Who Is In Charge of the Henhouse?

That local governments in Iron County, Michigan, are
corrupt is the responsibility of three distinct groups,
the politicians themselves, the public, and "the media."

So far as the media goes there are several varieties
here, the same as exits everywhere in the US. We
have a TV station WLUC, Marquette. We have a
radio station, WIKB both AM and FM. We have two
newspapers, Iron Mountain Daily News and the
Iron County Reporter.

And then we have the internet. Presently there are
three outlets. Two are discussion groups based on
Yahoo, and there is Iron County Doings, that you are
reading presently. Iron County Doings is a serial
electronic publication registered as such with the
Library of Congress.

This discussion has as its basis the failure of any
of the airwaves based media and the two newspapers
to report Ben Smith's discovery that the chair of the
Iron County Board of Commissioners has placed
herself above the law and is violating it in plain sight.
The problem, as I see it, is that those reporting on
the community have a vested interest in it. They're
part of the system they're reporting about, a really
bad problem. It is no different from putting the fox
in charge of security at the henhouse.

Jay Barry retired from managing WIKB today. He
sang the praises of John Archocosky on the air
today. John is the City Manager for Iron River, and
is a mover and shaker in other aspects of the
community. The position that Jay should have held
is that of a skeptic, not a supporter of the power
elite, the oligarchy, that is running Iron County. One
wonders just what it is that Jay Barry will be doing
during his retirement years. It is an unfortunate
fact that he has ingratiated himself to the people
in power during the 45 years he's been involved
with WIKB. He'd have provided a far better service
to the community had he held those in power at
arm's length as he was instructed, by former owners
of WIKB, to do.

What we have, going on in Iron County, is a serious
and significant illegal act by the chair of the Board
of Commissioners, and the failure of the local
media, save this arm of it, to provide the public with
a report of it places the entire community in jeopardy.
In effect the media is supporting the illegality of the
acts, thereby supporting corruption of our local
government. If such a clear violation of the laws is
ignored, what about more sophisticated corruption?

Bill Vajk