Chronicle Editorial: By taking a position against diversity of opinion and violating the First Amendment, the IDEA Advisory Committee further discredits itself in the eyes of villagers.

By stacking the committee with loyalists, the mayor and Board of Trustees have created a government body with a noble mission but a corrupted culture.

We have now published two articles about the First Amendment issues surrounding Croton’s IDEA Advisory Committee, the first a news report with some limited commentary and the second a Guest Editorial by local resident Paul Steinberg, who has extensive knowledge of First Amendment law. (Readers will recall that Steinberg provided a lot of analysis during the controversies around Lenny Amicola’s Trump flag.)

The response from village officials so far has been very disappointing. They have failed or refused to engage with the obvious First Amendment issues raised by a government appointed committee discussing how to vet a local news outlet and discourage the village from cooperating with it, choosing so far instead to portray the Committee’s conduct in terms of bureaucratic errors in the preparation of agendas and minutes.

To that apparent end, Mayor Brian Pugh has been missing in action so far during this important community discussion (the Chronicle is, after all a community publication), thus adding to this obfuscation of the real issues.

Mayor Brian Pugh

In the meantime, many readers of the Chronicle seem to get the point, judging from their comments and private messages of support, and two leading regional journalists have made comments on our posts about the clear First Amendment implications.

Perhaps things will improve at this evening’s Board of Trustees meeting, when the Village Attorney might have the chance to make some comments, or when the trustees will be able to discuss this topic during their reports—that is, if they choose to. Or perhaps the board will shirk the issues in whole or in part.

One issue we have not discussed yet is how bad this all is for the IDEA Advisory Committee, whose basic ideals and goals the Chronicle has endorsed editorially on many occasions, and whose activities we have reported on more than any other publication. (That goes also for the work of the Lorraine Hansberry Coalition, which is affiliated with the IDEA Committee.)

For many conservatives, and for all right-wing MAGA extremists in the village, the IDEA Advisory Committee is the committee they love to hate, for the obvious reason that its anti-hate, anti-bigotry message is not consistent with right-wing politics—nor is it acceptable to outright racists in Croton, of which, sadly, we still have more than a small handful.

The way the IDEA Advisory Committee operates—as Steinberg put it, like an exclusive school club—has made it much easier for those who disagree with its message of inclusion, diversity, equity, and access to attack it both openly and covertly. And by explicitly going after a local media outlet, the members of the Committee have helped to unite both progressives and right-wingers against it, at least on First Amendment grounds.

A number of villagers have asked us, privately and publicly, what the Committee members have against the Chronicle and its editor (because the minutes make clear that the animus is very personalized and the minutes’ bullet points for action against the publication focus on its editor by name.)

They have pointed out, as we and Steinberg did, that the Chronicle’s editorial slant is progressive, anti-racist, and anti-Trump (especially because of the president’s own attacks against the press and the First Amendment.)

The minutes appear to reflect a consensus in the Committee that the Chronicle is putting out “misinformation.” But as we pointed out, no one on that Committee, or anyone else for that matter, has seriously challenged the basic facts of our reporting, and not one post out of the 1,117 we have published since the Chronicle launched in October 2023 has had to be retracted—nor has anyone ever asked for a retraction.

We count nine corrections in all that time, most of them pretty minor. Even the two or three errors that might be considered a bit more serious—for example, misstating the job title of our Village Engineer just before he came to Croton, or writing that the vote on a resolution had been carried over to the next meeting when it had already passed—were quickly corrected when they were pointed out to us.

So the hostility to the Chronicle in some quarters is not really due to our publishing “misinformation.” What is behind it? We think that is easily explainable.

Since the Chronicle first went online, we have published many articles that take the liberal Democrats who are in the majority on the Board of Trustees and in the village’s institutions (including its boards and committees) to task for lack of transparency, for not listening carefully enough to the concerns of villagers, and for backing down too easily in the face of the prerogatives of developers, cannabis dispensers, and the like.

Architect’s conception of the Lot A development

We have provided a voice to all sides in political controversies in Croton, including candidates for elected office who have wanted to get their message across, or to other critics of the majority on the Board of Trustees. (We have also published many Guest Editorials by the mayor and other Croton Democrats.)

In other words, we have operated completely independently, and we have never been beholden to the dominant political, social, or cultural groupings in the village. We have maintained that independence despite a lot of pressures. That is why so many villagers read the Chronicle (nearly 1,700 direct email subscribers) and how we have emerged as Croton’s number one source of news—even for those who might not like all of our editorials or editorial positions.

We know many of the members of the IDEA Advisory Committee, past and present. By and large, with a small number of exceptions, they are loyal to the mayor and the Croton Democrats who have appointed them—and to a large extent, that is why they were appointed.

So it doesn’t matter how many articles we publish about the Pride Flag or Juneteenth, how many editorials we write condemning racism and other forms of bigotry, how many times we criticize Donald Trump’s destructive policies or Israel’s proven war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, or how many times we publish articles summarizing the scientific arguments against vaccine denialism.

If we criticize the ruling Croton Democrats or publish investigative pieces about their often anti-democratic internal policies or their lack of transparency, then we are considered an enemy.

It’s fine for some villagers to be hostile to the Chronicle and what it publishes, or to vehemently disagree with some of our articles. To paraphrase what one of our village leaders once famously said, no one is forced to read it. But when an official village committee appointed by the mayor and approved by the Board of Trustees tries to figure out how to censor us, how to “deplatform” the Chronicle and encourage village officials to no longer talk to us, that crosses the line into a First Amendment violation.

It also discredits that committee and its members as political operatives who are working against diversity rather than for it, and gives ammunition to those in the village who actually hate the otherwise noble principles that the Committee stands for.

We think that many or most in Croton understand this. The question is whether the mayor and the Board of Trustees will demonstrate that they do as well, and guarantee that freedom of speech—and of the press—is fully protected in our village.

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