The Southern Illinoisan recently devoted space in its newspaper to an attack on this paper.
The piece, penned collectively by the newspaper’s editorial board, entitled “Voice of The Southern: Know what you’re reading” took issue with the Southwest Illinois News’ editorial bent.
We are not shy about our position in favoring free-market principles and less government spending.
We’ve said this time and again, and we’ll say it again here. But the description of this newspaper by The Southern Illinoisan was beyond disdain.
“Does it look like a newspaper? For the most part, yeah. It’s got a masthead, some stories on the front page, an index, a community calendar, an editorial – why, it even has a sports page,” the Southern Illinoisan wrote in its editorial before going on to criticize us for covering local challengers, such as House District 118 candidate Jason Kasiar, to entrenched local politicians.
Why have we focused on these candidates? Simple. The Southern Illinoisan, a daily newspaper has made mention of Kasiar in news articles and columns only eight times since he first announced his candidacy six months ago. During that same time period, his opponent, incumbent Democrat Rep. Brandon Phelps, has received at least 35 mentions.
Unlike the editorial board of the Southern Illinoisan, we live in a reality where people and organizations are allowed to openly have opinions about the state of government; and as the residents of Illinois know, the state is in peril.
What readers may not know, however, is that the editorial board of the Southern Illinoisan is populated by “journalists” aligned with the Democratic Party and leftist ideals.
The editorial board in 2014 put its support behind former Gov. Pat Quinn, a politician on the state level going back to when he was first elected as state treasurer in 1990. Although 24 years had elapsed since Quinn’s appearance on the scene, including six years as governor, and the editorial board acknowledging the state was in terrible shape economically and politically, the board supported him over Gov. Bruce Rauner.
“Illinois is a mess. Our unemployment rate is still well above the national average and the number of those who have stopped looking for work is higher still. The state pension funding is in limbo, our infrastructure is crumbling and both businesses and residents are looking to get out of Dodge,” the editorial board said in its support of Quinn.
It is unclear what other evidence they would have needed to support Rauner or any other conservative for that matter.
Everyone should have an opinion, but don’t have an opinion and act like you are objective and no one else is.. That is just hypocrisy.
The Southern Illinoisan editorial board doesn’t disagree with us because of our donors or subscribers. Its self-congratulatory preening is a misdirection play.
The editorial board unfairly criticizes us because we do not support the leftist ideology and the big government policies imposed on this state by Chicago Democrats and compliant Republicans for decades that has not only made Illinois the current worst-governed state in the nation, but the worst-governed state in America in three decades.
The Southern’s editorial board members are not the guardians of a free press they pretend to be. They are clerics for Illinois’ political ruling class.
This is the deal with our newspaper. Our stories provide the context and consequence for state and local public policies decisions that you will find nowhere else.
From property taxes to public sector pensions to K-12 funding, we examine the structural underpinnings of these systems that directly impact your quality of life and ask the question: are they delivering what they promised to deliver to Illinois families at the price at which they promised to deliver it?
The legacy media outlets that have largely served as handmaidens to the warlords in Chicago and Springfield are attacking us because they've rarely bothered to challenge what is or examine what could be.
They refuse to examine the financial house of cards upon which Illinois has been built.
They trade access for honesty.
They trade the path of least resistance for asking the tough questions and following where the answers lead.
And now our work is exposing their lethargy.
Further, our transparency in terms of editorial point of view is laying bare their false objectivity.
We are not inviting you to the old media's woozy dream world where they pretend not to have political and policy viewpoints, and readers are expected to pretend along with them.
Rather, we tell you who we are, what we believe and in whom we most believe.
Based on the quality of the evidence presented and the arguments offered, we put faith in and give respect to the judgments you make.
The Fourth Estate in Illinois has become just one more property where Illinois ruling-class politicians comfortably reside.
They can lie to you. They can lie to themselves. We choose to do neither.
They don't want to compete. We are happy to compete with all comers.
You decide whose content adds more value to your life.
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