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Health & Fitness

Gazette Watch

Anonymous letters – tattletales

Does it bother anyone else that the Gazette's gone to publishing anonymous letters? It reminds me of tattle-telling in school. A kid goes to the teacher to complain about another kid. The teacher talks to the second kid's parents but, because of "confidentiality," can't divulge the name of the complaining kid.

That's what we have going on at the Gazette, big time.  If it isn't "Name on file," it's "Grateful Citizen" or some other mask hiding someone who doesn't have the courage to comment or criticize in his or her own name.

Recently Kristen Henderson was called to account by the Gazette editor (via an anonymous letter) for critical comments Ms. Henderson made about the Martinez Historical Society and a member of the Martinez City Council. Was it the editor herself hiding behind "Grateful Citizen?" Or was it a member of the Martinez Historical Society itself? Or was it the City Council member whom Ms. Henderson's letter had also targeted? We will never know.

In either case, it is unacceptable that the Gazette has become the home of this kind of discourse, exchanges in the community newspaper critical of or in defense of persons or groups, printed without attribution.

The most egregious example I remember was a few months ago when the editor published a "Name on file" letter criticizing the professional qualities of a former writer of the paper whom the editor herself had summarily dismissed some time before and with whom the same editor was then in litigation over that writer's dismissal.

We're getting close to the totalitarian practice of anonymous denunciations. Nothing is worse for a community.

Martinez deserves better, much better from its local paper.

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