Sept. 6, 2000 Barnstable Meeting

[Guest guest]

TOWN COUNCIL SEPTEMBER 5, 2000

In Today's Cape Cod Times, Francis Broadhurst wrote of Barnstable, Government and the Media. The issue that I will discuss is the Media and Barnstable. If you attend or watch the Council Meetings, very seldom do any of the issues that are important to the citizens of Barnstable that are mentioned get reported in our news media.

The Cape Cod Times, Barnstable Patriot, Register, WXTK or WQRC have failed to allow any mention of the payoffs, bribes and corruption that has gone on within the Town. All of these organizations have known of the documented corruption for years. Instead of reporting this information to the public they have remained silent.

There are only a few reasons why this has never been reported. You can chose which one you think is the correct answer.

Choice One is because they are incompetent.

Choice Two is because they are protecting their friends that have been involved in these criminal acts.

Choice Three is they are helping the Town Manager and Town Council keep this information away from the majority of the public so nobody gets fired or goes to jail.

Choice four is they don't care.

Choice five is they are all preparing a special edition called Corruption equals Barnstable.

As you can see the choices are very basic and easy to understand. I have personally asked all of these media outlets to review and report on the public record documents that detail this ongoing corruption. They say they are aware of all of the issues but still they won't report.

In the case of the Cape Cod Times, they have stated that they don't do investigative reporting. After reading their paper, I, and most readers, agree!

I have repeatedly challenged the Council and Manager to obey and enforce the law and they have declined my challenge. I now challenge each of these outlets to act as responsible parties in our community and tell the citizens of Barnstable the whole truth about the corruption in Barnstable.

As an example, I am placing a letter into the record that I wrote to the Barnstable Patriot on August 28th. In it I discus their story about Ralph Crossen leaving as our building commissioner. I cite, in my letter, the reasons why he was hired by Barnstable in the first place. The media has failed to explain these reasons for far too long.

By their failures they are sending a message to corrupt and incompetent government officials and the Town that these illegal deeds will not be told to the Citizens of Barnstable. They will protect these crooks with their silence.

Under the Constitution they have Freedom of the Press. This does not give them the right to censor or withhold the truth from the citizens!

Ken Moulton