Once again, we’re back here to Correct the Courier because of lazy journalism.
Courier Times Journalist Chris Ullery published an article yesterday about last Tuesday’s Central Bucks School Board meeting, where about a dozen parents gave public comments critical of graphic excerpts from books that are available in Central Bucks middle- and high-school libraries.
In the article, Mr. Ullery ties the parents’ effort to an organization known as WokePA, and then attempts to connect WokePA to ReOpen Bucks. His attempt to do so is not surprising, as radical progressives have been desperately trying since last August to tie ReOpen Bucks to various organizations that have nothing to do with COVID or reopening. As a card-carrying member of the radical progressives, of course Mr. Ullery would try to do the same.
What is surprising, however, is the sheer magnitude of laziness in this article, and the complete lack of any attempt whatsoever on the part of Mr. Ullery to report truthful information to the Courier’s readers. Let’s get into it.
Mr. Ullery has written several articles about WokePA over the last few months, but up until yesterday he did not, to my awareness, ever try to link WokePA to ReOpen Bucks. Let’s go through the middle part of his article which uses about 260 of the article’s 1500 words to make his assertion that WokePA and ReOpen Bucks are linked.
While Woke PA may be taking inspiration from national groups, the unknown leaders behind the Bucks County movement do appear to be local.
Quite abruptly we’re met with an amazing fact: Chris Ullery does not know who is behind WokePA. This was stunning to me to read, because, you know, Mr. Ullery is supposedly a journalist with an outfit that is supposedly a newspaper. Such people and such organizations are supposed to be able to figure such things out, right?
For reference, I am aware of literally dozens of people, myself included, who know exactly who runs WokePA. It’s not like it’s some ultra-top-secret G14 classified material. It’s out there and a lot of people know. I find it at first astonishing, and then pitiful, that Mr. Ullery is not able to solve this head-scratching whodunit.
Rumors have cropped up on social media claiming that ReOpen Bucks, a group that has long fought against mask mandates in schools, is either in charge of or is involved with Woke PA.
Ah, yes. “Rumors have cropped up“. When a writer wants to make a flimsy assertion but has neither the brains nor the balls to do so, they use terms such as “rumor has it…“
Obviously, ReOpen Bucks is neither in charge of nor is in any way involved with WokePA. Again, the people who are in charge of WokePA are not exactly a secret.
In my last Correcting the Courier article, which focused on the Bucks County Government phone block of Megan Brock, I chastised Courier Times Executive Editor Shane Fitzgerald for making no attempt to contact Mrs. Brock. He wrote a whole article asserting that Mrs. Brock is verbally abusive, yet never once tried to contact her to hear her side of the story. That’s not journalism; that’s narration.
Similarly, I find it wild that Mr. Ullery would insert this “rumor” into his article without making any attempt to contact me or any other Administrator of ReOpen Bucks. Making a simple phone call goes a really long way to understanding truth, and yet that seems to be something folks at the Courier are consistently incapable of. I guess I already nailed it above: they’re not journalists; they’re narrators.
If Mr. Ullery had contacted me, I probably would have told him exactly who is behind WokePA 🤷♂️
ReOpen’s Twitter account in February posted that it had “absolutely nothing to do with ‘wokePA’ or any movement anywhere that is not focused on the issue of COVID/return to normalcy.”
“Any suggestion to the contrary is either ignorance or deceit,” the posted added. Yet the organizations seem to share members.
Mr. Ullery deserves some credit for reporting on this tweet, which I would have thought settles the issue once and for all. Yet here we are.
Furthermore, ReOpen Bucks is 10,000 people right now. When we say “share members“, are we talking about all 10,000 people, or just one person, or what? What does “share members” mean?
A member of the group’s private Facebook page shared an email with this news organization this week they said came through an email group for Central Bucks parents that ReOpen Bucks maintains.
The email, which appears to have been sent by Mazzoni on Tuesday morning, reminds recipients of the meeting to come that night and that a group of parents will be reading from “this filth” during public comment.
Ah, yes. Now that explains it. Lazy journalism leads to misinformation, and that is exactly what happened here.
Mr. Ullery is publishing an assertion from an unnamed source that ReOpen Bucks maintains an “email group” which was used by Erin Mazzoni. If Mr. Ullery had made any attempt whatsoever to contact either Mrs. Mazzoni or an Administrator of ReOpen Bucks, he would have easily learned that to be untrue. But again, phone calls are hard for these folks.
The ReOpen Bucks email list has been used exactly one time: to send out a reminder to vote on Election Day last November. That is the only time we have ever sent an email to our email list.
I decided to do some actual journalism and reach out to Erin Mazzoni to ask about her email list. I know, I know–it was very hard to do. I didn’t think I could do it. But I reached out and–viola! I had a conversation with someone to try to get to the bottom of a story. Miraculous, I know.
It turns out that Mrs. Mazzoni built her email list over the last year or so, by circulating petitions that she wanted to send to the Central Bucks School Board. All it took to learn that fact was one little phone call. 🙂
I’m left with a simple question: is this obvious misinformation due to Mr. Ullery’s lack of ability, or is it intentional laziness designed to push a narrative? Remember, earlier in the article, Mr. Ullery wrote that WokePA’s website “offers no information on its administrators or members” and that “No social media accounts appear to be tied to Woke PA“. He had already clearly stated that he knows nothing about WokePA’s membership, but he was all too happy to lazily publish a blatantly false connection. 🤔
While the email doesn’t mention ReOpen Bucks, Mazzoni reminds readers to email elected Central Bucks board members who have voted against mask requirements.
So Mrs. Mazzoni sent an email to her own email list, and that email did not mention ReOpen Bucks, but somehow because masks are mentioned ReOpen Bucks is now in charge of WokePA. Lmao. I mean, I seriously can’t even with this. As I write this, I can’t stop laughing. What in the hell is going on with local journalism in Bucks County? Are local papers really that afraid of ReOpen Bucks? It’s weird.
Despite the hilarity, I do see an issue here that I need to address. When speaking of ReOpen Bucks, radical progressives consistently fixate on the mask issue, as if to imply that masks are the one-and-only point of advocacy that ReOpen Bucks cares about. In the sentence above, Mr. Ullery is claiming that the email’s reference to masks somehow proves that it must have to do with ReOpen Bucks. The implicit point being made is that anything to do with masks anywhere in Bucks County must be from ReOpen Bucks.
Look, we’re certainly very proud of our anti-mask stance (which we adopted way before it was cool), but it is only one component of our efforts.
The Bucks County Commissioners exhibit the same behavior: fixating on the mask issue in order to suggest that masks are the only thing ReOpen Bucks cares about. I very pointedly brought this up with them a week ago in an email. The Commissioners have not responded to that email, and I can’t help but feel there is some level of coordination between the Commissioners and Mr. Ullery in trying to tie ReOpen Bucks to only caring about masks. I have no proof of that of course, but these underlying themes seem pretty coincidental.
The Importance of Brand
As I said at the beginning of this article, radical progressives in Bucks County have spent months desperately trying to connect ReOpen Bucks with various other movements. In most cases, I’ve made the intentional decision to let them run with their wild ideas, because average people (average voters) see them for exactly what they are: crazy people. I trust the average person to be able to distinguish normalcy from insanity, and truth from lies.
When Cyril Mychalejko made bizarre claims last August that ReOpen Bucks is a militia, he wound up hurting his own brand, not ours. ReOpen Bucks became immensely stronger, politically and otherwise, throughout Fall 2021. Mr. Mychalejko, on the other hand, became widely known as the ultra-progressive that he is.
Similarly, Diana Leygerman hurt her own brand last month, not ours, when she tried to make the Central Bucks field trip to Washington, D.C. an issue of antisemitism rather than what it really was about (vaccine choice). Radical progressives ate up her lies, but average people saw her as the divisive woman that she is.
I do find it bizarre that people fear ReOpen Bucks so much that they have to find convoluted ways to try to discredit it. When all is said and done, they reach so far in error that they just wind up discrediting themselves.
So it goes for Mr. Ullery, who seems to be deciding that the narrative he wants to publish is more important than his reputation as a journalist. He simply makes no effort, and his work reflects that. People notice.
By publishing lazy journalism, the Courier Times continues to discredit itself as well. It’s sad to see people become so consumed with their own agendas that they blatantly decide to bypass the truth. Again, Mr. Ullery made no attempt to contact me or any of the ReOpen Bucks Administrators. Nor did he try to contact Erin Mazzoni.
I’ll leave you with this question: do you think his failure to do so was incompetence, or malice?
Just Ask
While the ReOpen Bucks movement and brand is strictly focused on the issues of COVID, everyone in the group is an individual person with their own background, thoughts, stories to tell, viewpoints, and beliefs. That includes me and every other leader in the group. If you’re ever curious what we think about any other issues, you can always just ask.
I encourage everyone to stop making presumptions about others based on preconceived tribalism. Until you find the courage to talk to someone, you’ll never know what they might contribute to your world.
