Well, I really can’t believe I am saying this, but in response to the piece on Gonzaga and Spokane by The Guardian’s Cody Delistraty, I have to say that you, sir, are ‘fake news.’
In Delistraty’s piece for the upcoming NCAA tournament, he wrote about how the Gonzaga men’s basketball team was the only hope for a struggling city. By the looks of the article, one could guess that the author has never been to Spokane, and just pulled up the Wikipedia page. But no, this journalist actually went to the same high school as me in Spokane, Lewis and Clark High School. (Go Tigers!) He bashed the city where he came from. Now, I will admit Spokane does have many flaws, but the city is amazing and is ever-growing into the 21st century. But I have a larger issue here, other than the fact that we ‘Spokanites’ were stabbed in the back. I have a huge issue with this young journalist’s ethics.
First of all, any city can look like a war-torn, crime-riddled hellhole if you spend all your time looking at the negatives. Never in his article did he mention the fact that Spokane has an amazing school system that I think has some of the most compassionate teachers, administrators and programs (which Lewis and Clark has) or that Rogers High School made it on the New York Times for how they are gearing students in poverty areas to not only get a diploma, but prepare themselves for graduation. Then you look at the aspects of the wonderful sports programs the area has, that has produced all-star talent, and even a couple of hall-of-famers in multiple sports. Gonzaga is certainly a cool aspect to the city, but it isn’t ‘our one shining moment.’
Secondly, some of his facts were just wildly incorrect. "The Inlander," a local newspaper, ran a piece fact-checking the piece and found blatant lies, and they were not flattering. His brief history of the city was one of doom and gloom, and that Spokane is stuck in a rut, and without Gonzaga, we would all be shooting each other and starting turf wars. This is where I really want to drive a point explicitly to journalists and Mr. Delistraty especially. We are dealing with one of the hardest moments in journalism’s history. We have a president that has called CNN ‘fake news’ and is currently trying to defund parts of the public voice. Democratized voice is in serious jeopardy here because the deck is stacked against journalists. The general public is willing to call anything they disagree with fake news, even if it is true, but it becomes so much easier to discredit an entire publication based on one journalist's mishaps (well, in this case, laziness).
You can’t make up lies and expect people to still believe you. Look, I know this is just some silly piece, but when you insult an entire city (the 96th largest urban center in America) it is going to start to make some waves. It’s cool and all that you didn’t like a place where you lived (I particularly hate the current place I live), but you don’t see me making up random ‘facts’ to make it look bad, and you certainly don’t see me going back on being a journalist with ethics.
Although he did apologize to the city through the Inlander blog, I still feel like the damage was done. His apology seemed half-hearted and just like a typical response from someone who was caught with their hands down their pants. I hope in the future he can come around to realizing Spokane is pretty great, when we aren’t shooting each other and robbing each other.
