GAZETTE EDITORIAL: Get it right or don't write it

I don’t read the Payson Roundup. You know why.

But I do glance at the headlines when I’m out, and last Friday’s front page article by Pete Aleshire about Payson selling water to Mesa del Caballo was hard to miss.

Because I live in Mesa del. Because I know the Mesa del Water Committee members very well. They're all good friends. One is my next door neighbor.

But I resisted the temptation to pick up the paper. Until today, when I saw a copy at a friend’s house. I couldn’t resist – blood pressure be damned.

And I survived to point out just a couple of the most glaring inaccuracies it contained. To wit:

Last year’s summer water shortage in Mesa del did not lead to more expensive water as the article claimed. Rates were unchanged. We didn’t pay extra for the water that was trucked in.

Pine does. We don’t. At least, not yet.

Yes, those few individuals who had their water turned off last summer for excessive consumption may have had to pay hookup fees to be reconnected, but that does not make the water more expensive.

Simply not a true statement.

Second, the water shortage in Mesa del is not due in part to an increase in summer residents as Aleshire wrote. I know my community well. I don’t know of anyone who is a summer resident.

That’s not to say there aren’t a few, but not enough to impact our water supply the way it does in Pine. To suggest otherwise is as bad as Brooke’s claim that the shortage was due to people moving into Mesa del and shacking up with their relatives due to the economy.

I resent it when Mesa del is made to look like a third world community. Show me the statistics to back up such claims or stop making them.

And finally, if both Brooke Utilities and the water committee declined to talk to Aleshire about the agreement, citing issues of confidentiality, maybe Pete should have thought twice before writing it. It’s about truth and accuracy, not about a reporter’s ego.

Or a mayor’s ego for that matter. The Mesa del story and related editorial were obviously triggered by Aleshire’s cloyingly close personal relationship with Payson Mayor Kenny Evans.

As journalists, we must constantly guard against our personal relationships interfering with our sacred trust – to report the news fairly and accurately. And, often just as important, in a timely manner.

Or in this case, an untimely manner – before all the details were in place and before the residents themselves had been informed by their water committee.

If the Roundup had a real editor, maybe this wouldn’t keep happening. But their editor is a photographer. That simply doesn’t work.

We all, as journalists, need editors. Even the best of us. For a second pair of eyes. To keep us honest. To temper our excesses.

As Shakespeare put it so well, “The better part of valour is discretion.”

Jim Keyworth
Editor