Citizenship is not a spectator sport

Truth is an elusive prey, because it hides so easily in forests of competing agendas, some innocuous as the ferns that grow beneath a tree and others potentially troublesome like poison oak.

My experience with truth is jaded perhaps. People are paid to lie to me, or at least to stretch, spin and color what start out as perfectly harmless facts. One of the things I have learned over many years is that one side of a story is never enough. But there are rarely only two sides to a story, more like three and even four. Some stories are three-dimensional affairs with as many facets as a grain of salt, and it takes great effort in some cases to present all available sides. Sometimes there are sides to the story that you don’t even know exist.

This has been the case with coverage of the uproar arising from the now-infamous website and Facebook page that calls itself “Exposedat,” coverage of which has become nearly a full-time job.

Stories I have written resulted in a number of phone calls from people I know and respect who have asked me what “the real story” is. I have told them, as I tell you now, that everything I know connected to this case has appeared on these pages or on houmatimes.com.

The maddening element of all this is that what appears on the website that has become news has been covered by this paper, in part, if it was newsworthy, timely and credible, and if its existence was something that would matter to readers.

Our newspaper has run stories on many actions the Terrebonne Parish Council has taken, some of which involved elements of Exposedat’s “tell-all” claims. What made the website itself newsworthy, of course, was the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office decision to act on a criminal complaint filed by insurance Tony Alford, alleging that he was defamed. I had no knowledge of the execution of warrants in the matter, which was the crux of a story broadcast on WWL-TV.

Since that time there has been a court hearing and, as you see in this issue, a federal legal action alleging that the constitutional rights of Wayne and Jennifer Anderson were violated by the seizure of their computers and cell phones from their residence.

Their attorneys allege that the warrants were invalid because they were based on an unconstitutional law. Attorneys for the Sheriff – who is no longer involved in this investigation, having turned it over to the Louisiana Attorney General – have maintained that the law has not been flat-out declared unconstitutional.

I am not a judge and so I cannot tell you which argument holds the most water, although both have both redeeming and detracting elements. I can just tell you what each side says.

But there is something I can say with certainty, and which I have told people who have asked me questions. Mostly they have asked if our local government is corrupt, and I have told them that an answer is subject to wildly fluctuating underlying determinations.

I have belief in our local government and elected officials. I have not seen anything here that is more suggestive of problems than I have seen in communities of similar size, where it is difficult if not impossible to avoid doing business with people you know, which is why proactive checking of potential conflicts with ethics laws are to be encouraged and supported.

The ultimate arbiter of who is right and who is wrong will be the courts, which are now heavily involved in all facets of this issue. I’m not passing the buck. I’m saying that determining fact is difficult. But that is the job of the courts, it’s why we have them. And ultimately I think the courts at their highest levels will make appropriate decisions.

In the meantime I will keep readers informed on what occurs, doing my best to make sure they have all sides so that they can make their own decisions on what we present. And I can further say this. If this controversy is what was needed to inspire people to pay a lot closer attention to what the people they elect decide to do with the authority and money the public gives them, then a good thing occurred.

The job of citizens is to actively take part in how they are governed, not to merely select others to do it and go on their merry way. And for now that’s all I have to say about that. •