We Need to Stop Blaming Hagerstown Mayor and Council for Public Safety Concerns (Opinion)

As a general rule, we try not to editorialize in our news articles, and only present the currently available facts in an unbiased manner. While this is likely the most fair and balanced approach we can take, especially for controversial issues, where this process breaks down is when the available facts are skewed in one party’s favor. Fortunately, we can “balance the scales” so to speak through opinion articles.

One recent instance in which our ability to provide truly balanced coverage is impacted, is our coverage of the public safety town hall in Hagerstown. Unfortunately, because the city council did not participate in the town hall the article was very skewed, because the town hall was in its nature skewed against the city. We wrote about the contents of the meeting, but did not interject our own opinions. Personally, I was very disappointed with the town hall because the entire town hall was essentially used as a forum to use the City of Hagerstown as a punching bag, and they weren’t even able to defend themselves because they weren’t on the panel.

And who can blame the city council for not wanting to participate? As pointed out by Councilmember Perini during a city council meeting, the council wasn’t even invited to participate in the first meeting. Neither was Radio Free Hub City. We were informed by Maryland Senator Corderman that the failure to invite us to the first meeting was an oversight in the haste to setup the meeting and not a slight towards us, but it still gives me pause that key stakeholders and even more importantly the public were not invited to this critical meeting. I strongly debated refusing to cover the meeting in protest, but decided in the end this is too important a topic not to cover it. And honestly, by the end of the meeting, I didn’t really feel it actually solved anything. There was a lot of information presented, but I’m not sure that anyone was actually listening.

The relationship between the City and County has been rocky for some time now, and we’ve seen high points and we’ve seen low points. Right now we’re seeing a very low point. And unfortunately, a lot of this is due to problems with communication.

Communication is hard, and sometimes we get it wrong. I personally feel that Senator Corderman got it wrong with his initial public letter, which only increased tensions and set the focus on the City Council as the area punching bag. A much better approach would have been for Senator Corderman to offer his assistance, than “poke the bear” so to speak. I don’t hold this against Senator Corderman, because sometimes emotion leads us down the wrong path – when we let it guide our words, it doesn’t always come out the way it should.

But some of the communications by the city have not been helpful either, and this has not been intentional. We’re still in the process of collecting data, but our ongoing research study is showing that City of Hagerstown is accidentally worsening the public perception of crime through their own communication through HPD. We, the news media (including local newspaper and television coverage), are also guilty of writing news headlines to get the most views without taking into consideration if the headline will impact the perception of public safety. And by the way, we’re working to improve on this, and that’s exactly why we have an open research study on this topic.

So what has the study shown so far? That generalized statements such as “Shooting at 100 Block of Some Street” make people more afraid, but also make them more likely to visit the article. We’re finding that equally accurate headlines, such as “Targeted Shooting Under Investigation” causes much less concern, but results in fewer visits to the article. Now personally, I’m okay with fewer visits to the article, because I’d rather we make a positive contribution to the community than get a few extra pennies in ad revenue. However, once our study is complete I’ll be sending to City of Hagerstown so they can leverage the data to better craft press releases to reduce the perceived threat to the community while still accurately portraying the facts.

At the end of the town hall meeting, I encouraged everyone to utilize the data to better identify the actual public safety problems in Hagerstown. Crime is a problem, and public perception of crime is a problem. While there is some overlap in these problems, the solution to these problems is radically different. One requires effective listening to area residents, the other requires effective communication to area residents.

It does not do any good to have the city and county and odds with each other. We’re stronger together, and need to work to set aside our differences and find common ground to solve our public safety challenges. I feel for the mayor and city council, because they’ve really been beat up lately, and it really feels like they’re struggling to defend themselves. Maybe instead of asking “what are you doing to fix this?” we should all start asking “what can I do to help?”.

And that goes for us here at Radio Free Hub City as well – what can we do to help?

Opinion article by Ken Buckler, President of RFHC. All opinions are his own, and do not reflect those of our sponsors or clients.