Fansler's ruling, visual metaphors, and the fat lady clears her throat
Today's News Sentinel features two articles reporting on yesterday's ruling by Chancellor Daryl Fansler in Editor Jack McElroy's victorious lawsuit against Knox County Commission. Under the banner headline "Judge tosses 12," the paper's above-the-fold story discusses the content of the judge's ruling and its immediate aftermath. The other article on the subject focuses mainly on the reaction of County Commissioners to the fact that the twelve appointees selected on Black Wednesday are now out of office.
In addition, the paper includes extensive excerpts from the judge's ruling, quotes from ousted officeholders and other county officials, and selected quotes from readers' comments posted online.
Knox County Law Director John Owings makes it pretty clear that he doesn't want to pursue an appeal of the ruling, and even the ringleaders of Black Wednesday seem to have resigned themselves to the ruling's inevitability. Although the trial itself is now finished, the appointment of those twelve new officials won't take place for a few weeks yet, so the drama isn't quite over.
The fat lady has not yet begun to sing, but I can distinctly hear her clearing her throat.
However, unless there's an appeal of the outcome, this will probably be my last post critiquing the News Sentinel's coverage of the subject. I agreed to critique the coverage of the trial, and as far as I'm concerned, the trial ended yesterday with Fansler's ruling. From this point forward, the story is about the politics of the aftermath.
The articles in today's paper are straightforward, using quotes and reactions from all sides of the controversy. The extensive quotes from Fansler's ruling provide a good overview of its gist, and the quotes from county officials and readers' comments add some more meat to the bones of the story. The articles are written in a clear, concise, and direct way, without editorializing or gloating. These articles are a good finale to the courtroom proceedings, finally laying this long trial to rest.
Including the two articles in today's paper, I've critiqued a total of 36 news articles written by KNS staff; this does not include AP wire stories or editorials. Of those 36, I've had negative things to say about 11 of them, which is slightly more than 30% of the total.
Although today's news articles are objective and uncontaminated by bias, two photographs accompanying the coverage carry some striking visual metaphors. This photo, above the fold on the front page, shows Commissioner Strickland pointing to the text of the decision while looking at Commissioner Moore. Strickland is using his middle finger to point to the page. Whether the editors of the News Sentinel noticed that detail or not, the image of a County Commissioner flipping a bird at a judge's ruling (and, by extension, giving the finger to the people of Knox County) strikes me as both funny and sad. It's a perfect visual metaphor for this entire mess, from Black Wednesday onward.
Page A9 carries this curious photo of Commissioner Scott "Scoobie" Moore, ringleader of Black Wednesday. I share the opinion of many other watchers of this trial in thinking that Moore probably perjured himself on the witness stand when he denied deliberating with other commissioners in private. The photo shows Moore, wearing a striped polo shirt, looking shifty-eyed and sideways at the camera. His face is partially obscured by a grey metal pole, described in the caption as a television light stand. The image is that of a shifty-eyed man, in stripes and behind bars.
Maybe no one at the News Sentinel noticed the symbolism, but like Strickland's gesture, the imagery in this photo speaks volumes about this case. Like the Strickland photo, it is both funny and sad to suggest that our local government has fallen this low.