After the Santa Fe New Mexican printed an article last week detailing the important role which social media played in the 2013 legislative session a nice edit job by the article’s author Julie Ann Grimm was made in the online edition on Tuesday afternoon (March 19).  As can be seen here, the current edition does not include the paragraph below:

Breaking the mold are the likes of handles such as @politixfireball, which has nearly 24,000 followers and hits national issues as well as local ones. Gov. Susana Martinez reportedly has a communications staffer assigned to update social media.

I was excised from the article, but why?  Ms. Grimm had sought a phone interview with me, but as I was not interested in a phone interview that day I replied in an email saying no phone, but I would be happy to answer questions via email.

Perhaps the greatest clue to why the paragraph above was excised is the tweet below from the Occupy movement of New Mexico:

I must say that the ‘right wing’ as Occupy describes it, was not given more time than the left.  What is more, the few Republicans who were mentioned in the article were portrayed negatively and as if they are entirely ineffectual.  From the tweets above we can assume that the administrator for the Occupy account did not respond in any form to Ms. Grimm’s query, furthermore it is interesting to note that Occupy was following Grimm and is following Occupy.  Grimm does not follow me and neither does Occupy so there is no ability for Direct Messaging (or DM) which is like an email in 140 characters.  Seems Occupy and Grimm may be a little chummy?

*     *     *

In response to my repeated query as to why I was excised from Grimm’s article I received the following response:

I did respond to the email Ms. Grimm sent me.  Perhaps she is busy and does not check her email.  The above seems to imply she never received my email, I did respond saying I would not be able to do a phone interview at present, but she could contact me if I could assist in other ways.  Beside not answering my question, Grimm appears to to circumventing the truth.  Then she says that her article had views from ‘several political factions.’  Yes, it did, but pulling someone out of an article after they had been in it is a terrible form of journalism.  It is a form of changing a record.

In conclusion all I see here is that Grimm submits to pressure from the left, and an already left slanting article goes completely biased.   An edit job with no reasonable explanation beyond dislike for one’s political view is irresponsible and shows one’s very poor skills in the area of journalism where accuracy and well-rounded reporting should be found.

“The advertisements are the most truthful part of a newspaper.”  Often accredited to – Thomas Jefferson

**  UDATE  **

Read the rest of the story here:

Media Bias: Why did Santa Fe New Mexican edit me out of their article on social media and the legislative session?

Media Bias: The rationale behind the Santa Fe New Mexican’s censorship