Local Papers As Information Sources

In your local civil affairs efforts, you will often find that local papers will tend to whitewash various local officials and public figures. We’ve discussed this in other articles; the tendency is to want to ignore the local rags because of how obviously lop-sided their reporting can be. As it is above with mainstream media and national news and public figures, so it is below with local media and local news and public figures. This doesn’t mean that the local papers should be ignored. Far from it. Even in the whitewashing, local rags can reveal many useful bits of information. Plus, once you see the pattern between the whitewashed image and the real thing, future whitewashing will help you fill in the gaps in your intelligence operation, or at least direct you onto interesting collection targets. Today, Leech City released an article that was prompted by a local paper source.

In this case, the subject was Manassas Councilman Shaun Edwards, who was nominated for Citizen of the Year. In the very first paragraph of his nomination bio, published in the local paper, two key pieces of information were revealed which fell into place in the puzzle we are currently solving. Had we not been subscribers to this paper, we would have completely missed this information and its relevance. Sometimes, the opposition will just drop things right into your lap.

And yes, absent his involvement in this city government and its shady operations, I had a lot of respect for the man himself, as mentioned in that post. But, we have to fit the puzzle pieces in where they belong, come what may. I already knew he had a high-level position at Georgia Southern, but I had completely overlooked the relevance of that specific position. I’ll admit, I had a bit of a blind-spot here. I’m still hoping that he is a good man stuck in a tight spot, not realizing how close his rudderless ship is to running aground.

Leave a Reply

Be the First to Comment!

Notify of
avatar
wpDiscuz