It was with a good deal of interest that I read Dunklin County Democratic Central Committee chairman Jim Pemberton's remarks from the Dunklin County Democratic Women's meeting last week.

Pemberton took the floor to criticize the local newspaper for what he called being too partisan in its coverage, slanting toward Republicans. Candidates for the Democratic slots were not getting proper coverage, others added, citing the U.S. senator's race as an example of biased coverage.

I don't mind criticism, lord knows I'm certainly prone to dispensing enough of it myself. However, when the criticism is unwarranted and without fact to back it up there is a need to set the record straight.

A quick search of the DDD's front pages by editor Jack Rollins reveals that Senator Jim Talent has appeared on the newspaper's front page four times with one photo since the first of the year. During that same time period Democrat Claire McCaskill has had six page one stories and one photo.

Although it was not reported, I'm told someone else complained about a lack of coverage for Democrat Tom Todd in the state representative's race against Republican Keith Mitchell.

We have a small staff here and do not go around chasing candidates all over the district during a campaign season. However, when asked, or told of an event that at least has the promise of being newsworthy - and every chicken dinner where a candidate of either party gets to speak is not newsworthy - we're going to make a very sincere effort to be there.

It's about using the media. A case in point was the candidacy of Pat Allen for the Democratic nomination in the 163rd District race that Todd won in August.

Every time Pat had an event going on she was at the newspaper office making sure we knew about what was going on, where and when and who was going to be in attendance as well as speaking. Honestly, during those times it seemed as if I saw more of Pat than I did some of the newspaper's employees. Interestingly, Pat did all of this without any of the local party leaders who seemed to stay as far away from her candidacy as possible even back in the spring when she was the only announced candidate.

I did not check, but I'll bet most of Pat's coverage was page one material as well.

A couple of paragraphs later Pemberton inadvertently revealed something that should have prompted some questions to him but that did not happen. The chairman began to chastise his own group because young people were not showing up for party functions. There were only two "young people" among the 50 or so in at this particular meeting. In doing so, Pemberton revealed he not only has his facts wrong on news coverage in the local paper, he doesn't even know what's going on in Dunklin County Democratic party politics.

Steve Sokoloff stood up and announced to the crowd that a meeting of young Democrats was taking place even as the older folks were gathering. Wonder why they didn't tell their party leader? And I'll just point out that there was no coverage of that meeting because the newspaper wasn't aware of that meeting either.

Opinion pages aside, we're going to do our best to give fair coverage to all political parties and their candidates in the news columns. I sometimes chafe - that's not right, I chafe every time it happens - at candidates running for statewide offices who blow through town and stop for a 30 minute photo op and story in the local paper then spend their money on broadcast outlets. However, I believe it is important for local voters to know that at least the politician thought enough of them to come to their hometown and ask for their vote. So we do the story, take the photo and grimace.

When the newspaper's wrong, we're wrong, but at least those doing the criticizing should have the facts straight.

There were a couple of comments from Democrats who took exception to the chairman's remarks and the assessment of news coverage. Those individuals will go unnamed less they be branded as heretics within the party. Their comments were appreciated.

Pemberton fell into the trap Democrats at the national level seem to have. They want to blame everyone but themselves for coming up short in the polls. Voters want good candidates and good ideas. Constant criticism and blaming others for not getting the job done doesn't fly.

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Tip of the hat

It is awful easy to be critical of government and to mistrust some of the things that go on. That's why it was particularly refreshing to see how City Light Gas and Water responded to the findings of MTBE in one of the city's four wells last week.

Larry Jones, superintendent of CLGW and David Wilkins, director of operations, came by to lay everything out about the findings, how they were going to handle it and how the utility's customers would be affected. They were ahead of the curve, very proactive and met the situation head on.

With virtually no impact on customers, the utility was not obligated to do anything in the way of informing the public. However, CLGW wanted everyone to know what was going on and are as transparent about the findings and subsequent search to determine where the MTBE came from as anyone can ask.

That should inspire confidence in the utility and its management.