Village Shlep: why won't Herald Gazette reporter Auciello cover both sides of the local windpower stories?

Sometimes you just have to gnash your teeth over the  determination of local commercial media workers to avoid rocking the boat of Commerce.  Take Village Soup's Herald Gazette reporter Shlomit Auciello.

Please.  

Joking aside, Auciellot reports on windmill stories for the Herald Gazette, which covers Knox County, Maine, from coastal  Camden to Port Clyde on Penobscot Bay's shores, and inland to the town of Washington and the upper Saint George River Valley.
     
Unfortunately, as her stories reveal, she is demonstrably content to be stenographer to industry, uncritically reprinting every oneliner the industry can feed her, while brazenly editing out dissenting opinions and inconvenient truths from her windpower stories. 
     
Consider her latest story on the topic Camden Select Board reviews wind proposals... -a story which doesn't even mention the word " windmill", and scrubbed  out the fact that windfarm promoter George Baker's claim, of having already met with "a bunch of regulators" about his plans for Ragged Mountain, turns out, on questioning, to have been an informal meeting with a single former member of the Maine Public Utility Commission.    It was not newsworthy to her  that Baker had boldly knowingly lied to the people of Camden and their duly elected representatives at the meeting, which aired on community cable too. Nor of course, were the convolutions Baker went through to avoid answering the Big Question. 


All Camdenites were no doubt eager to learn how many windmills  the Island Institute and the investors squatting behind them have in mind.  But neither such fundamental information, nor even coverage of George Baker's see-no-evil antics in keeping this vague was to be found in her reportage. 
     
Or Shlomit Auciello's immortal May 12, 2010 piece: Camden Hills windplanners gain approval for on-campus turbine which can be summarized again as uncritical stenography of what one source calls  "a carpetbagging Massachusetts firm" using public relations spin on credulous journalists, to gets high school students to squeeze their parents for $500,000 dollars to buy and operate a wind turbine. Where? In the midst of a owl- and other bird-rich coastal forest area. A windmill that, both the manufacturer and  the University of Massachusetts professorial windpower shill George Baker admit, probably won't perform worth a hoot.  But for Aucello, evidently, that nature stuff,  and the admitted uselessness of the community's investment, is not news worth informing her readers of.


Those two tales follow the same wind industry uber alles line as Auciello's two windpower-related stories from  earlier this year:


March 10, 2010  Sharing the bottom: Maine Fishermen's Forum looks at wind energy
Again Shlomit  Auciello excises her Krhuschev-like magic eraser to blot out  the chief participants in this story of a presentation at this annual gathering of lobstermen, groundfishers and other commercial fishermen  of a state plan to begin leasing state waters to the wind industry.  Despite there being a furious roomful of fishfolk disputing this pronouncement, Auciello quotes only from the wind industry and its governmental supporters. 


"Prepare to share" Maine  marine resources Comissioner George Lapointe told the assembled.  But true to form, Herald Gazette reporter Shlomit Auciello was prepared to share only industry and government's point of view with her listeners, not that of the fishermen - whose Forum this gathering was, after all!

February 18, 2010 Monhegan islanders hear more about wind study plans

  "Approximately 25 people attended a meeting on Monhegan Island Feb. 16 to learn more about plans for a deepwater wind energy testing site to be located about 2.5 miles off the island's shore."  Were there dissenters at the meeting?  Yes. Did she cover that fact? No!  Is there a lawsuit in Maine Superior Court about the very recently approved plan being touted at the meeting? Yes!  Did Auciello know? Yes. Does she mention it in her coverage? No!  

What is one to do in the face of this sort of censorship?  Thanks to all the social media, from blogs to twitter and everything in between, one can get information directly to persons or demographics of interest.   

    

But the proud imprimatur of unbiased  professional journalism, that  has long been stamped on Maine's print media, is vanishing as Auciello and others like her reflexively use the delete button on dissenting points of view in their copy.