Rye Record Needs To Print A Retraction & Apology

The last issue of the Rye Record contained a front page article written by Bill Lawyer that was supposedly a journalistic "report" on Sustainable Playland's December presentation to the community at the Rye Library. I could take issue with so many points in that piece that it would take me a week to go through it, so I'm going to focus on just this one.

Here is the email sent to Rye Record Owner/Publisher Robin Jovanovich this morning, after an initial email expressing concern prior to the holiday week to which she replied to me that Bill Lawyer is a "first rate researcher".

Robin, thank you for your reply. I hope you had a good holiday season and are now ready to get back to business. I hope that you receive this in time to print a full retraction as well as an apology to not only myself, but also to Catherine Parker and Nick Everett front and center in the next issue of the Rye Record for the inaccurate representation of things never said at the SPI December presentation to the community.

I won't even get into how ridiculously lop-sided and biased in favor of Sustainable Playland this "news article" written by Bill Lawyer and passed off (apparently) as "journalism" was, or how insulting the very headline was to attendees. It's unfortunately par for the course with your local publication and I'm not sure you understand how badly allowing pieces like this affects your local credibility.

What I *will* take exception to is the flat-out fabrication Bill Lawyer comes up with about two thirds of the way down the article, in a line all by itself:

"Deirdre Curran alleged that both Catherine Parker and Nick Everett have conflicts of interest."

See link to online article here:

http://ryerecord.com/news/spi-tries-field-zone-defense-but-unruly-crowd-controls-the-action.html)

This simply never happened.

I challenge you, Bill Lawyer and Mr. McDermott to sit down together, watch this entire video together and tell me at exactly what minute mark it is that I stood up and said ANYTHING let alone made any allegations pertaining to Nick Everett and Catherine Parker. It never happened that night, yet it was reported here as a factual event having taken place at the Library presentation.

While I may have expressed dis-satisfaction at other times with Catherine Parker's unfortunate support for SPI, I have never alleged that she has any "conflict of interest". While I have definitely expressed my opinion in other venues that I do in fact believe Nick Everett has a conflict of interest by serving as Chairman of the Planning Commission while simultaneously sitting as an Executive VP on the board of AP Construction, the company listed on SPI's web site as a "Consultant", I did not stand up at the SPI Library event in December and ask any questions regarding this issue, nor did I stand up and publicly make any such allegations. 

Based on what I've seen, I would classify Bill Lawyer as far - FAR - from a "first rate researcher". He simply made this up, plain and simple. It is a disservice to your readers to print this and a disservice to myself and the other individuals mentioned. In trying to make me look bad, he has dragged Ms. Parker and Mr. Everett into things.

I am respectfully demanding a retraction in both the print and online editions of the next Rye Record, including an apology to myself, Ms. Parker and Mr. Everett for this erroneous statement of non-fact from both yourself as Publisher and Mr. Lawyer as the "Journalist" who wrote this piece.