City of Clayton Stands Up to Abuse of Power

I first read about this in the Clayton Pioneer, our local paper. The publisher of the paper, Tamara Steiner, wrote an excellent editorial on this abuse of power by Thomas Peele, a Contra Costa Times investigative journalist. Refer to page 4 of the Clayton Pioneer 2-19-10. Another opinion article appeared in the Contra Costa Times that heralds the same alarm.

To be honest, I applaud Mr. Peele’s interest in keeping an eye on public expenditures, out tax dollars at work. Government is here to work for us and should be viewed something we need to keep lean and honest; it belongs to us after all. It should serve us while at the same time, stay out of our way.

Nevertheless, this is typical of the arrogance that we see with many of the folks who pursue a career in journalism.
Their world view is that they are in this by themselves; that they are the only ones gifted enough intellectually and morally to decide what abuse of power really is; what is really right and what is wrong; what should be tolerated and what should not; what is moral and what is immoral. Thus, they put on the guise of super hero out to save us peasants who are too ignorant to decide or too blind to be aware. Their world becomes a bunker where they emerge at night from behind their computer screens to do battle with the forces of evil while we watch in horror and reverence of their brave and altruistic acts.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The first amendment of the constitution was put in place (among other things) so the citizenry can be informed. Informed because we are the decision makers; our nation’s founders had faith in us as individual souls to know truth, as it is natural for us to seek it and recognize it, given honest conditions that is. The role of the journalist is invaluable to the fabric of a free and open civilization. And, through the principle of subsidiarity, we, the people, decide at the local level to the degree that it is applicable.

We need to be guarded with journalist in this age. Many are the sophists of our time, willing to sell incomplete wisdom for a price; furthermore, no price is too steep for their own egos, which they have formed and nurtured in their own denial of human grace. In the end, they become narrow minded and the amoral because they have no faith in the people they claim to serve - this is the source of their arrogance and bias, no faith in the human being.