Jerry Raehal, who runs the state’s press association, too often gets the impression that accusations of “fake news” are made anytime someone disagrees with a newspaper, whether that disagreement is with a news story or a piece in the opinion section. So when he attempts to diminish us by calling us ‘fake news’ for the purpose of avoiding that accountability, I’ve got a big problem with that.” “And the purpose of newspapers is to hold those people in positions of power responsible. “What’s really disturbing in this context is the fact that he is an elected official, he’s in a position of power,” Seaton said on Monday. That time, the charges came from an anonymous blog. Last month, I wrote for CJR about another recent instance in Colorado in which charges of “fake news” were leveled against a credible news source. (The paper does not discuss editorial opinions with subjects prior to publication.) Scott, a possible gubernatorial candidate, isn’t talking, so it’s hard to clear up this particular dispute. Seaton says he called the senator twice on Friday, but no one called him in advance of the editorial to clear the paper’s position with him. NO ONE ever attempted to contact me,” he wrote. “Bring it on Jay, if you lie it blows back. But he did post messages on Twitter and Facebook. Scott, who served as a regional field director for Donald Trump’s Colorado campaign, declined to comment for this story on the advice of his counsel. What I can’t abide is an attack on the essence of what we do.” “I can take the criticism that we’re too far right, or we’re too far left, or our reporter was sloppy, or our editorial misunderstands the issue, that I can handle. “What I consider actionable is the attack on the Sentinel as fake news,” Seaton says. The publisher says he has already seen people on Facebook pledge to cancel newspaper subscriptions after the lawmaker’s comments. So I don’t view this really as any different.” “I practiced law in Kansas City for 13 years, so I’m accustomed to resolving business damage in the judicial system. Before taking the helm of the Sentinel in 2009, Seaton was a commercial litigator. This particular publisher, it should be noted, is no stranger to a courtroom. In his Saturday column, Seaton defended his newspaper and indicated there might be a court fight on the horizon. You may have a barrel of ink but it just splashed in your face.” They haven’t contacted me to get any information on why the bill has been delayed but choose to run a fake news story demanding I run the bill. They have no facts, as usual, and tried to call me out on SB 40 as the CORA bill. “The very liberal GJ Sentinel is attempting to apply pressure for me to move a bill. The very liberal GJ Sentinel is attempting to apply (more: ) We have our own fake news in Grand Junction. The Sentinel urged its local lawmaker, who the paper endorsed in 2014, to set a new hearing and push the bill forward. Scott chairs a committee in the state Senate that was scheduled to hear the bill last week, but he cancelled the hearing. The bill would require government agencies to release digital copies of documents in a machine-readable format (if they have them), something they currently aren’t required to do. Here’s the background: The state senator called his local newspaper “fake news” on Twitter and Facebook after a February 8 editorial in the Sentinel urged him to move along a bill that would update the Colorado Open Records Act, or CORA. “That’s my intention,” he said about a potential lawsuit, “but we’re going to have some cooling-off period before I file anything.” It was no joke, either, Seaton told CJR over the phone Monday. Scott has defamed this company and me as its leader.” And then the kicker: “To borrow a phrase from another famous Twitter user, I’ll see you in court.” Words have real meaning in this business. “I don’t think I can sit back and take this kind of attack from an elected official,” the publisher wrote. On Saturday, the paper’s publisher, Jay Seaton, wrote a pointed column taking the state senator, Ray Scott, to task over the allegation. When a Republican lawmaker in Colorado recently called his hometown newspaper “fake news,” the family-owned Grand Junction Daily Sentinel didn’t let it go unchallenged.
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