Unpublished Letter to the Editor: Calling Into Question Forum Choices

Submitted to the Fargo Forum after this op-ed. No response. I’m sick of the phrase ‘leafy spurge.’

One natural inclination after reading this paper’s Monday editorial column, regarding the failures of Secretary of State Al Jaeger during the June primary, is to ask how the Fargo Forum views its role in North Dakotan society. While the office of the Secretary of State, in its bureaucratic ineptitude and with the collusion of the office of the Attorney General, massively denied the public its due electoral process and then conspired to conceal the failure, the Forum has shown a profound ignorance of the events at hand, only to have jealously saved its wrath for those who have been vigilant on pressing to the attention of voters the gravity of this and other issues. The fear that this behavior should provoke is that it embodies a broader trend in the news media of the state, especially this publication.Whereas in most insistences the press views itself as a vanguard for the public, fastidious pursuing an objective truth, more often than not, the Forum’s approach seems to be one of constructed naivety as a keeper of the status quo.

In acting this way, the North Dakota public has been kept in the dark on significant issues that directly impact their daily affairs and cut across partisan lines. A very facile enumeration of cases tells us that beyond the facade promoted by the local media lies the same tendencies of corruption that exists anywhere else, perhaps just with a friendlier face. Voters would do well to consider the consequences of our Lt. Governor’s forthcoming promotion in light of his having sold a wholly North Dakotan cooperative corporation to a foreign entity at great personal profit. Furthermore, they should also ponder heavily the current investigation of our incumbent Representative over the timing of fundraisers during regulatory reform. More quantitatively, North Dakota was recently labelled as one of the most corrupt states in the country based on corruption convictions. Clear statistical and investigative issues aside, readers may be surprised that any cases exist in the pollyanna society envisioned by this publication. For this newspaper to continue to subscribe to a mindset of intentional ignorance would be provincial, sophomoric and call into question the profound trust that North Dakotans have placed in the Forum.