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Thank you for continuing to publish the balanced, fact-based, and insightful news reporting and also the occasional editorial and special interest pieces of Steven Allen Adams. His work is one of the key reasons I continue to subscribe to the Inter-Mountain. Adams presents fair, balanced and neutral accounts in his news reporting, and fair and balanced editorial writing in his opinion and special interest pieces. These two types of writing, news reporting and editorial writing, are very different, and serve different purposes; too often, though, they are confused or thought to be the same thing.
Thank you, too, for the letter from Elkins reader James Van Gundy. This reader's Dec. 23 letter, while a form of editorial opinion, nonetheless intelligently and fairly outlined in a factual way how our current West Virginia Secretary of State, Mac Warner, has a delusional attachment to former US President Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was "stolen." James Van Gundy makes clear -- by assembling fact-checked evidence to support his statements -- that our current WV Secretary of State, who's vying to be our next governor, "undercuts the fairness and legitimacy of our elections and directly threatens our democracy" by continuing to promote a false narrative: that the last general election was won by someone who did NOT win. James Van Gundy spells out the danger of having such people like Warner in public office. I know I will not be supporting Warner or any of the delusional MAGA crowd of candidates in the 2024 primary and general elections; I hope other readers likewise will separate fact from opinion, and truth from delusions, when choosing for whom to vote.
To this point, the Inter-Mountain needs to publish a balanced selection of editorials, including viewpoints such as Van Gundy's and Adams' in every issue. Too often, your editorial page -- with the rare exception of those editorials written in-house and the above noted occasional letter or local editorial -- arrives filled with serialized pieces and comics from the so-called "conservative" or "right-wing" press. Many of these contain distortions, red herring arguments, and nonsense. Publishing editorials, even cartoons, that only present one side of the current political discourses does everyone a disservice. I urge you to choose a wide range of opinion to publish: editorials as well as other work that relies on sound argument and facts, from the right to the left, from conservative to liberal to progressive viewpoints. In this way, we readers will have a more balanced view of the current thinking on a wide range of topics. Thank you, and Happy New Year!
Deborah Stiles
Parsons