Editorial: Past the rhetoric to the motive

Ray Carney, now describing himself as an anti-illegal alien advocate, sent out press releases on Tuesday announcing that he and members of the San Diego Minutemen will stage a protest at Village News offices over the “unwarranted assault of an innocent fourteen year old child.” He further demands the immediate termination of Nathalie Taylor from our staff and a full page apology in the Village News.

According to the police report, both the mother and daughter said that there was no injury to the daughter, however the mother insisted on making a citizens arrest for battery and desired prosecution anyway.

Nathalie was so traumatized by the events of that morning that she has not returned to work, and in fact, resigned on Saturday, and is contemplating moving, which is complicated, since she is her parents’ primary caregiver.

I am concerned not only for Nathalie and the minor who was at the protest, but that adults around this minor are using her for their own personal gain.

Let’s take Mr. Ray Carney for example. In his press release, he threatens, “Starting next week, we will assemble outside the offices of the Fallbrook Bonsall Village News with signs and flyers demanding that they fire the reporter who harmed this innocent child. We will also encourage passers by to cancel their subscriptions.” He continues with a threat to target our subscribers and advertisers, asking them to take their business to another publication. The other person who used to picket regularly in front of our office was Tom Metzger. I don’t have a problem with picketing. I don’t have a problem with free speech—I’ve published online and in print Mr. Ray Carney’s opinions at my own expense, probably for years. But let’s be honest.

There are thousands of people in this town who know and respect Nathalie. She has worked tirelessly to serve the community with her feature stories on youth, nonprofits, church functions, businesses, schools, events, etc. She is not a “hardcore” journalist. She is a feature writer. She is an honest, compassionate, and sensitive person who would never intentionally hurt anyone.

With all the rhetoric being thrown around defaming her character, I would ask that anyone who has heard or read about this incident would consider some additional facts.

Last week I had to temporarily remove our forum from our website because of pornography that some individuals linked to it and the fact that we were unable to clean it off in a reasonable time period. Within an hour of this, Ray Carney was writing nasty emails threatening to start his own publication. This is not a problem for us, but it sheds a whole new light on his motives for picketing, protesting, and threatening to pull advertisers and subscribers. This is the email we received.

From: Ray Carney

Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:31:10 -0800

Since before you killed your blog page, my stories were getting more “hits’

than your publication, I decided to contact some influential people in

Fallbrook to start an alternative publication here called “not seen in the

village news”. These people, like I, want to see more local “what’s

happening” news besides the “soft soap” crapola seen in your publication.

Competition, the American way.

RC - American Citizen in Exile!

I should put Ray in contact with the people who call and complain that our stories are too negative on the front page.

And, by the way, his blog page was not receiving more traffic than our stories.

So, when you hear people jumping up and down and protesting and saying nasty things, you’ll know at least more of the story.

The Village News doesn’t condone battery and our advertisers are smarter than that. I’m sure they would never believe that we would condone any violence against children. It was ironic that while Ray was generating his campaign, the Fallbrook Chamber of Commerce was presenting us with the Ingold Community Builder Award.

I would welcome a meeting with the mother and daughter who were at the protest if they would like to come and talk with me.