Editorial: The Blame Game, Shooting the Messenger

In recent days, Antioch residents have become increasing aware of just how negative social media has become towards the City of Antioch. Some are now calling for the negative behavior online to stop and to instead begin working on solutions.

We agree!

Antioch resident Kip Stephens spoke beautifully to the city council on last Tuesday about the need for residents to re-focus from negativity to becoming part of the solution. Trine Gallegos followed up with a nice article in the Contra Costa Times about how whenever “Antioch” is mentioned, negativity follows.

A person posted “I blame you for this article”

After her article was published, our inbox and email was filled with people making the assumption Gallegos was referring to us—she 100% says it was not aimed at us when we asked her about it. We then received more emails about the article and then a few who blamed us for the negativity about Antioch on social media.

In fact, one person wrote “I blame you for this article.”

The truth is, we rarely censor opinions and loosely monitor our Facebook page. This is by design as we want to be a place where people have an outlet to discuss different ideas, opinions and get their information. Everyone has a right to their opinion, whether or not we agree with them or not.

As for the blame, let’s first go back to July of 2012 when we launched. The goal was to provide a news service at no cost to our readers to update the public on what was transpiring around East Contra Costa whether it is good news or bad news. In 2012, the public was not aware just how much crime was occurring.

It’s no secret we made the choice to heavily focus on police and fire activity—it’s also no secret we support police, fire, paramedics and military. Some people do not like that, but it’s the foundation of our site culture to support good behavior. After all, should we applaud the criminals and people behaving badly?

We think not.

We cover police and fire incidents in real time and post it on social media. The result is the community knows what is going on and do not have to wonder what all the sirens are for. It also opens up incidents for discussion promoting transparency. The comments create a dialogue which not everyone agrees—sometimes, the comments are offensive and sometimes we even have to remove them or ban users.

On social media, we allow comments of all opinions whether we agree or disagree; we try our best not to censor unless there is profanity or if it’s just flat out inappropriate. Some would like more censorship, some want less, while some suggest we allow no comments at all. We do our best to be somewhere in the middle.

In less than two years, we have more than 43,500 Facebook followers—more than the Contra Costa Times, Antioch Herald, Brentwood Press and Delta Sun Times combined.

To monitor 43.500 opinions would require a full time moderator if not more—we admit we are not interested in babysitting for political correctness which at best is subjective to 43,500 different people.  We refuse to invest a lot of time babysitting what people may say or think and instead focusing our time on producing information that is useful to the public who then can take it for what its worth.

While Antioch has received negative publicity on social media, we reject the idea that we are the reason for the way people think. What we are reporting is in response to the culture the Antioch City Leadership has created for itself. EastCountyToday does not manage the City Manager, its staffing, its police department and certainly have no say in what the City Council does.

For example, in 2011, Antioch Police had 126 sworn officers before the economic downturn. Today, it sits around 87 officers. Rather than make more difficult cuts on “popular items”, the City cut its police force and today Antioch is paying the price.

If Antioch is unhappy with its image, perhaps a change in leadership is needed. Perhaps staffing needs to be changed out. The reality is the City leadership is disconnected from its residents.

EastCountyToday produces the news that is real and people respond to it. We do not control who is committing crimes, where they commit them or when they do it. We simply report what is transpiring.
We also report off the scanner. With dozens of people also listening, if we mess up, and sometimes we do, we will get called out on it rather quickly and fix it–this is why we appreciate our audience as they are engaged as much as we are.

Unfortunately sometimes people do go negative because there is nothing they can do in that moment in time.

We believe residents of Antioch do have a right to be negative if they wish just as those who want to be positive have that same right. If people do not wish to read the comments, take the information for what it is, and ignore the comments on social media—but its reality and we choose not to live in a bubble with our heads in the sand as the negative comments do have a value.

Yes, we will repeat that they do have a value because any “doer” or engaged elected official who is paying attention has a wealth of information at their fingertips and could get a pulse of the community in an instance. Listen to what people are saying, form partnerships, then work to make changes.

What the community needs to understand is we are not traditional news media nor do we claim to be or want to be. We consider ourselves a hybrid hyper-local news media service creating content that is accurate, timely and engaging.

Blaming EastCountyToday for the negativity within Antioch is the easy thing to do—we are low hanging fruit and we get that. We provide an outlet for people to express opinions that not everyone agrees with. But what we will not apologize for is producing content that is alerting the public to what has transpired in Antioch over the past two years.

This site was created with long-term objectives to create a better Antioch where residents are informed and out of the dark from what is going on. An informed citizen can help push the city to better decisions and place better elected officials into office.
If we really wanted to trash Antioch has some suggest and promote hatred, we would focus all of our time in being copy cats to Stanley Roberts “People Behaving Badly”.

If we were to go there, we would post some of the very negative photographs being shared on Cleaning Up Antioch One Home at a Time (Facebook Page) —including this photo of a person using a garbage can as a restroom. We refused to post it at the time it occurred.

This photograph likely would have received hundreds of comments, a ton of shares, and brought traffic to both our website and social media sites. Some even criticized us for not showing it.

Why we did not show it was because no one bothered to call the police department or make a report or to allow them a chance to respond. People were focused on snapping the photograph and blasting it on social media.  In the end, we found out this man who everyone criticized and gave Antioch yet another black eye has a form of mental illness.

If we truly wanted to embarrass Antioch, we could become like KRON 4 and post peoples Twitter Messages on our stories for entertainment purposes. Just last week, during a 500-acre fire KRON news ridiculously posted these twitter comments during a live breaking news segment on that fire while firefighters were out on the lines protecting a community.

Unlike KRON, we actually live in East Contra Costa County and care. We are not in it for ratings or exposure. We actually hope KRON fired whoever approved posting these tweets.

For change to occur, Antioch resident’s first need to be aware a problem exists instead of sold a bill of goods during election time by fancy marketing of how any one person can change the city—one person can’t change the city because they need 3-votes. The truth is, not even the council can change the city, it’s going to be the people of Antioch who drive the change and everyone doing what they can to demand more of its family, friends, neighbors, and out of town guests.

For example, when a teen is caught stealing, it’s easy to go negative with one liners and degrading Antioch comments, but a few bad apples should not ruin an entire cities image. Maybe the focus should turn from negative to how can we help prevent this person from stealing in the future? Does the teen have a mentor, an activity, a support system? Only then, will he realize the error of his ways.

One a problem is identified, only then can solutions be vetted and implemented.

As for the negative comments on social media, we encourage folks to be self-aware of what they are actually posting—it’s not like a website where you are anonymous, on Facebook, we know who you are and can click on your profile and learn all about you. Use the grandma rule when posting. If you wouldn’t want her to see it, you probably shouldn’t post it.

It’s nice to see people like Kip Stephens and Trine Gallegos speaking out publicly on stopping with the negative and instead focusing on being part of a greater solution. We hope this is just the first of many to create a movement of re-enforcing positive behavior.

In the meantime, remember we are only the messenger and in no way do we create the negativity nor endorse it. We simply provide the information at no cost to our readers—although we do accept donations.

For Antioch to change, both its city leadership and residents have to come together for something to work. If one is giving more than the other, it’s going to turn out bad because its emotional, taxing, and a lot is at stake.