ESTÚPIDO SAVANNAH - Tue Dec 30 2008 09:28:05
The New Word for 2009: Berkowian
It is kinda like Orwellian only a lot more obvious and a lot less fictional.
Darth Berkow has done it again.
Word comes this morning that the Dark Lord of Public Safety is now filtering public records through his Ministry of Truth.
Now this is no surprise to me. He has been trying to circumvent the media and manipulate the public since he got here.
He began his “I Hate the Media” tour the first year with elected officials and civic and neighborhood groups.
The spiel ran something like this, “Savannah’s crime problem is one of perception. The bad old media feeds that perception by reporting every single crime. The bad old media does this just to drive ratings and sell papers and not as a public service and you shouldn’t trust them.”
And the Media makes it easy for him, as of this moment there is only one reporter left in Savannah that’s been covering the police department for more than a year and she just happens to be married to a cop.
Of late we have seen Herr Berkow turn his silver tongue against his boss Michael Brown in an effort to increase his own budget above and beyond the $60-something-million he already gets.
And yet the only time the paper seems to get its undies in a bunch is when he tries to restrict their access like this week when word came down from Mount Berkowlympus (yeah, that sounded better in my head) that the public shall no longer be allowed to see every police report, even though they are all public record.
So, what are they going to do about it? Will they fight back? Will they file suit?
Most likely what they will do is follow up today’s article with a not-so-strongly worded editorial urging a better balance between the needs of crime fighting and the public’s right to know.
And thus shall dawn the Berkowian age.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
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