Jerry Bledsoe –whose name came up in last week’s post on the alleged push polls in the Senate District 27 race —- responds:
I want to clarify something in Roch’s first comment. The statement he attributes to me is a quote from a police department news release, not my own words. I did not write about the controversy when it broke in the spring of 2006. The claims that black leaders had been recorded for nefarious purposes, as reported by the News & Record and News 2, were indeed false, as I detailed in parts 41-43 of my Cops in Black White series in the Rhino Times in the fall of 2007.
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30
2012 At 10:34 pm, Roch Smith Said:
As I wrote to Jerry, he and Eric Townsend both reported what the police said. If what the police said was false, that is no more an indictment of Townsend than it is Bledsoe, as John Hammer tried to have it.
30
2012 At 10:40 pm, Roch Smith Said:
Additionally, what Jerry says I attributed to him was not represented as a quote by him by a quotation from his article. I think that was clear when I prefaced it with “The police said it was true, and Townsend wasn’t the only one to report it. Jerry Bledsoe reported it too…”
31
2012 At 7:58 am, Sam Hieb Said:
OK, Roch I’m following your logic but still how do you square with Bledsoe’s conclusion in Part 43 that no Greensboro black leaders had been intentionally recorded? Did the N&R ever walk that back?
31
2012 At 9:56 am, Roch Smith Said:
What? Common ground? I’m coming Elizabeth!
There is plenty about which to criticize the Ahearn/Townsend/Robinson fiasco that was the coverage of the Wray fray including, as you rightly allude to, that once facts emerged that contradicted the N&R’s original reporting, they never attempted to correct the record — even actively worked against it. It was truly the most shameful, unprofessional episode of local journalistic malpractice I have seen in my lifetime, saved from being the worst ever locally or nationally only by the national media’s monumental failures to vet the claims made in the run-up to the Iraq war.
And, as I’ve publicly said, were it not for the Herculean efforts of Jerry Bledsoe, our city would have lived under a perpetual series of News & Record sanctioned lies — a terrible legacy for a new organization to bestow upon a community — and they almost got away with it. Greensboro should erect a monument of gratitude to Bledsoe for singlehandedly rescuing us from a swamp of mendacity, I’ve said.
The legacies of Townsend and Bledsoe are world’s apart in this realm. Still, I think Hammer’s observation misrepresented that particular segment of Townsend’s reporting and, therefore, his insinuations were off base.