Fact vs Opinion or News vs Crap

It has never ceased to amaze me how many times I read "news" that should be billed as opinion. It happens every day.

Take for example our good buddies over at atgeist.joke. Remember this joke web site is run by a guy who doesn't even live in Hamilton county but has thrown in with the gUO group to help his business. He supposedly "broke the story about the illegalities surrounding the annexation of Fishers Town Council President Scott Faultless’ property in the Valleys at geist". Now I'm sure the atgeist.joke guy hasn't had even one journalism class or he would know that a responsible journalist would not make statements about legalities unless the allegations had already been proven in court or by admission. Neither of those things have occurred. Not that it matters but truthfully someone in the gUO actually "broke" the story much earlier by stumbling on to the Faultless information while researching the defense for their doomed remonstrance against annexation. This .joke guy is disguising his little on-line rag as a news source when all it really is is an animated version of Money Mailer.

He is also a frequent poster on another jewel of a web site. This one, fishersblog.crap is supposedly:

"a public journal for the Town of Fishers. You can discuss the local news, events, and other topics we present, or create your own topic for others to talk about. You are free to discuss and write about anything
Fishers, nearby communities, local happenings, neighbors, town gossip, the new restaraunt(sic ed.), Troop 199, your cat, your grandson, the town drunk. . .
It’s up to you!"

Sounds like a place that would be open and fair (probably not to the town drunk) by allowing public comment and discourse on the issues of the day. The stories I had read there were sometimes kinda funny and off-beat but after the annexation storm started brewing the allegiance of the web site owner (who goes nameless-like myself) began to show. I wanted to respond to this bit of libelous drivel:

rachel Says:
February 3rd, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Scott Faultless is…

a. ARROGANT- by believing there is no single person in Fishers as competent as himself to run the Fishers Town Council- which resulted in Scott having to annex his Geist property to save the people of Fishers from governing their town without him

b. SNEAKY- by trying to pull off the ridiculous annexation of his property

c. STUPID-for thinking he could get away with his annexation scheme with nobody being the wiser

d. ALL OF THE ABOVE

After posting an equally mean and childish response to "rachel", probably the gUO treasurer, fishersblog.crap didn't allow the post. They censored me. When I wrote to ask why my post had not passed moderation I was informed that "after reviewing your website it was apparent that the blog was created for reasons other than the annexation issue. FishersBlog.com does not want to get involved."

OK, I don't get it. Fishersblog.crap doesn't want to get involved well it looks like to me that they are already involved! The truth is they just aren't interested in allowing both sides of the argument on to their crappy little web site. So much for their claim of "You are free to discuss and write about anything". The tidy little statement of the site's purpose doesn't mention anything about a commentators web site being OK. I even wrote back and told them to leave the web site link off of my post but there was no response, real classy. Maybe they should add the disclaimer "as long as it is approved by the Reichminister Of Propaganda". They should just stick to restaurant (this is how the word is spelled) reviews, whiny little diatribes about the way people drive and park in Fishers or fish stories and leave the tough issues for those with a little integrity. If you're going to take a stand on an issue then take it. Don't pretend to be some fair-to-both-sides, gossip-about-the-town-drunk news source and then renege when the stakes get too high. And what is up with all of the gUO people posting to a fishersblog.crap? I thought those people wanted nothing to do with Fishers. It would be interesting to know who is behind this site. My guess is it's some underemployed Fishers housewife trying to impress her geist friends.