Letter Asks Tiser: Where Are Rail Poll's Results?

Kirk Caldwell, managing director of the City and County of Honolulu, has a letter to the editor in today’s Honolulu Advertiser that makes the point we made here a few days ago. Caldwell begins his letter:

“We find it interesting that The Advertiser’s story about a scientific poll on rail authorized by the city (“Poll, TV deals avoid scrutiny,” Dec. 11) neglected to include the most obvious thing: the poll results.”

In an almost unbelievable journalistic lapse, the paper carried a story about the poll (but not the results) that appeared to find fault with project consultant Parsons Brinkerhoff for not including polling firm QMark in a list of subcontractors.

That’s unremarkable, because QMark is not a PB subcontractor – and neither are the parent companies of three local television stations that the reporter noted also were not listed as subcontractors.

The Advertiser’s rail coverage is beyond strange. What kind of journalism is it when the only way to get results of a City-sponsored scientific public opinion poll into the newspaper is to include them in a letter to the editor?