Within hours of former President Donald Trump being convicted by a New York jury on 34 felony counts on Thursday, May 30, we received our first letter to the editor reacting to it, though the only one thus far.
We love publishing letters from residents about local, state, national and international issues as they affect us here in the Verde Valley. But we always require letter writers to provide their phone numbers and local home addresses so we can make sure that they are Sedona or Verde Valley residents — we print that every week in all three of our newspapers, and it appears on our website for the same reason.
This “letter” had only a name, a Verde Valley ZIP code and an email address, which, after years as managing editor, are tell-tale signs of a form letter, not an original thought labored over in an effort to concisely express a resident’s sincerely-held opinion about an issue. When we emailed the sender, the “author” refused to provide address verification as requested, which all the letter writers whose opinions appear on Page 4A do without hesitation.
The letter was unusually eloquent, but was also obviously pre-written and clearly penned as a political tool, rather than addressing the recent trial and relatively sudden announcement of the conviction — which no one really expected that day. These were obvious red flags that it was not a spontaneous letter from the grassroots concerned about what the conviction meant for the future of American democracy, but instead was written by some for-profit political action committee with naked political ends.
This is called astroturfing: “The practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization, e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations, to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants.”
The submission was apparently written, edited and processed by a focus group days or weeks in advance by some PAC or paid communications professional with a shiny new political science degree and sent out to followers to be forwarded to their local newspapers in hopes that the plagiarized piece could be published as a sincere opinion.
Had Trump been acquitted, I’m certain the PAC had a different letter in the hopper ready to send out to its followers and we would have received that instead.
Either way, “prose is a thumbprint,” as I wrote in 2021 in an editorial about why we don’t publish form letters. “We can tell when a letter is natural and organic or when it’s over-processed and mass-produced.”
“Why reinvent the wheel when you’re gonna have a number of people responding with the same letter with the same sentiments,” the submitting person wrote, adding, “It’s not plagiarism if the letter was offered to me.”
Actually, yes, that is the exact definition of plagiarism — a piece of writing by someone else onto which someone else puts their name as if they wrote it.
In searching for the letter’s text now, days later, I found verbatim letters published under the names of four different “authors” as far away as the Baltimore Post-Examiner and locally in Arizona by Today’s News-Herald in Lake Havasu.
It’s disheartening that some feel others’ words, opinions or views are better than their own. Have faith in your political convictions and write something original, in your own words. It’s fine to quote others, as long as you cite those quotes, but voice your opinion, not someone else’s. Participate in our democratic republic, don’t copy and paste.
Politicians and PACs love it when we repeat their talking points without generating our own ideas. They don’t want civil discourse and exchange of ideas, they want parrots to recycle their workshopped phrases, share their generated memes, forward their mass emails and fall in line, obediently and blindly.
If this person actually lives in the Verde Valley and reads our newspapers and this editorial — I really have no idea — my offer still stands: “If you have an opinion, write one in your own words.”
That goes for all our readers: Tell us in your own words what you think about the issues affecting us locally and nationally. Email your letters to me at editor@larsonnewspapers.com.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
