Response to Comment on 2016 Election Update Article
On September 13th, I published an article on the Chieftain Press, which you can read here if you haven’t already. A few days after, it received this comment:
“Hello Sam, if you’re going to write about politics, state the facts, not your opinion. Your writing above is clearly swayed toward one candidate. First, ONLY Clinton has an issue with Lying her entire political career, not both. Clinton is also being investigated through Congressional hearings based on the missing emails relating to her pay for play involvement with the JD and the Clinton Foundation. Very important story if you don’t know. I can give other examples, but maybe you need to do your homework first and not just Google the last two months. Trump, yes he’s not an experienced political candidate, however that is helping him in the polls because people trust him. With all due respect, if you’re not going to report the facts than keep it out of the public school system.
Nashoba Taxpayer”
I felt that the comment deserved a response, so I’ve decided to share that with the Nashoba community below:
Hello,
I really appreciate that you took the time to read and reply to my article. At the Chieftain Press, we value all ideas and perspectives and, on a personal level, I am always looking for ways to improve as a journalist. Full disclosure, I am a Clinton supporter and you are right, this should not come through in my writing. In light of this, I’ve made a few edits to my article to even out a little of the biased language (see paragraphs 2 and 5). That being said, I do believe that everything I wrote was factual at its core. First, the intent of this article was a quick election update as students were coming back to school and the Politics section was catching up after the summer hiatus. Therefore, I was intentionally writing about the stories of the last month or two in order to, albeit briefly and incompletely, bring people up to speed on the latest stories. The examples of lying on the part of Mr. Trump were factually accurate stories. Here you can watch the clip that is referenced.
These articles and many others provide much of the research and detail that was left out of my little update.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/matt-lauer-donald-trump-iraq-war-lie_us_57d0b87ce4b0a48094a78bd3
The second story about Trump was regarding a tweet from way back in 2013 that was brought up in a Veteran’s forum.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/331907383771148288?lang=en
Trump chose to defend this tweet and expand upon the ideas surrounding it at a forum in early September.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/politics/donald-trump-military-sexual-assault/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/donald-trump-sexual-assault-military-women.html?_r=0
Whether you agree with his position on sexual assault in the military or not, there is no doubt that he defended his earlier position this month and that it drew significant criticism, which is all that I claim above.
The final issue that I raise regarding recent criticism that Mr. Trump has received is his seemingly close relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. This is a relationship that he has been criticized for from both Republicans and Democrats.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-putin-embrace-fallout-227940
I have yet to be convinced that there were serious and disqualifying ethics violations committed in conjunction with the Clinton Foundation. However, as I now think about it, I believe there is enough evidence to support removing the modifier “conspiratorial” from the sentence, which should make it read more neutrally. Here’s what I found:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/tag/clinton-foundation/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ap-many-donors-to-clinton-foundation-met-with-her-at-state/
It does appear that there was some level of access granted to donors, but as there has been no official investigation and we don’t know the truth, I think they must stay allegations for now. In the interest of expanding our knowledge and research, I would encourage you to read this article.
Of course it does not excuse anything Secretary Clinton may have done, but I agree with you that it is important to fairly evaluate both sides. As far as the email scandal, I generally agree with FBI Director Comey’s investigation, in which he found that Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless”, but did not commit “intentional misconduct; or [have] indications of disloyalty to the United States; or [commit] efforts to obstruct justice”. His recommendation was that she not be indicted, she was not indicted, and as far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it.
Finally, I would take umbrage with the assertion that voters trust Trump more than Clinton. These two polls show that it depends on the issue and that a large portion of the electorate trusts neither of them.
I hope you continue to read the Chieftain Press and contribute to lively discussions. The Editorial staff has always tried to publish fairly and equally among the articles submitted regardless of their position on the political spectrum. If you ever wanted to delve more deeply into one of the issues you brought up, I would heartily encourage you to submit a Letter to the Editor. Thank you for your time and interest.
Erin Alzapiedi • Feb 22, 2017 at 12:22 pm
Sam, this is beautiful.