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Newspaper's treatment of Harrison unfair
To the editor:
Mr. Weld, I would like to ask that your newspaper step back and take an unbiased look at what is happening to my son, Barrett Harrison, in the IRS issue.
In March, an IRS representative knocked on his door and informed him that the city was delinquent on payroll tax payments. This was his very first knowledge of the delinquency, and since he was no longer in office, he had no access to records and little access to personnel in order to find out what happened. The state legislative audit upon which he based decisions has proven to be inconclusive and unreliable, and the only person who knows exactly what happened refuses to talk. The current administration has little incentive to find out exactly what happened, but seems satisfied with broadly placing the blame on the past administration.
This newspaper's first comment on the issue was that Mayor Harrison certainly must have known about and been complicit in the non-payment. Your reporter made this statement without the benefit of all of the facts in the case, and my son had to call the paper and ask to be interviewed on the subject. When he explained how it is in fact possible for taxes to go unpaid without his knowledge, one of your reporters accused him of throwing a sweet old lady under the bus. Well, I am an old lady, too, and I ask that you not throw my son under the bus.
When he asked your paper to refrain from attacks on his honesty and character until all the facts are in, you printed a lecture on how impossible it is to sue a newspaper for libel or to prove malice. I believe that anyone who will go back and read Mark Brasfield's first editorial on this matter, would have any doubt in his mind about whether Mr. Brasfield acted out of malice. Freedom of the press is an important concept in our country, but so is a sense of fair play, common decency and the concept of innocence until proven guilty.
Now you refuse to wait for the rest of the facts to be presented before suggesting that my son resign from his job. I believe that any fair-minded person would think that a person should have ample opportunity to defend himself before suffering consequences from the actions of someone else. You are certainly entitled to your personal opinion, but one would think that, upon introspection, that along with the platform of editorial writer there is also an ethical responsibility to gather all of the facts (even though it make take a long time) and fairly report both sides of an issue before trying to sway the public in one direction or another.