By Mike Wood

Staff writer

 

Thursday, December 19 (9:30 a.m.): A notable phase in the extensive debate over political columns in the Rossmoor News culminated with a 4-0 vote by the Policy Committee at its Dec. 9 meeting that recommended ending such content in the newspaper.

Proposed changes to Policy 601.2 now will go to the GRF Board, which meets next on Thursday, Jan. 30.

In another 4-0 vote, the Policy Committee recommended maintaining an existing policy that states Rossmoor TV does not accept programming on politics and religion, tweaking some language to specify politics as a whole.

If the Board approves the proposal on newspaper content as it stands, that will end political columns in the News going forward. Currently, those columns are on their third hiatus in six years. The latest came in July when GRF Board President Leanne Hamaji placed them under a moratorium after some politically charged incidents in Rossmoor.

In a presentation before the vote, Rossmoor News Editor- in-Chief Ann Peterson said that after trying to find a compromise that would allow political columns in the paper while reducing the time and expense incurred by staff, especially in fact-checking those columns, she now recommended that political columns no longer be published. If not, she sees the matter once again needing to be addressed at Policy Committee meetings.

“After years of really trying to come up with a compromise, the bottom line is we’re always going to end up back here,” Peterson said. “We just are. Every couple of years, something’s going to happen.”

Before voting, committee members discussed wording in the latest draft of policy changes, which will state:

• Significantly, that “Opinion columns cannot contain political commentary.” This would mark the end, at least in their current approach, of four columns that fell under the political scope: Progressive View, Republican Perspective, Alternative Voices and Earth Matters.

• All opinion section columns should focus on Rossmoor life or issues, senior living or personal stories. This draws a distinction among what newspapers broadly describe as columns, including advice columns – which the News runs for chess and bridge, for example – or review columns, such as on classical music. Those would be fine under a new policy, provided they didn’t venture into politics.

• Stating that “opinion columns cannot contain libelous and obscene language, or personal attacks against individuals, clubs or organizations, corporations or advertisers,” which makes that uniform with existing policy regarding letters to the editor, which are published as Residents’ Forum.

• While paid political ads from candidates for public office, measures or propositions (all outside of Rossmoor) would continue to be allowed, paid ads on political issues would not.

• It notes that opinion columns are subject to the News’ editorial guidelines, including deadlines and word limits.

• Residents interested in writing a regular opinion column that meets the above parameters can submit a proposal to the designated senior manager for consideration.

“If a resident is interested in writing a column, they can come to you, submit the idea, and you decide if it’s acceptable, but they fully understand that there can be no political comments in that proposed column?” asked committee member James Lee. Peterson said that is correct.

Peterson added that if someone involved with one of the four political columns “were to come back with a proposal that met all of these parameters, then we would discuss the possibility that one of those four could continue.” But that would be particularly difficult for Progressive View and Republican Perspective, with no politics in a column, she said.

After the meeting, Hamaji, who also serves as Policy Committee chairwoman, described the proposed policy changes as “comprehensive.”

“We’ve discussed it since August,” Hamaji said. “We researched it. And there are multiple reasons I think it’s a good policy.”

Many changes to the draft were hashed out at length at November’s Policy Committee meeting.

“Ann did a lot of research, she heard us and worked with the policy to include the various things that we considered,” Hamaji said.

Recent Policy meetings drew strong turnouts of residents and multiple speakers for Residents’ Forum. However, this meeting had just two residents speak, one on rising insurance costs and another on room-reservation policy.

The Policy Committee’s next meeting is Monday, Jan. 13 in the Board Room