CFUH and the St. Louis Magazine Article

Below is my email to the Steering Committee of Community for Understanding and Healing (CFUH) a "non-political, inclusive, peacemaking group of local citizens ... committed to promoting respect, acceptance, and reconciliation among all citizens in our Kirkwood community through reflective dialogue and ongoing proactive initiatives." If you have more questions about CFUH, please learn more about them at their web site. A link to their web site can be found to the left in "useful links" under "Kirkwood CFUH."

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Dear CFUH Steering Committee,

I am sending this email to the main contact email for CFUH, the email addresses of members I already had and a few of the email addresses of members I could find from public sources. I hope you will forward this email to all members of the Steering Committee. Also, I will be posting this letter on my blog on Kirkwood news and issues: www.joekirkwood.blogspot.com

First, I want to let you know how much I have appreciated being able to attend the last two CFUH meetings. I was unable to attend the first two due to previous plans and family issues.

Being a participant in the CFUH meetings has been a very enlightening and at times challenging community building adventure (for lack of a better term). To let down your guard, look a room of usually total strangers in the eye, honestly express your viewpoint on such tough issues as race and then try to effectively listen to that same room of usually total strangers each express their viewpoints on such tough issues can be a bit overwhelming and a lot to chew on. Yet, CFUH has done a great job of providing a very open, non-political, inclusive environment for this kind of discussion to go on in our community. You have truly worked hard to fulfill your stated Mission.

I am, however, disheartened by the fact that CFUH has propagated the St. Louis Magazine article, “The Kirkwood Shootings” by Jeannete Cooperman not only as a “Resource Material” on your web site, but also added it to your “Summer Events” flyer. The reason why I am so disheartened is because the way this jaded article was written and portrays our community is in direct opposition to every stated principle of CFUH’s Mission.

Yes, the first and last two sections of the article bring some light to the subject. But, the article’s two main middle sections “Kirkwood, Meacham Park and the Racial Divide” and “The Return to City Hall” are a politically biased, blatantly exclusionary, inadequately researched and very one-sided distortion of Kirkwood. I have detailed a few of the more outstanding examples of the unfair and inaccurate reporting on my blog in the May 6, 2008 posting entitled, “St. Biased … oops I mean … St. Louis Magazine's “The Kirkwood Shootings” Article.”

If you will read my posting, then take another read of the two main middle sections of Ms. Cooperman’s article you will clearly see her reporting was not researched with any depth. This is in direct contradiction to what CFUH’s flyer states. Also, the only way this piece of poor reporting could overall “shed some light” on an issue in the community of Kirkwood and be considered a “Resource Material” in relation to CFUH’s Mission is to use it as a “poster child” for the biased and one-sided reporting on controversial issues Kirkwood has consistently had to endure from our various local new sources.

The issue of biased and one-sided journalism is a subject CFUH needs to address if it ever plans to fulfill its commitment to “promoting respect, acceptance, and reconciliation among all citizens in our Kirkwood community.” So, promoting and propagating such a blatant example of biased and one-sided journalism in our community is self-defeating.

Our local press for far too long has been the primary vehicle for inaccurate, incendiary and at times incredibly despicable public attacks against various governing bodies, city officials and citizen-volunteer board members in our community. The Webster-Kirkwood Times, the self-proclaimed “Hometown Newspaper” of Kirkwood, has been the worst of the offenders. No better example of this fact is their article from August 15, 2003 on Cookie Thornton entitled, “A Thorn In Kirkwood’s Side.” The strongly worded and terse August 22, 2003 Mailbag response from Kirkwood’s mild mannered Chief Administrative Officer Mike Brown is very telling of how bad the Times once again blew it. Publisher Dwight Bitikofer’s August 29, 2003 lame and pathetic editorial on the subject continued to prove how clueless the Times’ editorial staff was concerning the article’s ramifications in the community of Kirkwood.

I can only hope you will take what I have had to say to heart and modify your policies on how CFUH deals with disseminating articles and information from news sources. Especially, in the case where these articles so blatantly miss the mark. To turn a blind eye to this kind of poor reporting is to condone it.

In addition, I hope you will not ignore the issue of how our local press has negatively impacted the public discourse in our community for many years now. I believe it is important for a group like CFUH to engage our local press in a serious discussion of their biased, unfair and inaccurate reporting and editorial practices. I believe we all can agree the communication of varied and divergent points of view will be a vital part of promoting understanding and healing for the long term in our community. Unfortunately, our local press has all too often failed to provide this kind of a fair and accurate portrayal of controversial issues in our community.

If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you for your service to our community.

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