Either this exemplifies bad reporting, the problem with “unbiased” reporting, or both.
In this week’s Hartford Advocate, Daniel D’Ambrosio writes about the “Bullish, Bubble, or Bust” discussion in his piece titled “Signs of Life.”
His write-up sounds like he wasn’t even in the same room. Brief reports featuring sentences like the following do nothing to enlighten the public:
There was plenty of bad news to go around in the discussion–Constitution Plaza was a mistake; the city’s youth are leaving in droves because they don’t see a future here; crime is still a huge problem.
Misuse of the semicolon aside, D’Ambrosio gives no context for such assertions, and makes it sound as if those statements all went unchallenged. I, for one, disputed this idea of youth hauling out of Hartford, and even had statistics to back that up. For some reason, the writer doesn’t mention people, namely planners, knowing nothing about Constitution Plaza’s history, or why it might be considered a mistake. The talk of crime was almost non-existent. I’ve checked through my notes from the event a few times, and can’t find any mention of crime, so, I have to ask why it was big enough of a deal to the Advocate writer to even mention it.
This News Briefs section in the paper appears to be new. Maybe the Advocate should stick to what they do best: provide inaccurate dining and entertainment listings (I’m still wondering how the Alley Cat Cafe can occupy the same space as the Center Squeeze), spiteful reviews, and rants that show a complete lack of rhetorical prowess.