Moldova Mulled Over More
2011-07-20 - by
A friend emailed a good question about my earlier blog on Elaine Marshall and Moldova: “Did you attempt to contact Elaine Marshal to find out if her trip was paid for personally or by state funds?…Can you tell me what you did to check this out before publishing it? And what I am missing about the justification for publishing this without any indication of the veracity of the allegation or any attempts to verify it?”
The short answer is no, I didn’t check it out. Here’s why:
First, if I was a real journalist, I would have, just like my old N&O editor Bob Brooks taught me. But I’m a blogger, not a journalist. For one thing, neither Carter nor I are paid to do this. (Also note that the N&O apparently didn’t ask either.)
Second, I don’t have the time or patience to hunt down politicians or their flacks and get their well-spun responses. Instead, I always make the blog available to pols – and their staffs – who take issue with my posts. So it is with Marshall. (Note: I’ve heard nothing from her or her staff.)
Third, I’m not sure it would help Secretary Marshall if the trip was paid for privately. Then the question is: Who paid? And what do they stand to gain?
The real point is how do the people of North Carolina benefit one iota from this trip? And how she can justify it after she ran ads in her Senate campaign last year about how hard she was working to protect average people from big, bad special interests? How, to belabor the point, did her trip to Moldova help North Carolinians struggling in this economy?
Posted in General, North Carolina - Democrats
Moldova Mulled Over More
2011-07-20/
A friend emailed a good question about my earlier blog on Elaine Marshall and Moldova: “Did you attempt to contact Elaine Marshal to find out if her trip was paid for personally or by state funds?…Can you tell me what you did to check this out before publishing it? And what I am missing about the justification for publishing this without any indication of the veracity of the allegation or any attempts to verify it?”
The short answer is no, I didn’t check it out. Here’s why:
First, if I was a real journalist, I would have, just like my old N&O editor Bob Brooks taught me. But I’m a blogger, not a journalist. For one thing, neither Carter nor I are paid to do this. (Also note that the N&O apparently didn’t ask either.)
Second, I don’t have the time or patience to hunt down politicians or their flacks and get their well-spun responses. Instead, I always make the blog available to pols – and their staffs – who take issue with my posts. So it is with Marshall. (Note: I’ve heard nothing from her or her staff.)
Third, I’m not sure it would help Secretary Marshall if the trip was paid for privately. Then the question is: Who paid? And what do they stand to gain?
The real point is how do the people of North Carolina benefit one iota from this trip? And how she can justify it after she ran ads in her Senate campaign last year about how hard she was working to protect average people from big, bad special interests? How, to belabor the point, did her trip to Moldova help North Carolinians struggling in this economy?
Posted in General, North Carolina - Democrats