Mayor Zamora Attacks Media

According to Mayor Sarah Zamora, Inland Empire media “sells newspapers on cities’ dirty laundry.” During a council meeting Aug. 19 in which council members were accused of telling lies to local media outlets, Mayor Sarah Zamora told residents that articles in the news are never completely correct. The comments were made during the council comment portion of Tuesday night’s regular meeting, after a resident expressed concern over what she called “untruths” reported in local newspapers as quoted by city council members. “There’s a lot of confusion and frustration, yet we read… ’We passed a balanced budget, everything’s fine, everybody’s great, no problems whatsoever.’ That is false, false, false and untrue,” resident Linda Tripp addressed the council. In response to Tripp’s comments, Councilmember Deirdre Bennett said she didn’t appreciate misinformation being given to the media. “If we make inaccurate statements, it’s misleading to the community and it does reflect poorly on the city,” she said. “We will make errors… but we’ve got to do our best to try not to knowingly make false statements, that whatever we say, we have the information to back it up.” "Journalism is the profession of reporting information, not creating information, and journalists have a duty of sourcing their information. A 'quote' is often used as a tool to source the information presented to the public. Those that serve the public should be sure of what they say before they speak, so they are not the source of misinformation," said City News Publisher Margie Miller. Mayor Zamora said, “A lot of times the newspapers write articles and a lot of times those articles are not, and they probably never will be, 100 percent correct,” citing differences in communication and changes in information as news is shared. She expressed frustration with Inland Empire media outlets, but she did not name a particular news source. “Why don’t you sell some newspapers on our clean laundry and things that are positive in our city?” Zamora said. She defended the council, saying that though they disagree on some issues, she felt they worked as a collective unit. Zamora pointed out the building of Colton’s senior housing complex on La Cadena as one instance of “good news” she claimed was not reported on. “Our local newspapers did very little write ups on those types of things,” she said. “It was real discouraging to me, because that senior housing complex started before my husband was the mayor and it was a project that took a lot of people a lot of hard work and it would have been wonderful had the newspapers come and reported that.” In contrast, this newspaper covered the groundbreaking of the senior housing complex, The Villas 55+, on Feb. 2, 2013 when ground was broke to begin the project. The story ran in the Feb. 7, 2013 issue of the Colton City News on the front page in an article titled “Senior Housing Complex Project Officially Begins with Weekend’s Groundbreaking Ceremony.” This newspaper also covered the completion of that particular project, which published Feb. 4, 2014. Since 2006 this newspaper has been dedicated to sharing positive news and taking great effort to obtain the truth on unfavorable issues. Other examples of recent positive stories include: • Community events, including parades, concerts in the park, Colton’s annual anniversary celebration, health fairs, the end of Colton’s fire department closures and the honoring of Colton police with life-saving medals • Colton schools and students, including students of the month, homecoming dances, graduations and job fairs; Colton sports leagues and teams, including features on members of the 1954 and 1956 Colton Little League All Star teams, and their induction into the Colton Sports Hall of Fame • Sports league opening ceremonies and high school football, baseball, softball and wrestling matches • and highlights of military members with coverage of Memorial, Independence and Veteran’s Day parades, as well as the features of those military service members and veterans whose banners have been hung in the city to honor their service. City News Group has been and will remain vigilant about both sharing positive news and shedding light on issues that may be controversial and/or unpopular.