South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

Citizens trust Mehlville board, administration

To the editor

We residents of Mehlville-Oakville are very fortunate that we have a community newspaper like the Call.

The press is a vital part of a democracy, and the Call provides citizens with information and opinions that the public institutions might not broadcast with the same openness.

While I think the Call’s reporting on Proposition P has been valuable, I think the Call has often been petty in its criticism of the Mehlville School District. One example was its attempt to find some nefarious motive when the board changed its meeting day in order to accommodate a diligent board member who had a work conflict.

Another example is its obsession to find some violation of the Sunshine Law.

It would be difficult to get an accurate sense of how many people share this opinion. But I suggest that the decisive defeat of the only board candidate endorsed by the Call was a message to the paper. The message is that the citizens of the district have tired of the Call’s almost weekly “revelation” of a Watergate-like scandal in the district.

I suspect that the citizens trust the board and administration and are skeptical of these mini-exposes. We need the press to call attention to wrongs in our government, but crying “wolf” every week seriously dilutes your credibility.

Leonard Leon

Oakville

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