Are They Truly That Stupid?

That became a joke back in the late 90s when then President Bill Clinton responded to a Grand Jury question with that now infamous statement.

What we have today is not so much a joke as an indicator of what the media has become today. Okay, maybe that is a joke. On August 28th The Sedalia Democrat’s online edition boasted a headline proclaiming “County commission violates Missouri’s Sunshine Law", when in fact no such violation occurred. I suppose The Democrat relied on the opinion from Missouri Press Association attorney Jean Maneke, quoted in the paper as saying “to take something up that is not on the agenda is a violation of the Sunshine Law”. On its face, that statement would seem to be correct, but if one were to actually look at the law in question you would find that the commission did in fact comply with the law, which states “All public governmental bodies shall give notice of the time, date and place of each meeting, and its tentative agenda, in a manner reasonably calculated to advise the public of the matters to be considered…” (There’s more, but you’ll have to take my word that it is wholly irrelevant to this discussion. Or you can look it up for yourself, but trust me, you’ll be wasting your time.)

This argument hinges on the definition of the word ‘tentative’. According to dictionary.com, tentative is defined as “unsure; uncertain; not definite or positive". Given this definition, and the fact that the county commission did, in fact, publish an agenda, no reasonable person could conclude that a violation occurred. So the next logical question:

Follow up:

Is the Sedalia Democrat ignorant of what their precious Sunshine Law actually says? If that is the case, they have no business trying to throw around the weight of that law, and they certainly have no business trying to convince an unsuspecting public that they are a credible source for anything other than sports scores and obits. Of course the alternative is that they are well aware of the correct verbiage of the law and they intentionally ran with that headline, expecting (and I fear rightly so) that the vast majority of their readers would be ignorant of the law.

So which is it, Mr. Wiest? Are you ignorant, or did you just believe your readers to be? Whatever your answer, whenever someone reads an article in The Democrat from now on the ony valid question to ask is “what if that’s true?”

The BlacKnight

P.S.: Note to Rusty Kahrs: You didn’t do anything wrong except maybe not examine your agenda closely enough, so don’t let them force you to play their game. But I’d certainly make sure that whoever creates the agenda in the future adds the word “tentative” in bold letters across the top.

P.P.S.: Note to Oliver Wiest: If you won’t send someone to cover every meeting, don’t get pissed off if you miss something big. And you might want to verify your reporters research before publishing an article. Just a thought.

BK