Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor Policy

The Skier Scribbler welcomes and encourages letters to the editors.  This is a chance to express your viewpoint on important issues.  Letters should be less than 200 words. Letters will be edited for space and legal considerations, but not for inaccuracies, grammar, and spelling.  Letters must contain information pertinent to students of Aspen High School. The staff reserves the right to not publish any letter not meeting these requirements. Unsigned letters will not be published.  You can submit letters in person to the adviser ([email protected]), or by mail to Skier Scribbler Editor, 235 High School Road, Aspen, CO 81611.

JP McMenimen

Interested in Aspen High School’s journalism, I recently read through a number of online Skier Scribbler articles.  I came across an opinion article written by Chase Slesinger-Hall titled “Being Red in a Sea of Blue: Thoughts and Beliefs,” which I originally became interested in reading as I disagree with its political takes. But, what motivated me to write this letter is the article’s number of factual inaccuracies, along with omissions of fact that serve to obfuscate the truth. This letter’s purpose is not to attack Chase, nor any of the staff of the Skier Scribbler. I have left out arguments that I personally disagree with because there is a place for those arguments in an opinion piece. I intend solely to point out how facts and statistics can create a misleading picture of the world based on wording and presentation, no matter their perceived level or importance. I believe standards of truth should remain constant for all journalistic reporting. All sources I use to verify the writing will be listed in order of appearance in this letter.

“…in our valley, with over 75% of the residents voting Democratic in the last election.” This statistic is taken from a database known as BestPlaces which catalogs areas in the US based on a number of factors, one of which is voting demographics. This is a misleading figure as it accounts for Pitkin County and not the Roaring Fork Valley as a whole. Pitkin County does not include Carbondale, El Jebel, or Glenwood, which account for large amounts of the population of the valley. I included their populations and the voting demographics as stated by BestPlaces and recalculated the proportion of people who voted Democrat in the 2020 election within the valley to be about 60%.

“According to CBS News, 79% of Americans believe that the United States is on the wrong track, and 70% believe the economy is at least ‘not so good’ or worse. This polling is from September of 2024.” The article links to a dead page on a local CBS station, and Googling the statistics reveals that polling with similar results comes from a CBS News poll from before the 2022 election, not September of 2024. There are no other results for what is claimed in the article. While searching for the described polling, I came across a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute that states that 70% of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction, which is close to what is implied in the article. This poll got data from just over 5,300 people, a sample size far too small to generalize to the American public effectively. The poll also states that they attempted to account for nonresponse bias (when people asked the questions do not respond) by manipulating the data, which only serves to obfuscate the true data. The only way to account for nonresponse bias is to substitute previous poll results and compare them to the newly found values, which will not help to understand a political climate that is constantly changing. This statistic, which is the closest I found to the one used in the article, is founded on poor analysis that consequently may be incorrect.

“In 2020, the average income necessary to afford a house was about $59,000. As of 2024, it is about $106,500.” While this is not fabricated, its validity is questioned as the argument in which this fact is mentioned is misleading. Its data was collected in January 2020, two months before COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, which caused a global recession and economic downturn. As this article omits this date – which may push a reader to assume that data was collected after the lockdown had taken full effect –  it places blame primarily on the Biden presidency, not on the global pandemic. Furthermore, the data itself does not seem to be very clear. It comes from an article published by Zillow, an online realtor business, and the author does not cite how she got to a figure of $106,000. There is mention of the average monthly mortgage payment increasing and interest rates increasing, but not how that relates to the figure presented in the article or the math they did to find it.

“Trump’s so-called ‘racism’ is wanting to stop the entrance of and to facilitate and the deportation of illegal immigrants.” This is not true. Trump’s remarks in his 2016 Presidential Election Campaign about instituting a no-exceptions ban on entry to the US from six Muslim-majority countries and claiming that most Mexicans are rapists and need to be removed, which informed his harsh border policy. This paragraph concludes with the implication that all illegal immigrants are dangerous, which is a long-debunked myth. According to the National Institute of Justice, immigrants proportionally commit far fewer crimes than native-born American citizens. Former policy advisors and members of Trump’s inner circle have created a plan known as Project 2025, a roadmap of how an ideal conservative administration would run the country. Trump has repeatedly denied involvement with the organization and there is no evidence that he has contributed to it, but to ignore the similarities in policy proposals between his administrations and the plan would be improper. According to Axios, Project 2025 has plans to remove obstructions to the deportation of all immigrants, repeal visas given to victims of abuse and human trafficking, and repeal Temporary Protected Status, among many other policies made primarily to discriminate against immigrants, legal or illegal. The American Civil Liberties Union has summarized these proposals as “Targeting immigrant communities through mass deportations and raids, ending birthright citizenship, separating families, and dismantling our nation’s asylum system.”

“Firstly, Trump is the opposite of homophobic.” This is not true. Yet again, Project 2025 outlines the unfounded and disproven belief that heterosexual couples raise better children which is a myth. According to the National Women’s Law Center, it calls to remove protections for gender identity and sexual orientation and uses the language of “trans ideology” which dehumanizes trans people. The Human Rights Campaign says that in his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump supported employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, opposed the Equality Act, and was responsible for spreading myths regarding trans people and sexual assault statistics. According to GLAAD, Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch, who was appointed under Trump, has ruled in favor of marriage equality but has also ruled against the trans community, allied himself with anti-gay marriage advocates, and more. Even if Trump has appointed some gay people, that does not speak to his larger policy actions against the queer liberation movement and the goals of his appointees. He has consistently shown opposition to “gender ideology” and a reluctance to acknowledge queer people as people. As an advocate for and member of the queer community myself, along with being friends with many queer people, the statements of Trump regarding queer people have been damaging and hurtful, and a portrayal of him as an ally in spite of such bigotry is dangerous.

“Harris wants to make ninth-month abortion legal under certain circumstances.” This is untrue. The only source for such a claim is comments made by Trump in the September Presidential Debate. Harris has stated her intention to institute protections similar to what was offered under Roe v. Wade and to protect abortion rights up to 22 weeks of pregnancy, according to the source linked in the article. There has been no mention of access beyond that point as part of her campaign. 

Misleading language. This last point is not a specific occurrence of direct misinformation but more a collection of usages of language that imply something that is not the case. It is included to demonstrate how journalism that is not specific often exists solely to reaffirm the reader’s own biases instead of getting them to think critically about the subject. 

(Relating to Harris’s role as Vice President) “For the people in the back, if she wanted to make a difference for the greater good of our country, she would have done it in the past four years.” This statement implies that Harris did nothing during her term as Vice President of this country, without stating so explicitly. In reality, she has fought for access to abortion and methods of contraception to be offered more broadly, has fought back against limitations to voting rights and capabilities, and oversaw the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Of course, the Vice President has not done as much as the President, but in her role, she has continually shown an attempt to make voting and contraception available to more people and worked to reduce the insanely traumatizing effects of gun violence upon Americans of any age.
“Don’t you think we should be putting Americans over criminals?” and “When George Floyd, a criminal” are quotes that serve to imply that illegal immigrants and victims of police violence are somehow less deserving of the basic human dignities that include life and freedom than other people. To say that George Floyd’s status as a criminal who had served proper time in prison makes him less deserving of being remembered as a victim of police brutality is harsh and dehumanizing. 

“…it is undeniable that (Trump) was convicted of 34 counts of falsified business records.” The article neglects to provide context for the charges beyond this point, though the source linked does provide some explanation. The 34 felony counts were related to business records that were falsified to cover up what has been described by the Associated Press as “a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.” Though correct, describing the conviction as solely about falsified business records leaves out the context of why they were important and the role they played in the 2016 election.

Regardless of one’s political views, it is important to draw attention to misleading language and statistics whenever present to provide the public with accurate information regarding their role as part of this democracy.