Editor,
The Daily Lobo has completely failed students in its coverage of the City Council election. The headline of Tuesday's article read "Voting begins today ...." However, voting ended Tuesday and began nearly three weeks ago.
The article directs readers to the city's Web site to locate their polling places. If the news editor had visited that Web site, he would have seen that voting actually began on Sept. 12 at four sites around the city. And one finds election-day polling places through the Bernalillo County Clerk's Web page, not the city's.
The news editor also states that District 6 encompasses the University area. Another quick glance at the city's Web site would have shown the news editor that most of the University and its surrounding neighborhoods lie in District 3.
In neither Tuesday's article nor any previous article did the Daily Lobo report on the biographies and policy positions of the candidates for City Council. The news editor never interviewed candidates or reported on any of the various candidate forums held in recent weeks. The absent and erroneous election coverage demonstrates downright dereliction of duty on the part of the news editor.
It disappoints that we must constantly call the Daily Lobo on its inaccurate headlines and shoddy reporting. In recent weeks, the news editor has written derogatory conjecture about homosexuals, misled students on the status of hate crimes policy and now drastically misinformed readers on the city election. One or two misguided stories may have been tolerable, but egregiously withholding and misstating information related to basic democratic participation is inexcusable.
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If maintaining an informed democracy is truly important to us, the only prudent step is to request that the current news editor step down from his post.
Max Fitzpatrick
UNM student
