If I knew what was good for me, I would just shut up, shrug and move on with my day. Alas - sometimes I (i.e. my opinionated brain) get the better of me.

So then here it goes: When I read an article (titled "Housing forecast: It'll only get better") in The Bulletin a couple of weeks ago about a real estate breakfast at the Riverhouse and how their keynote speaker touted the local real estate market as "being on the brink of a turn-around", I quietly sat for a minute, astonished at the cheery and uncritical tone of the article, and then thought to myself "BULLSHIT".

Shortly thereafter, an article in The Source about COBA (Central Oregon Building Association - for all your out-of-town readers), trying to get its members to cheerlead to the local media and asking them to put out press releases with good news about how strong the local building industry was, got me pondering too, and I came up with the same result - "BULLSHIT".

Now, that is just my opinion. Although I have to mention that it is based on three minor facts:
A) as an architectural photographer, I work with a lot of local building industry folks and have a pretty good sense of the overall mood in the housing market.
B) I have a business degree, and therefore pay attention to economic trends as they relate to the nation and world as a whole (and that trend says the housing market, along with the overall economy, is in the shitter).
C) I'm married to a finish carpenter who has had to travel all over the West Coast for the past 6 months for work.

But I only put two and two together today, when I read in The Source online about the very reporter who wrote the Riverhouse article losing his job "after complaining the paper was sugar-coating its coverage of the local real estate market".

Hmm.
WTF?
Hello?

Is anybody living in Central Oregon (or in the rest of the US, for that matter) - and blessed with a brain - seriously buying that the local real estate market is just fine or on the verge of a turn-around? What's the point of sugar-coating? Why risk your credibility and dignity as a newspaper by putting out tweaked stories, and then hoping people will not notice the excrement all over it, or worse, actually believe you? It's insulting - that's what it is.

Yeah, yeah, I know - preservation of advertising revenue to keep the paper on the press, and all that jazz. Throw the local housing market a bone to keep the ad money flowing. But I don't know. I always thought that the responsibility of a newspaper and its editors - and as such the media as a whole - is to truth and honesty in reporting and disseminating a story. Independent of what the economy, and therefore your advertisers, experience as a whole.

Is that too idealistic? Is it really too much to ask of your local media to adhere to some basic standards in reporting? I think not.

So, dear Bulletin - please pull your heads out of your asses, and stop insulting the intelligence of your readers.

Or I will cancel my subscription.

And I'm sure your advertisers won't appreciate that.

Right on.

LOL....this is the bright side? Only joking.

Hey Simone

"Why risk your credibility and dignity as a newspaper"

It's an easy risk... they have no dignity or credibility to lose.

Later,
Ziv

OK, I am looking at the this blog post way after the fact and I see this theme through many blog sites so my comment may not be relevant now but.... Dana Bratton was KIDDING he didn't really believe the market would turn around on a certain day. He was KIDDING. Everyone asks him everyday over and over when will the market turn so he just made up a date. Or pulled a date out of is arse but he was KIDDING. Whew, now I feel better.