Shadow Warriors: Eye vs Eye

“Fight, fight!,” as we used to say on the school yard.

The Political Eye column of the St. Louis American newspaper and MayorSlay.com, a creation of Public Eye, Inc., the PR firm of Richard Callow, have gone to the mattresses.

Last week, the American reported that actions by the city’s public safety director, Sam Simon, had possibly left city firefighters in a dangerous position by ordering that all Fire Department airmasks be removed by Aug. 1 without notifying Fire Chief Sherman George.

A few days after the report was published, Mayor Francis Slay‘s anonymously-written blog, MayorSlay.com, called the story “bad reporting” and outlined its own version of events:

Five years ago, two St. Louis firefighters died tragically. Their widows filed suit against the manufacturer and distributor of some of the Department’s equipment. In the course of the first trial, testimony suggested that equipment might be defective. Both widows are convinced the equipment contributed to the deaths of their husbands.

Armed with that information, Simon wrote to the distributor asking for a $1.2 million refund. The distributor responded by offering to remove the equipment, but without refunding any cash. Simon declined. At no point did Simon ever order the equipment removed.

That’s the simple chronology that “supports” the baseless assertion by some partisans that Simon’s actions were improper.

Bad reporting? “Surely it is not ‘bad’ reporting to report a ‘demand’ as a demand. That is simply letting grammar be one’s guide in interpreting the English language,” answered today’s anonymously-written Political Eye column.

In another post on mayorslay.com, using the same pompous tone, Slay-Rainford-Callow-Rhode write, “One of the challenging things about the current state of news reporting is the mix of rumor and fact that gets churned around in blogs, talk shows and boards – and then re-reported on mainstream TV and radio.”

It should be evident from Simon’s signed letter and the statement of the “facts” on mayorslay.com that the mayor’s own blog is guilty of mixing rumor and outright lies with whatever facts it churns around – and, unfortunately, the mayor’s version of events too often gets “re-reported on mainstream TV and radio,” whether or not it is based in fact.

Touché.