Democracy Is Messy – So Spout Off Is Too

We received a Spout Off recently which accused a government agency of wasting tax dollars on an expensive pick-up truck. While we read all Spout Offs before they are published, we don’t know if what is being stated is true. If it is general in nature, is a citizen writing on a governmental issue, and it sounds plausible, while not accusing an identifiable person of breaking the law, we generally default to giving the person his or her voice. The criteria are different for commercial establishments. Why do we do that?  What is the public benefit?
Let me first explain why the rules are different for businesses. When you go to a store to purchase something, if you like what you bought, you go back, again and again. The business owners are keeping an eye out to make sure that you are happy because their livelihood depends on it. When the owners fail at that, you take your business elsewhere. Thus consumer behavior dictates who has the privilege of serving the public.
This is not so with government. You own the government.  However, if a government employee doesn’t serve you well, you can’t take your business elsewhere – they are the only show in town, and in some cases, the employees know that and act like it. If you can’t spend your dollars somewhere else, what can you do? You share your complaints with others to bring pressure to bear on the entity which is failing to satisfy you.  Many people use Spout Off for this purpose.
A problem arises, however, because not everyone is fair-minded when stating their opinions, and when complaining, the grievances they express aren’t always reasonable. So, how is a community to deal with such unfairness? We must recognize that democracy is messy, and there is injustice on both sides; however, in the give and take, the greater good is generally served. 
So now let’s return to the pick-up truck Spout above. We published the Spout online, and shortly thereafter we received word from an involved public official that the post was untrue, that the public entity only possessed one older truck, and asked us to consider taking it down. It had not yet gone to print. We believed the official, and we did unpublish it. The official further requested that if we chose not to remove it, he did not want us to publish his explanation as an editor’s note, because, as he said, “I do not believe in responding to anonymous posts.”
In retrospect, our best service to the community would’ve been to publish the Spout along with a reply from the government official.  In this way, the Spouter would be corrected in his misperception, and the general public might gain greater confidence in their government.  Instead, unpublishing the Spout may have left the Spouter thinking his voice was squelched and left the government official thinking he need not be responsive to the public he serves.
People have expressed to us that if they had to sign their names, they would remain silent because they don’t want to be ridiculed or be retaliated against.  This is clearly a broad-based sentiment, as demonstrated in the average number of letters to the editor we receive weekly (a half dozen) versus the number of Spout Offs (a couple of hundred).
For a democratic community to thrive, people must be heard and heard in the way they feel comfortable expressing themselves. And government must be responsive to the voice of the people.