Shoot the messenger, but the message lives on

While armed thugs terrorize the East Side, Mayor McKelvey and some city councilmen seem more interested in shooting the messenger.
Last Sunday, The Vindicator reported on La La Land, an East Side neighborhood roughly bounded by Wilson Avenue on the south, Shehy Street on the north and Ayers Street on the west.
The story quoted unidentified residents, most of them elderly, who live in fear for their lives at worst or are, at best, intimidated into living quietly behind drawn shades, afraid to leave, haunted by the thought that a neighborhood gang known as the Ayers Street Playas will brand them as snitches. If you're poor and elderly and have nowhere to live but La La Land, the last thing you want is for the Playas to think you called the cops on them.
The story acknowledged that things have gotten better since 14 members of the gang were arrested by Youngstown police on gang and drug charges. But nine of those 14 had made bail, and some residents were clearly still worried. Some also expressed a fear that the Playas would beat the rap and return more emboldened.
Two views: The story got quick response -- good and bad.
Among the good, both city police and the Mahoning County sheriff's office stepped up their patrols in the area, pursuing a zero-tolerance policy that is designed to get drugs and weapons off the streets in high-crime areas.
And then there was the bad.
At Wednesday night's city council meeting, La La Land's councilman, Rufus Hudson, D-2nd, took umbrage at the story. He said that it was offensive to East Side residents and that the newspaper ignores good news coming out of the community.
McKelvey took up Hudson's banner. The story, he said, should have focused on the progress police have made in cleaning up the area. It's bad enough, the mayor said, when out of town newspapers criticize the city.
Hudson and McKelvey were roundly applauded for their remarks.
Good for them. But something tells us the applause wasn't coming from the people who count.
We doubt that the 74-year-old man who told a reporter: "We are afraid. Too much shooting," joined in the applause. Somehow we don't think the people whose houses have been shot up, even in the days after the story ran, were giving McKelvey and Hudson any ovations.
Rah, rah land: Apparently, some city fathers are of the opinion that a daily newspaper's job is to be their cheerleader. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Should we report good news? Certainly, and we do. And both Hudson and McKelvey know that. Do we report it in the proportion that they think is appropriate? No. Nor, necessarily, should we.
If McKelvey or Hudson or anyone else wants to tell themselves things are better in La La Land than our report portrayed, that's their privilege. But it seems to us that in doing so, they're not only attacking the credibility of the newspaper, they're also questioning the veracity of many of their East Side constituents.
We were going to call a political science professor or two and ask if that's smart politics. But we stopped mid-dial because we realized what a stupid question that would be.