While poll watching at Christ Lutheran the other day, an old retired farmer came by on his way to Kasey Lynn’s for breakfast. We had a long friendly chat as my poll watching duties were certainly not arduous—only six voters showed up during my seven to nine shift. The farmer said, proudly, that he never voted because all politicians are thieves. If that were so, I said, he was talking to one of them as I have a seat on the school board. I explained that I had somehow managed to finance a Rolls Royce on the money I had filched from the district. Fortunately, he knew I was kidding.

The farmer illustrates several of the dangers of democracy. First, of course, is that he does not exercise his right to vote. Accordingly, he has his government dictated to him. He may complain about politicians, but he has dis empowered himself from doing anything about it. Secondly, embodied in his attitude is a kind of hopelessness which fails to take into the account the ability of voters, if sufficient in numbers, to change their government. Third, without meaning to offend, he is uninformed. A democracy only works if the electorate takes the trouble to inform itself and has the information available in terms of a free press to do so. This last was the basic faith of our founding fathers, particularly Jefferson. The notion is that all ideas should be able to be expressed publicly no matter how bad, but that a fully informed public can be relied on to sink the bad ones and go with the good ones.

Unfortunately, both in the nation and in our community, freedom of speech and the press (including, of course, TV and other media) are controlled by very few people. Thus, for example, The Morning Call which was originally and independently owned newspaper which competed with The Bethlehem Globe Times for dominance in our area, was bought some years ago by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. That syndicate was in turn recently bought by the Tribune Syndicate, Accordingly, the Tribune Syndicate, which owns skatey eight newspapers in the United States not to mention many radio and television stations, now is the primary source of local news in our area. The Globe Times, which itself was a combination of two older newspapers, was killed off. The Easton Express Times, another combo, is a non starter here.

In Lower Saucon and Hellertown, the public has virtually no access to sufficient information on which to make an informed judgment on how to vote on local issues. The coverage by the two existing weeklies and the new local supplement issued weekly by The Morning Call is both inadequate and biased. For approximately 10 years, The Valley Voice was the only local weekly paper distributed in the district. At the time, perhaps understanding her responsibility, publisher Ann Marie Gonsalves allowed this columnist considerable freedom in expressing views and publishing information with which she did not necessarily agree. Then The News of Saucon Valley was organized by Lanita Lum who had formerly been an editor of The Valley Voice.

For a number of reasons, all of them having to do with the shoddy editing of The Valley Voice, I elected to join The News of Saucon Valley. For a while, I thought that paper was wonderful. It not only gave me freedom to express my views, but it published views, often at odds with mine, principally by Andrew Wilt. It also had some good news coverage in depth. All in all, it made for a lively paper well worth, at least I believed, reading. At the same time, The Valley Voice went down hill in terms of the fairness and breadth of its coverage, and the one note it continually sounded in its editorial policy. To give the devil her due, Gonsalves did improve the layout and composition of her paper.

( My name, by the way, has never been mentioned in The Valley Voice since I left even though I have been on the school board for over two years. In a way, I am honored.)

Then disaster struck. Lanita Lum who had assembled a really good group of writers for her paper, telling them that they would sink or swim together, sold the paper to the Berks-Mont chain. She fatuously said there would be no editorial change whatever but within months virtually all of the writers for the paper were gone. At the same time, under Berks-Mont management, as supervised by Lum, the paper outdid The Valley Voice in one sided coverage. For example, three weeks ago Lum published an editorial simply repeating outrageous misstatements of fact from TEACH candidate Karen Beyer. Lum was in the audience at the next school board during which Superintendent Ralph Tarola refuted the misstatements one by one, specifically referring to the editorial. In the following edition of The Saucon News, Lum had the nerve to publish an editorial in which she basically said that when she makes up her mind she sticks with her opinion even though others may disagree with it. Due to the need to include this piece of wisdom, she claimed that she had no space to publish two letters who dealt with her misstatements, one by parent Fran Kaufmann and the other by Tarola. Ironically, she published those letter in this week’s edition, after the election.

The Morning Call’s weekly, The Chronicle, is really little better then an ad carrier. It meticulously steers clear of news and opinion which might be considered controversial. As such, unless you are interested in the equivalent of who won the spelling bee, the paper provides no information which a voter might use in making a choice at the polls.

Finally, The Morning Call itself is no bargain. It published relatively few letters to the editor concerning our hotly contested election, and those it did publish were four to one in favor of TEACH although there were certainly many anti-TEACH letters available. Coverage of the contest itself was minimal, and no editorial writer or investigative reporter bothered to discuss the facts.

Now I have a confession to make. When Superintendent Ralph Tarola used the term “fishwrappers” to refer to the local newspapers in a confidential memo stolen by someone and made public, he was actually using a word he had heard me using. Tarola may have been indiscreet, but he did not apologize for the characterization nor do I. The term was commonly applied to newspapers because it was understood that newspapers only have fleeting currency and thereafter were are often used to wrap fish. Actually, in referring to The Valley Voice and The Saucon News as fishwrappers, I thought Tarola was restrained. I would have referred to their other secondary function, use in outhouses.

And so it is that uninformed, misinformed and few voters managed to nominate all five TEACH candidates to both parties’ tickets for the school board thereby dealing what may be a death blow to a really superb school system. The magnitude of the disaster is illustrated by that fact that Susan Baxter, who was responsible for creating absolute chaos during her term as president of the board, was actually nominated, albeit it with the fewest numbers, by both parties.

Voters in a democracy deserve what they get, but there is a bright side in all this. Whenever our septic system fails and I have to use the outhouse, I will be grateful to The Valley Voice and The Saucon News for their assistance.

Katz is a graduate of Columbia Law School where he also taught. Although admitted to the New York and California bars, he early on abandoned the law for a career in the entertainment industry, spending most of his working life in New York and Los Angeles. He has been a writer, director, producer and executive in both the motion picture and television industries. At one point he was in charge of Movies for Television for NBC and he was twice Senior Vice President of MGM Television. In 1990, Katz and his wife Susan settled in Saucon Valley where he continues to write, producing one novel and several screenplays. Katz was appointed to the Saucon Valley School Board in 2000, was elected in 2001 then served for 4 more years.