Do you recognize propaganda when you see it? The Pee Dee had a perfect display of it in today’s newspaper.
The Pee Dee has fallen in love with the so-called “Opportunity Corridor.” It is a proposed roadway that will slide people through poverty areas to University Circle from I-490 and East 55th Street. The drivers won’t have to see much as they speed along the proposed $350 million project. An overly expensive bypass, don’t you think?
“Few road projects hold so much promise for so many people,” wrote Karen Farkas. What data revealed that gem of a statement? The story doesn’t say. That’s because it’s made up by our local propagandists from the business community.
“The Opportunity Corridor, a proposed 2-3/4 mile parkway extending from where Interstate 490 ends at East 55th Street to East 105th Street, could lead to economic development,” the story says. Well, at least she used “could,” not “would.” But again, nothing to back it up.
It also “could” lead to community development for “neighborhoods ravaged by unemployment and foreclosure,” the article says. Again, nothing to back it up. And highly doubtful.
Indeed, it “could” lead to a heavy expenditure of public money to satisfy a small self-interested elite that’s well-connected. In fact, it will.
Corruption doesn’t always mean a politician or building inspector taking a pittance of a bribe. Corruption comes in many forms.
And selling this as a project to help poor people is as sick as it gets.
The article calls a private committee set up by the Greater Cleveland Partnership (our Chamber of Commerce) as an “independent committee.” Hardly independent. It’s set up by business leaders. Nothing more, nothing less.
She does at least quote one Council member who gives an honest assessment for the moment. Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland is quoted, “In my community they say it is an ‘Opportunity for whom?’” She serves Ward 5, once headed by Mayor Frank Jackson. I remember Jackson raising questions about this road at least five years ago. He now supports it with funding.
The key to remember, however, is that the reporter’s boss, Terry Egger, Pee Dee publisher and president, is co-chairing the Opportunity Corridor committee.
You want to please the boss. Or at least you don’t want to put your thumb in his eye. That’s how propaganda gets sped along.
Maybe Egger should keep himself in the telling-the-news business rather than in the creating-the-news business.
There will never be honest reporting about the PR-named “Opportunity Corridor,” especially when the paper’s boss is so intimately involved.
Terry, stay in the news business. Leave the propaganda to the Greater Cleveland Partnership and its partners. They take pride in doing it.