A hard day's work

[figmo]

I spent much of my day chasing down a story about someone at Frontier Ford allegedly poisoning cats because they scratched up the paint jobs on cars. When I called Frontier Ford, they responded with "no comment for the media." Really rude, IMHO.

I finally heard from the person who first posted the accusation. It turns out the guys from the car dealership were trapping the cats and turning them over to the Humane Society. This is both reasonable and well within their rights. The person involved with the cat that had been missing assumed the folks from the Ford dealership would use the name "Frontier Ford" instead of their own names and thus didn't realize the car dealership folks had done the right thing.

I almost ran what I'd learned, but the dealership was so rude I just chose to not run the story since nothing out of the ordinary happened, save for the accusation.

Comments

[firecat]

Thanks, I really appreciate your checking out the story and writing about it here.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Frustrating, yes.

I actually do suggest running the story in a form like you posted it above. I know, "But Wolf, why should I be nice to rude people at the dealership?" I wouldn't be surprised if they had other media inquiries that might have been far nosier and accusatory than yours. Even so, news of people doing the right thing for the right reasons (which the employees at the dealership have been doing) are a good antidote to the whirl of confusion and changing reasons we get from certain unnamed government sources on a regular basis.

That said I do respect your decision not to run it, it's your decision. The above are why I would like you to reconsider (but it is still your decision).

[figmo.livejournal.com]

I didn't run the story on the radio partly because IMHO it would've been like "This thing you didn't hear about didn't happen." Someone with a bad radio in their car might've caught only part of it and thought they were killing cats.

Putting it on my LiveJournal account and posting to the area where it first appeared (which I did do) was IMHO more effective.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Ahh, so the initial accusation never hit the news. Got it. I didn't catch that from the context of the story.