The Shadow
Welcome back, Shadowers! Since when is reporting on acts of government corruption and gross negligence no longer the business of the news industry? When Ben Franklin took over the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729, Franklin used it to do exactly that against the British government. So unless our constitutional rights have changed in 295 years, let’s call our current local news reporting situation for what it truly is:
There is a clear attempt by some Alleghany Highlands officials to ‘control the news narrative’ to deliberately hide unethical and illicit behavior. And it’s been happening for almost a decade.
Sounds pretty conspiratorial, so what are the facts to support this theory?
Did you see the wonderful, feel-good article about the Alleghany-Covington Department of Social Services in the Recorder back in April? The local DSS promoted their “National Child Abuse Prevention Month”, complete with smiling faces of our public officials doing wonderful things for our children.
But where was the $5M lawsuit story accusing the Director and the department of toxic and illegal behavior? Stop the presses! We can’t cover that, Mr. Crosier is the Recorder’s Alleghany Editor and also the Chairman of that organization.
Ohhh… that doesn’t help the Vice Mayor get re-elected, so we’ll hide that one.
Then there was the never-ending train-wreck saga of the City of Covington’s partnership with 410 Main Street where things got so bad in the end that the State Fire Marshal had to intervene and shut down both the business and the City’s building department.
Better hide that one too, the Mayor is also up for re-election, and we need to make sure he looks pious and squeaky clean.
How did we get to the point where our politicians have the power to pick and choose what stories are written about them? The Vice Mayor absolutely insists there’s no conflict of interest between his political office and his role at the Recorder, despite glaring evidence to the contrary. In fact, according to many Virginian Review staffers and alumni, it started after Horton died in 2015. The Vice Mayor became General Manager during that time, and reportedly, it was commonplace for these types of stories to die on the editing room floor.
Why?
Power. Power to control the City’s news narrative. Power to reduce a news organization to nothing more than fake and filtered news that hides the reality of what’s really going on right under your nose.
Folks, this is not how a Democracy works. This is how autocratic governments like Russia and North Korea operate. This is how corrupt public officials operate. And if they can’t control the narrative, they retaliate and kill any news agency that does not submit to their power and regurgitate their false narrative.
The Covington Mayor and Vice Mayor have been actively trying to kill the Virginian Review for years, even more so since the new owner took over. During the Vice Mayor’s dual role as the General Manager of the Virginian Review, the newspaper collapsed in 2020 from severe financial and operational mismanagement. Apparently the General Manager didn’t care about the newspaper at all, he just loved the societal power that the position afforded him, completely ignoring the reality of operational losses to the tune of more than a half million dollars in just the two years leading up to its sale in 2020. It seems the Beirnes were forced to either shut the newspaper’s doors, or find some sucker that would take it on and try to salvage something from the train-wreck. After the sale, it was reported the General Manager resigned because he refused to perform the fiscal duties required to keep the paper afloat.
And here we are, four years later, and the Vice Mayor is still actively blaming the new owner and doing everything he can to kill your hometown paper and replace it with one that he can control the city’s narrative once again.
There was a movie about this exact scenario. George Orwell’s “1984.”
Mayor Sibold has also shot several retaliating blows at the newspaper. He recently stated, “As I’ve talked with business owners as well as local government officials one thing that is obviously true. There seems to be a business owner that very seldom comes to Covington setting in West VA. trying his best to cause division between business owners and local government as well as division between local governments.” Setting? Like a table? A trap? An old typesetting machine?
Wait a minute. Did the Mayor just dog whistle a lynch mob to drive the new owner out of town? Did he form a group to stalk the Virginian Review’s offices, under the disguise of ‘praying for the nonbelievers’ there? Isn’t the Mayor guilty of the very thing he’s spouting all over town, that no business or new residents want to live here because of all the bad news the Shadow brings?
Really?
The new owner of the Virginian Review has invested heavily in the community to keep the second-oldest business in town alive, yet he’s been subjected to 4 years of nothing but false proclamations designed to obscure the facts of what really happened with the Virginian Review, heavy retaliation, blackballing, and being brutally attacked by the town’s leaders. Why is that acceptable?
What kind of government official uses their offices to weaponize their personal opinions? Corrupt ones.
Let’s be clear, The Virginian Review and the Shadow are not the bad guys here. They are the only true, independent news agency willing to stand up, regardless of how brutal the retaliation gets, and report what citizens have been trying to say for years to our officials: “What you are doing is unethical. It is against the Law. STOP!”
When you don’t have facts, you don’t have a choice.
Like, how many parents have we heard from that were upset upon learning that they sent their child to the Prom unknowingly that the place was a major fire trap? They trusted their government to protect them from harm. Instead, the current administration endorsed it, encouraged it, and played along by issuing bogus permits.
That, in my opinion, is a real sign of a massive failure and loss of community trust in our current administration. That event out of the dozens of violations discovered over the past 7 months is enough to prove they are unfit for office.
And I don’t know about you, but the amount of extra make-work, financial costs and downright tom-foolery going on in this administration is exhausting. Time to vote for change, and focus on reestablishing an administration that implicitly understands what the oath of office really stands for.
We don’t work for the Government, the Government works for us.
I’m out of time, and out of Coffee, but you can take this fact to the bank. The Shadow and the Virginian Review have reconfirmed their commitment to ethical journalism. We have chosen to follow the path of Benjamin Franklin, and will unyieldingly oppose blatant abuses of power and will fiercely defend the rights of our Democracy.
