Unbiased reporting at the Newmarket Era? Some assembly required

The credibility of the media in the wake of the US Presidential election has never been more in doubt. "Lyin' media" was the rallying cry of many Trump supporters. And who could forget this t-shirt that sent a stark message in the last few days of the campaign?

Yet, criticism of the American press can be quite appropriate. The false equivalency the media gave to the Clinton Wikileaks to some of the impolitic things Trump said is one example. The voting public knew that Hillary Clinton's emails were far more serious and didn't believe the press who actively tried to convince everyone that these email revelations weren't important.

The American press unfortunately crossed the line from covering the news to actively campaigning for Hillary Clinton. When they did that, the voting public didn't believe three-quarters of the news coverage they reported on Donald Trump.

And just as President Obama's talk of gun control achieved no other results other than to unintentionally increase the number of guns sold in the US, the pro-Hillary bias in the American press actually convinced the plurality of voters to cast a ballot for Trump.

Time will tell what the consequences for the United States will be as an outcome of the American press abandoning its neutrality. Will Americans ever believe the Fourth Estate ever again?

There are parallels to Newmarket.

In the last municipal election, the Newmarket Era was narrowly focused on getting rid of Maddie Di Muccio on Council and ensuring no conservative minded Councillors were elected, (the Era even went so far as publishing multiple false "news" about her and other candidates), and despite achieving success in the short term, the Newmarket Era is now in a tailspin as a result.

Instead of Council meetings where important measures received meaningful debate, we now have 15-minute long Council meetings that basically rubber stamp $600,000+ projects without any due consideration.

And outside of a Letter to the Editor from the Inn From the Cold organization demanding that the Newmarket Era report facts not innuendo, when was the last time any resident from Newmarket ever wrote about any issue related to Newmarket Council? Recently the new editor of the Era (the third one since 2014), wrote an editorial begging Newmarket residents to write to him.

But ever since Deputy Mayor John Taylor's wife became a top executive at the Newmarket Era "newspaper", credibility in the local media has dropped to an all time low. The Era, which had a tenuous idea of unbiased journalism previously, has devolved into a fan-page for the Gruesome Twosome of Mayor Van Bynen and Deputy Mayor Taylor and their council cronies.

The public has stopped trusting the Newmarket Era and more importantly, stopped reading and engaging too. The once profitable Newmarket Era has been steadily losing money as a result

I began this blog five years ago in response to what I felt was bias reporting. I made a promise to stop my blog once the Newmarket Era re-committed to the basic tenets of journalism. Instead of heeding the wake-up call, the Newmarket Era swung the pendulum even more to the extreme. 3 editors later, I am still blogging and the newspaper is still losing money. The public needs me in order to hear the truth about Newmarket Council.

After five years of bleeding red ink, you would think that the parent company of the Newmarket Era would get the message?