Election coverage sadly lacking

To The Eagle:

"The Eagle has landed." Words of Neil Armstrong landing the lunar module in 1969 or the title of a novel in 1975. Today, however, it has a less elegant connotation: it indicates that our newspaper, The Eagle, has landed clumsily, feathers flying, on one side of a local government problem that has degenerated into a political squabble.

The Eagle received an e-mail from write-in candidate Dale Jacobson criticizing the mayor and incumbent councilor Steve McNicholas (Dale's target of opportunity) for their handling of the financial and fiduciary problems of the town fire department. Steve was asked if he wanted to respond and he share his copy with several friends for advice. Dale's e-mail was full of hyperbole and errors, and we all applied lawyerly Latin to it: res ipsa loquitor (the thing speaks for itself), and advised Steve not to dignify it with a response, which turned out to be a miscalculation. We assumed it would appear exactly as submitted in the Letters section of the editorial page, where its glaring trashiness would obviate a response. Wrong!

The Eagle's publisher cleaned up the message and enshrined it in a box on the front page, under his own byline, presented as an interview rather than political advertising and omitting the last line, "Thanks for your support." The Eagle is, of course, welcome to endorse or criticize candidates for public office on the editorial page, not the front page. Failure to learn this lesson has caused the decline or demise of many previously great news publications across the country. To see The Eagle headed in this direction is disheartening.

Ironically, while the state auditors have found indications of possible financial and contractual improprieties on the part of fire department leadership, it is the town leadership that is confronted with frivolous charges of wrongdoing and financial malfeasance and plunged into a political imbroglio while they are politely and professionally waiting (along with the various investigators) for some straight answers from the fire department leadership.

Howard Brawn

Puget Island