Bringing hope to the new year, the Right Reverend James E. Curry and Reverend Matthew Crebbin will co-host a Swords To Plowshares transformational experience at Newtown Congregational Church next month.
With torrential rain and wind preceding a severe drop in temperatures into the Christmas weekend, town and state officials as well as Eversource are bracing while issuing advisories.
Following the revelation that the town's portion of the budgets for the Lake Zoar Authority and Lake Lillinonah Authority were state-statute mandated assessments and not requests, the Legislative Council voted to restore money it cut from them in the 2022-23 budget.
Following concerns on fund balances from outside agencies that make budget requests of the town, the Board of Finance is crafting a policy for how to review those budgets without singling any agency out.
Deputy Director Planning and Land Use Rob Sibley has issued an advisory regarding a large, persistent blue-green algae bloom occurring in many parts of Taunton Lake.
The Board of Education heard both an overview of district special education programs and a report on the district’s response to pending state reading mandates at its December 6 meeting.
The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities has asked that community leaders sign on to a Civility Pledge, and Newtown's Deputy Director of Planning Rob Sibley was among them.
Real people were just in a frightening car accident. To immediately frame their misfortune as rhetorical ammunition against new housing — affordable housing included — feels less like concern for “health and safety” and more like opportunistically using a scary moment to support a pre-existing position.
If we’re going to debate this proposal, we should do it honestly: with data on traffic volume, accident history, engineering recommendations, and the town’s housing needs, not by seizing on a single crash as proof that 300 apartments are inherently unsafe.
Newtown deserves a thoughtful, fact-based conversation about growth, safety, and affordability — one that doesn’t turn other people’s bad day into a political talking point.
To add context that did not occur at the meeting would not be an accurate representation of the meeting and would, in fact, be editorializing to shape public opinion.
The editorial staff here do not consider ourselves to be final arbiters of what the truth is (and if we did, it would make us partisan and biased), and we would need to provide a source for any dissenting information (sourcing all information in an article is literally Journalism 101). There were no such sources present at the meeting in question, and so it would not be appropriate to include such information in an article about the meeting. Dissenting voices appear in meeting stories when there were active participants with dissenting opinions, such as during public participation or the words of a council member who disagreed. It should be noted that the Interfaith Council, like many local boards and commissions, conduct meetings that are open to the public.
This was not an article on the actions of the Greater Danbury Area Unites for Immigrants, or on immigrants, or on ICE's actions in the community, where including other voices or perspectives would be appropriate. We appreciate your opinion, but we stand by our meeting coverage and consider this discussion closed.
Propaganda is the systematic dissemination of information, often biased or misleading, to shape public perception and behavior toward a specific political cause or point of view. I'm not asking for Newtown Bee to editorialize, but providing context, where appropriate, to provide the reader with a more holistic view of the facts seems like a reasonable practice, particularly when encouraging the reader to decide what to believe/not to believe. Absent that context, this feels biased and misleading and intended to shape public perception.
The Newtown Bee reported what was said at a Newtown Interfaith Council meeting. Whether Mr McGillicuddy agrees with what was said or not, reporting what occurs at a public meeting is not "propaganda." Presenting what was said without editorializing is encouraging the reader to decide what to believe or not believe, and is standard for reporting at a community newspaper like The Newtown Bee.
