Unnecessary sarcasm in the News Sentinel's coverage

Published: September 15, 2007, 2:15 pm

Tags: politics, knoxville, kns v kcc

Today's News Sentinel carries this report on yesterday's court proceedings at the top of the front page, and it begins with this snarky lede: Don't blame Knox County Commission Chairman Scott Moore for nixing the notion of a special election to replace term-limited officeholders. "The law wouldn't let us," Moore testified Friday. Don't fault him for barring the public from speaking at a specially called meeting to name those replacements, either. Commission rules won't allow it, he said. Pressed during testimony in a lawsuit over the commission's alleged violations of the Tennessee Open Meetings Act to identify which rules and laws he was relying upon, Moore could not. But it's not his fault. I have two problems with this: First, narrative sarcasm has absolutely no place in a hard news story, and it is grotesquely inappropriate in an article covering a lawsuit filed by that newspaper's own editor. Second, the article ignores the fact that the January 12 Tennessee Supreme

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