More Botched Reporting from Town Topics 

In an earlier post here, I took issue with Town Topics’s defective reporting on the ITA municipal resolution campaign in Princeton. In quoting exclusively from members of the Princeton Council in its reporting on the July 28 Council meeting, I argued, the paper functioned essentially as a PR mouthpiece for the Council rather than as an expression of bona fide journalism. I sent a shorter version of that post as a letter to the editor of Town Topics, but it wasn’t printed. The paper’s most recent reporting on the August 11 meeting makes an attempt of sorts to remedy the problem, but still falls woefully short. 

The article paraphrases and quotes me as follows:

Irfan Khawaja praised the wording of the resolution, but said it does not indicate who residents should call during an ICE raid.

“It is unclear whether there is anyone to call in real time when such a raid takes place,” he said. “There is a desperate need for such a service. By contrast, in the case of Resistencia, there is a phone line you can call, and they will come as soon as they can. There is a desperate need for such a service.”

That’s not what I said. My point was not that the resolution doesn’t indicate whom residents should call, but (as a separate point) that it’s not clear whether anyone within municipal government can be reached by phone in real time during an ICE raid. Does the Council think it appropriate for residents to call the police when ICE shows up? Yes or no? If not, is there someone else to call? Yes or no? I’ve discussed the issue in greater detail here. 

A resident discusses the ITA resolution, Princeton Council, August 11

The rest of the supposed “quotation” is a botched mish-mash of claims I made. For a transcript of my statement and a link to the original video of the meeting, go here. How hard is it to check a quotation against a transcript or video of the statement itself? Too hard, apparently. 

A second and much bigger problem with the Town Topics article concerns its (egregious) misrendering of the statement made at the August 11 meeting by Princeton resident John Heilner. I’ll deal with that–both Town Topics’s misreporting and Heilner’s comment itself–in a separate post.