In your Oct. 22 edition you published a letter from a Mr. Don Lauer that seeks to redirect the focus from your and Mr. Murphy's journalistic integrity to the First Amendment.
Neither your paper nor Mr. Lauer should assume from anything I have written that this writer is desirous of eliminating or curtailing in any way the First Amendment rights of the Express to publish virtually anything it wants to, including the venomous rants of Mr. Murphy.
That is not the issue. The problem is that contrary to the paper's own announced standards, you regularly publish apparently libelous and at a minimum unseemly rages of Mr. Murphy at perceived political enemies.
Proof that the Express employs a double standard is evident from Mr. Lauer's own letter, wherein he erroneously accuses me of directing vicious insults at Mr. Murphy. In fact, the referenced cheap shots "dishonorable," "distorts," "shameful," "cheap lies," etc. appeared in your publication as the handiwork of Mr. Murphy himself.
If Mr. Murphy's accusations and epithets directed at Sen. McCain are not unseemly, then nothing is. Clearly, the Express is willing to ignore its own quality standards so long as the trash tossed about serves its political agenda. Then it is only too happy to provide a "bully pulpit" to an unprincipled bully whose fulminations would otherwise be ignored by the public.
That the Express is now the only game in town serves to deepen the loss to our community of any sense of journalistic integrity on the part of your paper.
Edwin Thomas III
Sun Valley
