Letter To The Editor: Trusting the Messenger. The recent Johns Creek Herald article (10/25/17) about “trusting the messenger” is so full of malarkey I really don’t know where to begin. So let’s start at the top.

The first few paragraphs sound like Mr. Hurd just recently discovered the Internet and wants to warn folks that not everything on the net is true. And this warning seems particularly important since Mr. Hurd wants to conveniently confuse reader blog comments from other posted content. This, combined with his lecture on “sourcing” in the context of a comment blog makes you wonder if Mr. Hurd has ever visited modern online news sites like Yahoo or CBS News, among hundreds of others. If we could just go back to the days when print editors controlled reader feedback with very limited print space.

The second paragraph sounds like Mr. Hurd believes the Internet is the only place we have fake news. He says the “national media” is plagued by it on the Internet. Otherwise, Mr. Hurd apparently believes the “national media” (or is it “the system”) never contrives stories or references unnamed or anonymous sources and they always consider the motives of all anonymous sources. All of this is laughable so far!

Next, we move on to the Mayor defending the city’s openness. I’m not aware that anyone in JC is complaining about this. But there is a big difference between making city information available and keeping citizens informed. In the Mayor’s defense on this topic, a large part of Johns Creek residents doesn’t bother to be informed.

Next up are claims made by the Mayor against the JCP. As reported, these claims have very little detail. And, are we talking about reader blog comments? The same goes for the claims of Mr. Carrel with no reported investigation into his “friend” sources. And once again, is Mr. Carrel talking about reader blog comments? Are Mr. Carrel and his friends aware that comments don’t immediately appear on the JCP after they are submitted? I’ve seen many comments on the JCP that were entirely opposed to any apparent “narrative” and they were nearly ALWAYS posted by an anonymous source. What are these posters afraid of, busy city residents with families? Then the Mayor chimes in with how “he’s been told of several cases where comments were edited to change their meaning to further the Post’s narrative”. What about those sources, Mr. Hurd?

The Mayor doesn’t want to launch a (frivolous) lawsuit about this during his campaign but he is quite happy to discredit or smear some of his JCP detractors if he can. After all, they seem to be quickly growing in numbers and voting power, and this is very scary to the business, development, construction, consulting, and contracting community in JC. The first attempt at publicly discrediting the JCP backfired a few weeks ago with the involvement of an overzealous citizen who did more harm than good to the JCP smear effort. Mr. Hurd didn’t seem to want any part of this. What we have now is V2.0 of the smear effort and Mr. Hurd cooperated this time, less than two weeks prior to election day. But the big question is, can we trust the messenger?

By Zane Edge