We had an anonymous call to the office the other day with a gentleman complaining about our front page story on Wednesday, the morning after the B.C. election went almost until 1 a.m. before it was completely decided.
This gentleman accused us of publishing fake news on our front page in a story about the Student Vote, a mock election that saw some 170,000 elementary and high school students hold their own BC election. We published the results of the Student Vote in the paper as our press deadline of 4 p.m. Tuesday was well before the polls had even closed.
And we clearly stated that it was a Student Vote, obviously not the real election.
Had this caller left a phone number we would have explained that a Student Vote that is engaging students of all ages in the political process is very far from fake news and is in fact a very important effort to get young people thinking about politics.
But people’s willingness to follow Donald Trump’s lead and label things as fake news is alarming and makes one think that they believe a lot of the BS coming out of the president’s mouth.
No sir, it wasn’t fake news, it was a story about students being engaged in a system that so many adults are not.
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Part of the reason for the cover story on the Student Vote was the fact that in community newspapers, often our paper comes out after news has already happened. Such is the nature of the beast and that’s why we talk to people that are affected by the news that happens and try to tell their stories.
The great thing for us now is that we have a fully interactive web site where we can deal with spot news, as we did on election night with reporters with the three major parties as well as our team of Black Press reporters all over the province, bringing up to the minute news to your web and phones.
And that’s much like what we will do with these impending floods. This paper was at the press by Thursday at 4 p.m., around the same time heavy rains were expected to move in and cause more flooding problems. We have stories in this paper about how people were preparing. And now our reporters are out in the field talking to people and reporting on the floods, sending stories, pictures and video to our web site at kelownacapnews.com.
We wish all of you safety in this historic time for Kelowna.
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Let’s not forget about the most important people of all this weekend. We speak of you Moms out there who have all the answers, all the love, all the caring in the world for your kids. You are amazing and we thank you for being who you are. Happy Mother’s Day to you all.