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September 9, 2008

Exclusive: An Open Letter to the ‘San Antonio Express-News’

Colonel Kenneth Allard (US Army, ret.)

Gentlemen: (according you the benefit of every doubt):

I withheld comment on the abrupt cancellation of my column until after reading scores of e-mails to my Warheads address. That number is significant because you were characteristically gutless in withholding any announcement of its cancellation (much less the reasons for it). The omission was noticed nonetheless. The readers' reactions can fairly be characterized as “deeply disappointed but not surprised” - given their understanding that the Express-News is a profoundly biased publication. One reader even referred to the paper as "our local MSM fish-wrapper," while many others were surprised that my column had managed to survive for two years in the face of institutional opposition which they simply assumed. They also understood that your cavalier treatment of me rests on a bedrock of contempt for them as citizens of "Military City, USA."

You can expect to read more of my observations about the paper over the last two years, all of which line up well with my experiences with MSNBC and the New York Times. Specifically:

1. Competence: Whether it is the NYT, the DNC or most large universities, the fact is that liberals either run things poorly – or run them into the ground. The SA-EN is no exception, having managed to lose both readers and money despite an effective monopoly over a large metropolitan area. How do you manage that, except by progressively alienating your own community? Keep in mind that I teach MBAs. Like many other inept businesses, the SA-EN has simultaneously managed to lose touch with both workers and customers. Keep talking to yourselves guys: it will all be over very soon!

2. Ethical Standards: Despite all the self-serving rhetoric about "journalistic ethics," you're Pharisees acting from an exquisitely fine-tuned self-interest that disses or dismisses everyone else. Case in point: my column was canceled with no warning and a tardy phone call. No insincere accolades, no semblances of regret, not even a scintilla of understanding that – week in, week out – the paper had kept a readership who appreciated my writing. Do you think your other employees – the same ones you're counting on to bail you out – don't understand that too? That irony is the final riposte to Bob Richter's condescending boast (in a column earlier this spring) "Get over it, Kenny, you're one of us media types now yourself." Sorry Bob, but I never sunk quite that low. Not even on the worst day I ever had.

3. Censorship: For some time, local audiences have asked me why the SA-EN often resembles a broadsheet for the DNC. My response has been that, after serving nearly 30 years as an intelligence officer, I was never censored so routinely, so off-handedly or with such inherent clumsiness as the last two years while writing for your editorial page. To be fair, not all the editing was bad because every writer makes mistakes that a competent editorial staff should catch. But they should NEVER make new ones, alter meanings or even delete entire sentences. I asked repeatedly to be allowed to make my own adjustments to space limitations. I was overruled without explanation or apology and am told that this is a common experience for others as well.

4. Bias: You will need to explain to your readers rather than to me why "budget cuts" necessitated my departure rather than my considerably more Left-wing UTSA colleague, Mansour Al-Kikhia, whose Friday column characteristically slandered the Republican Convention. The irony is that I even offered to keep writing for free. You refused – a choice of which your readers should be made fully aware.

In short: you are everything the Left-wing media is customarily accused of being – a classless society but one with a most interesting distinction: you wouldn't recognize good writing if it walked up and bit you square in the a**.

Kenneth Allard

PS: Will From Hondo said to tell you the above goes double for him too!

Editor’s note: Col. Allard will now be writing exclusive articles for FSM, using his background and expertise to discuss the military and emerging dimensions of national security – specifically, the economic and informational components of security, including business intelligence and cyber security. We welcome his contributions to a topic that is important to us all.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Col. (Ret) Kenneth Allard is a former NBC military analyst and the author of Warheads. E-mail him at Warheads6@aol.com.

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