Why Are Some Local Politicians Upset?

Daniel Glover
Editor

As the editor of the Harnett Dispatch I enjoy allowing people in our community to gain access to news and events that would otherwise might not ever come to light. I have worked hard over the last 3 years to make the Harnett Dispatch the most transparent news outlet in Harnett County no matter who I’ve upset along the way.

In recent months the Harnett Dispatch has been the subject of threats of lawsuits at local events and among some elected officials. In one incident an elected official went as far as to buy the website domain www.harnettdispatch.com but did not have the knowledge of websites to know that we would be able to lookup who the domain was registered to. Once we discovered who had bought the domain within the prior month we reached out to the elected official through email and asked them if they were thinking about getting into the news business, to our surprise we never got a response to that email and the registration of the domain was set to private and hidden.

What we’ve noticed is that many elected officials claim that they want more transparency in government but when we do what they have been asking for they seem to get upset and try to promote other local media sources that don’t reveal their actions. We don’t discriminate based on political parties nor individuals. In most cases we report facts that have been conveniently hidden to the public. The threats and attempts to deter people from viewing our publication have failed miserably and have done the exact opposite and people are noticing the attempt and are sharing their observations with us. Our readership has rocketed to 40,000-75,000 on a daily basis. The people of Harnett County deserve to know the facts about their elected officials and what they are doing behind closed doors.  Factual journalism serves as a check and balance system for any community.