And the utterly predictable does in fact come to pass.  The PD again covers my candidacy for county council by gratuitously posting the most incendiary and prejudicial portions of a case now almost 9 years old, linking to the prosecution’s entire case.

Interestingly, Gomez didn’t quote from the chat transcripts in the text of the article.  What’s the matter, Henry, too hot for the print edition?  Are you saving it up for the week before the election?  Why not just publish the entire thing in print, fellas?  What the hell are you waiting for?  Maximum impact, perhaps?

Gomez knows full well why I won’t talk to him or the PD.  Not one time did Gomez ever alert me to the fact that the PD was going to publish the entire prosecution’s case from 2001, despite numerous conversations with him about many topics.  Here’s one of those emails.

Don’t hold me to this, but I don’t think Ronayne is using Burges. He has some of his own guys.

I talked to Gomez a lot.  In fact, for the piece in which Gomez first “reported” on this 9 year old news, Gomez spoke to me on the phone, asked for comment about my race, and didn’t once mention this rather significant detail, a detail Gomez knew would result in enormous blow back.  Gomez even asked for the photo which they now use every time they “cover” my race.  I happened to be at an event with Gomez when that last story hit, and a friend called to alert me that the story included a link to the entire chat transcript.  So I walked up to Gomez and asked him if he knew the story would include these chat transcripts.

You should have seen the look on Henry’s face.  Like he thought I was about to knee him in the testicles.

“I did know, yeah,” said Henry Gomez.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to print those transcripts?” I asked.

“I was under no obligation as a reporter,” said Henry Gomez, beads of sweat becoming visible.

I was stunned.  ”What about your obligation as a human being?”

“If you have a problem, take it up with my editors.”

People wonder why I’m putting myself through this, and I’ll have more to say on that in the next issue of The Independent.  But for now, here’s something I wrote when I first considered running for public office, and asked myself this same question.

The reason this happens is because this society has decided that if you make one mistake, especially like the one I made, you will pay for it the rest of your life, with everything you ever had, or ever will have.  You will earn no income, have no possessions, you will lose your life savings, your career, your friends, your family, everything.  And you will be branded by your mistake forever.

And the way this is enforced is through one thing, and one thing only.

Media.

This prison was built for me in the media, and it will be destroyed there.

Stay tuned.

Tags: henry gomez, pd

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Human Rights, Transparency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.