Nothing right wing in these pages

What a joke! The Daily Pilot right wing? Puh-leeze. (“Praise for

Wendy Leece belongs on Forum pages, not the front page” Mailbag, Dec.

17). On what planet has the writer of this letter been living?

As for his allegation that the Pilot’s top story on Dec. 16,

(“Teachers union flexes political muscle”) constitutes editorializing

on the front page, he couldn’t be more wrong on that account, either.

The story embodies what journalists do, must do, and have the

constitutional right to do if they are to call themselves

journalists: seek and report the stories that make the news;

especially stories that affect the readers and as such, except in

cases of national security, they have a right to know. It is what the

Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story did that

earned them a Pulitzer prize.

The Daily Pilot should be glad they have a reporter who recognizes

that when a liberal teachers’ union meddles in politics and its

president admits it “may have mislead” the voters and in so doing

effects the unseating of a conservative school board trustee in the

most conservative district in the state, like it or not, that is

news. I don’t always agree with the Daily Pilot, but I applaud them

for their honest reporting and broad coverage of local events.

Few communities have a local component of a major newspaper that

affords the local in-depth coverage provided here by the Daily Pilot,

a fact that is reflected in the interest the publication has for

locals and the spirited letters from readers with which the paper is

constantly bombarded from its diverse following.

Keep the stories coming, Daily Pilot. We don’t have to like them,

but hear them we must.

* ILA JOHNSON is a Costa Mesa resident who ran for the

Newport-Mesa school board in 2000.