The Syracuse Post-Standard, via Syracuse.com, has responded to Governor Patterson's statement of equal rights by posting verbatim the response from the Conservative Party. No other reactions are given. For some reason, the Conservative Party not even been given top billing on this issue, but the only billing. One has to assume, given that fact, the response must be concise and factual.
Of course, one should not assume.
Yesterday, Governor David Paterson declared that New York State must recognize out-of-state gay marriage while the residents of New York State are denied the opportunity to be heard on this subject.
Judges are supposed to interpret the laws as written, Governors are supposed to administer the laws as written and the Legislature writes the laws and so far, they have been silent on this issue. Marriage in New York State is between a man and a woman. The California Judges overturned the will of the California people and Governor Paterson is apparently trying to do the same thing in New York.
- Conservative Party of New York
Hey, you know what would be awesome? If a major newspaper didn't present this information as fact, when it is completely detached from anything approaching reality. Governor Patterson did not declare anything in the formal sense. He simply administered and enforced the law as interpreted by the judges of the New York state appeals court, who determined that refusing to recognize marriages performed elsewhere is a violation of the New York State constitution, which is maintained by the legislature. Every branch acted within its sphere here. Alleging that Patterson is trying to overturn the will of the people is not only irresponsible; it is a complete fabrication. It is a lie. And yet it is the position of the only organization given voice about the matter in the Syracuse Post-Standard.
Unbelievable.
4 comments:
Yo bro. The paper did have an editorial in the May 30 print edition. Did you see it?
http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2008/05/patersons_bold_move.html
The news blog on Syracuse.com is often used to post information that wouldn't make it into a daily news story by one of the P-S staffers, but might interest some people. The responses to the post show P-S readers are perceptive enough to take the post for what it was - a single statement from a political party. It actually inspired some interesting and thoughtful criticism on the blog:
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2008/05/conservative_party_reacts_to_p.html
Nah, we don't get the print edition here. I'm stuck reading the online version. That was the story linked from the front page of Syracuse.com, so that's all I had to go on.
I think the online version does give a bit of a skewed perspective, but that's all we see, so when we log in for Syracuse updates and see that press release headlined in the top five stories without comment... well, maybe my real gripe isn't the breadth of perspective, but what is chosen to be highlighted.
And I tend not to read the comments, because often they infuriate me. Sometimes, when I see a particularly batshit letter to the editor, I think, "Hey, if this one got printed, what the hell kind of poorly written, totally crazy drivel got rejected?" Then I read a comment thread and discover the answer.
Anyway, glad to see the paper came out officially, if not over-enthusiastically, in support of Patterson on this issue.
Syracuse.com has a major problem in that all news blog stories are sorted soley by the time stamps assigned when a reporter or editor submits them. So a major breaking news event sometimes ends up getting the same play as a crappy little press release. It's an annoyance for the newsroom, which has absolutely no control over the Web site.
After years of complaining about problems like that, Advance (the P-S and Syracuse.com parent company) finally agreed to test a new Web page design on Syracuse.com. I think it launches next week. Supposedly, the new design gives P-S staff control over how stories (and which stories) are displayed on the main page. Crossing fingers that it actually achieves this goal.
That's a really good idea. Whether it's true or not, people tend to assume that news stories are ranked by importance. It's a carry-over from print edition, but I think people expect it of online sources too.
At least they're listening to issues employees are having and are addressing them. I think every story a news source runs, in print or online, represents the agency in both content and presentation. It seems it's in their best interest to go the route your talking about and allow some control over that presentation.
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