[Vision2020] An Open Letter to Nathan Alford, publisher M-P Daily News

[Community Christian Ministries]

Open Letter to Nathan Alford, 
publisher of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News

dear mr. alford:

i recommend that your newspaper stop withholding
information regarding the hoover scandal.   
last may 2002, i was on the university campus, telling
people there about a hunch i had: that bob
hoover was stealing money from the university.  i
continued my investigation off-campus, letting
reporters around the northwest know what i was on to. 
curiously, no student reporter at the argonaut would
touch the story at the time, because of the stifling
climate of censorship present on campus and in moscow.
there was an oppressive free-speech climate that still
exists today.

things became quiet until...earlier this year, when it
came out in the press that perhaps hoover was
responsible for missing money having to do with a
failed educational project in boise.

well, mr. alford, it seems as if your reporters
weren't as quick on the uptake as they should have
been with the scandal, because when i was asked for
information over the internet by a few reporters
throughout the state, there was NO MENTION of any
quality coverage coming from your paper.  in fact, the
general opinion of the moscow-pullman daily news in 
boise is that it's strictly low-brow.

the fact is, the moscow-pullman daily news is far from
just a small-town sheet of innocence and what-not. 
what we really have in moscow, is an outfit that
leaves
information out, so that over time, the general local
public is uninformed, and thus much less likely to
challenge the status quo in moscow.

people around the northwest are going to find out that

people like you have been doing your very best to
protect your readership from the truth about moscow:
that it is a place totally littered with years of
political, business and law enforcement corruption.

i'm wondering, mr. alford, how a Christian staff at 
your paper would react to concern that you have been 
spreading disinformation to the public here.  maybe 
we will soon find out, as the hoover scandal grows
thick with cover-ups and you continue to maintain an 
editorial page that skirts local issues that are of
vital importance to people in moscow: like local
government corruption and pay-offs at the university. 
I don't think that your current staff at the paper
could tell the difference between gossip and the truth
even if Vera White admitted publicly that your version
of news in the Palouse is more than just sub-standard:
it's harmful to the public.  

for all the nonsense that goes on in this town about
how inferior the university of montana is compared to
the university of idaho, i know that this level of
conduct from your newspaper would never be tolerated
in the good town of Missoula.  maybe they should
report about what's going on in moscow from there. 
i'm sure they would have an insightful perspective on
Vandal pride and everything else that is wrong in the
Palouse.

all the best,
Ben Twigg (ccm_moscow@yahoo.com)
 





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