Reader believes the Tribune does not serve up news

Once upon a time your newspaper reported news. You had reporters that were not biased towards local politics and were fair in their reporting. I am not so sure you still have that.

Recently DJ Becker wrote an article critical of the Madera City Council. I am not sure how much of the two full pages of the story she wrote because it is simply a series of quotes from Wayne Padilla. I notice a trend every time I see an article covering the City Council. But not once has anyone said that most of the board were not elected during that time and were not around, but Mr. Padilla was. I am amazed at how many people quoted lately in your articles were aware of Mr. Tooley and Mr. Taubert’s salaries but waited until the last 7 months to bring it up. Some of the board did vote for cost of living raises but that was citywide.

So perhaps we can check to make sure the story is not biased by setting a couple of goals per story.

1. Journalists need to be unbiased and be able to cover an article fairly.

2. If you are going to talk about people that gave out raises, use the people that did it. The Madera City Council did not do that as your title claims, it is the Past Madera City Council. Give us the names of those people and how they voted. Invest time in research and tell us how those people voted and quit slamming people who were not elected back then. Everyone is mad at the City Council but many of them were in college, raising families when the bulk of these raises were negotiated.

I think it would be neat to go find whoever was on the board and ask them what they were thinking when they approved these contracts.

3. When you do point fingers at people or issue blame, let them have the opportunity to defend themselves. If they choose not to: then say they were offered but chose not to. That is called being fair. The article on the recall (which I am wondering when a follow up to will be) never quoted the person that they were recalling.

Madera Tribune readers expect a newspaper that tells the stories of our local community. I expect the editor of the paper to check the stories for fairness and integrity. If you choose to give two pages of newspaper to an ex employee’s opinions, then I have to wonder if you are serving the community.

— Tim Riche,

Madera