Opinion

A healthy, diverse media landscape is a good thing

We who live in Western North Carolina are fortunate in many ways. We know that. It’s a beautiful place with a vibrant economy populated by interesting people from all over. It’s easy to commune with friends at a brewery or restaurant (adhering to covid restrictions) or slip away to the woods in the East Coast’s largest wilderness area.

Here’s another reason we’re lucky: we are home to some very good, very reliable media outlets, this in an era when many parts of the country can’t say that.

I know that may sound braggadocious, but I’m not just talking about The Smoky Mountain News. The North Carolina Press Association held its awards ceremony a couple weeks ago, and all the newspapers in this region — The Franklin Press, The Sylva Herald, The Smoky Mountain Times, The Mountaineer, Mountain Xpress and The Smoky Mountain News — walked away with a nice haul of prizes certifying that they do quality work. In some categories — like investigative reporting, local news websites — The Smoky Mountain News and The Mountaineer dominated the competition, and in some categories our own staff won multiple awards. It’s fun to compete against our peers, and it’s nice to see our writers recognized for the hard work they do every week.

I wrote a column earlier this year about how trust in news sources at all levels has decreased dramatically in this country. It’s of interest to note that findings like that are occurring at the same time that newspapers across the country are closing. A study released a couple years ago by a UNC journalism professor found that 1,800 newspapers in this country have closed since 2004. A follow-up study, reported on by the Poynter Institute in February, noted that another 60 newsrooms in the U.S. have been shuttered since the onset of the pandemic. Many other news organizations are surviving by cutting staff and eliminating positions as local advertisers enduring business slowdowns due the pandemic have stopped advertising.

It’s a transformative time in many industries. But when we lose 30,000 reporting jobs in 10 years and more than 1,800 newspapers, there’s little doubt taxpayers and citizens are less informed. Having a shared set of facts is critical if we are to make decisions on local issues that are important to our communities. But many regions are now news deserts, places where there is no reliable source of information on what county commissioners, town leaders, and the school board are doing. Studies have found that the costs to taxpayers — taxes, user fees, etc. — go up when there is no local news source.

There’s no doubt that the way news is delivered is changing, and so does the way consumers pay for it. Just this week, I made a contribution to Blue Ridge Public Radio during their fund drive because I believe strongly that their reporting is important. I also made a contribution to another mostly Asheville news site — the Asheville Hotsheet, run by Jason Sandford who also runs the Ashvegas blog. Both are very good regional and local news sources, and the donation/subscription model is important for the survival of local news.

Just as our forests here are rich, diverse, temperate rainforests, so too is our media climate very diverse and mostly healthy. That’s good for those who live here, so let’s hope it stays that way as this industry continues to evolve. (Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)

Scott McLeod Editor

Stop Asian Hate

To the Editor:

As a member of the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community in Jackson County, the attack in Atlanta on the Asian American community was shocking and heart breaking, but not really surprising. Violence against Asian Americans has increased by 150% in 2020 during the Covid 19 pandemic with more than 2800 hate incidents recorded by the nonprofit Stop AAPI Hate.

Words have the power to enflame and the hateful rhetoric of the last president threw gasoline on an already tense situation. Calling the virus the Kung Flu, the Wuhan Virus and the China virus over and over again, only helped to direct the hate and animosity of Trump supporters toward the Asian American community. Asian Americans have often needed to “prove” racism until social media videos came along. AAPI groups have video footage of hundreds of instances of violence committed against our community.

The Asian community in Jackson County is the smallest minority group at 1.1% of the population according the 2019 US Census Bureau. That’s 315 people. We’re smaller than the African American population that makes up 2.4% and Latinos that make up 6.2%. While we don’t hear of violence against Asians in Jackson County, all minority groups face racism. On Sunday I attended a candlelight vigil at the fountain in Sylva against AAPI Hate and during the hour that we were assembled, several cars drove by yelling at us.

It doesn’t take much to enflame your supporters, but words can also heal and President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s words in Atlanta, did just that. I felt gratitude to know that President Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-mast in honor of the people who were killed in Atlanta. I felt gratitude when community members attended the vigil to show their support of the AAPI community.

Words can unite and heal, so lets all speak out against hateful speech and speak up against racism. Let’s use our speech to bring us together not tear us apart.

Nilofer Couture Culowhee

LETTERS

Canceling our freedom of speech

To the Editor:

Protecting our freedom of speech may be one circumstance where liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, Independents virtually all Americans can agree and unify. When did we begin to lose that freedom?

Maybe it happened when political correctness, a concept based on language usage, became a fixation in the 1970s. Euphemisms to ease perceived exclusion, marginalizing, or insult to groups of people became ingrained in our conversations. For instance, he is not balding, he is in follicle regression. She is not a housewife, she is a domestic engineer. Old is chronologically gifted.

Now such demands have escalated to proportions that unequivocally challenge our freedom of speech. Powerful big tech entities like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and Google censor any entries they … whoever “they” really are we do not know …. deem offensive. The problem is what is offensive to those censoring is not necessarily offensive to others.

For instance, many Americans believe there was election fraud. But because social media rejects that idea they disallow entries that mention it. Certain people have been shut down on social media because “they” do not like positions those individuals take. Some will say a certain idea is not popular, is offensive to others or is deemed untrue. It is not the job of any media to determine any of those conclusions. One may reject much of liberal or conservative gab, but those ideologues must have freedom to present their ideas no matter how fanatic, offensive, bizarre or eccentric.

If one does not use social media, we have something called cancel culture where “they” — again whoever “they” are — deem certain terms, products, books, toys, foods, titles, etc., etc., offensive because “they” say so. If you have any association with general news, you have heard that certain Dr. Suess books are racist, Goya Foods was boycotted because the company owner supported President Trump, and cartoon characters Dumbo, Pepe le Pew, Speedy Gonzalez are gone. My sense is because some group decided this, we all are supposed to go along with their ideas and forget our own freedom of thought and speech.

Workers have lost their jobs because they expressed an opinion. Entertainers and celebrities have suffered the same injustice. Most recently Piers Morgan left his show because of reactions to his negative comments about an interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Banjoist Winston Marshall apologized because he praised a book by rightwing writer Andy Ngo. Somewhere in the nonsense of politics, establishment of a commission reminiscent of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth has been suggested. This government agency would, I guess — with probably hundreds of hired snooping bureaucrats — comb through social media, talk shows, letters to the editor, print media articles, and monitored phone calls for comments that are anti anything that is the latest government darling. That is when we will have totally lost our freedom of speech guaranteed in our U.S. Constitution.

Vaccination volunteers, staff were wonderful

To the Editor:

I can’t recall ever writing a letter to the editor in all my 64 years; but I feel compelled to do so now. I received my first COVID Moderna vaccination today, administered by Haywood County at the Lambuth Inn, Lake Junaluska. My husband received his first vaccination last week at the fairgrounds and raved about what an impressive operation it was; but hearing about it didn’t have the same effect as seeing it for myself.

I cannot say enough positive things about how well coordinated and smooth the process was. To a person, everyone I encountered in my approximately 20-minute drive-through was efficient and extremely friendly. The first volunteer I encountered after my “jab” actually thanked me for being there. Who knows how many hours they were there in the cold and sometimes rain, processing reportedly 1,000 recipients throughout the day, and yet every one of them was as pleasant as could be.

I don’t know how many staff and volunteers there were in total, but it seemed like many dozens — and everything went like clockwork. I am so appreciative to every single person who had any part in planning and implementing the vaccinations. From the first volunteer who checked my ID, to the EMS personnel who were standing by at the “end of the line” to respond if anyone had an adverse reaction, to the many in between: thank you for your service and for helping to make Haywood County safer!