material. Since the Washington Daily News never owns up to who writes what editorial, I suppose the publication owns it. I guess since they wrote about me, constructed from an issue built on lies, I suppose I own a good bit of it too. When I need inspiration for the next installment, which will surely come, I'll just read a few paragraphs. Should be all I need.



    To be continued in succeeding editorials regarding the truth, or lack thereof, in the Washington Daily News.