Helena Kobrin writes to the St Petersburg Times
St. Petersburg [Florida] Times
October 1989
Letters to the Editor
Editor:
Having read your article of October 9 titled, Scientologists harm
business, merchants say, I could not contain myself from writing to you.
I have never seen a more blatant example of a writer starting out
with a preconceived story and them plugging in supposed "information,"
but mostly opinion, in order to create a story that conforms to what he
was assigned to write.
The headline was a surprise to me as my impression of downtown is
quite the opposite. So I read the article waiting to find out who were
all these merchants who were making this statement. I found in this
article that two merchants voiced negative opinions. (Surely there were
no others as Mr. Krueger would doubtless not have restrained himself from
quoting them as well.)
The story quotes at least five people, including the city's
economic development director, who stated that Scientology does not
harmfully affect the downtown and, per one person, Scientology actually
helps downtown. Did the person who wrote the headline not read those
parts of the article?
The article begins with a statement that Cleveland Street used to
be the shopping area in Clearwater. When? No amount of opinion or
innuendo nor any string of unrelated "facts" by Curtis Krueger can change
the fact that downtowns across the United States began to go downhill 20
to 30 years ago with the advent of shopping malls.
Probably thousands of studies have been done by urban planners
and expensive consulting companies on the decline of downtowns and the
reasons which contribute to those declines, inlcluding malls, lack of
parking, etc. The article omits that data entirely.
In the past I have found that a prime requirement of Times
articles is that they be boring. They must repeat something that has
already been "reported" at least 50 times previously and go back as many
years as possible. This article does meet that requirement.
However, usually the Times at least attempts to make it look like
it is really reporting news. This article does not even come close.
I for one believe that the public of Clearwater is more
intelligent than to want to read these same boring non-stories for years
on end or to believe that this type of article constitutes any sort of
responsible "reporting."
-Helena K. Kobrin