Our Klamath Basin
Water Crisis
Upholding rural Americans' rights to grow food,
own property, and caretake our wildlife and natural resources.
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Commentary on
San Francisco Chronicle Article
"Congressmen feuding
over
Dear Mr. Epstien,
of speech. I think that
journalists ought to appreciate the first amendment even more than the rest
of us.
The problem is that
there seems to be an increasing tendency among journalists to hide behind
the
first amendment and say
what they wish to say without giving regard to whether what they say is true
or
not, or put just enough
truth into a story and then come, somewhere in the article, out of the sun
on a strafing
run and shoot the hell out
of the truth, then disappear back into the article.
That is what you
have done with the "Feuding Congressmen" article.
Mr. Epstien, I am a
farmers in the entire
Klamath Project. Sir, I do not know of even ONE who was delighted that
there were
over 30,000 fish killed in
the lower reaches of the
sick-to-your-stomach kind
of dull shock. The honest reaction was like "...oh no, here we go again."
We all knew in our
heart of hearts that we were going to get the blame.
Guess what. We were
right.
Guess what. Facts
later point quite clearly to the fact that these were
River releases, or lack
thereof were the culprit. We just about get this notion across to people
and begin
to think we can maybe look
ahead.
Guess what. Along
comes some damned reporter and who spouts off about how we were delighted
that
the fish were killed.
First we were blamed for causing that which we did not, and now we are
painted as being
happy about it.
Thank you very much
for your efforts to shine the light of truth. Journalism as it exists today
will likely give
you some sort of award.
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