Below is the whole letter that was emailed to the Gazette by Doug in reference to your commentary. The statement was circulated to all directors before it was sent.

Thanks Rick 

To Whom It May Concern,

I respectfully request that Mr. Jack Chavez not be assigned to cover Ocean Pines Association Board meetings or related business. Over the past several months he has written articles that are arguably one-sided, based on a single perspective and a distortion of fact. As an example, the byline in a recent article he published on the OC Today site on December 1st was titled “OPA board meetings become members-only sessions”. This statement is false and misleading with the use of the word “become” as our governing documents clearly stipulate that board meeting have always been member-only and not open to the general public who are not members of the Ocean Pines Association. The reader of that byline could conclude that the Association did something illegal. The article is also based on a single source of information which, based on the content from Mr. Chavez, was assumed to be a credible and accurate source. There was an opportunity to get input from the Board to clarify the matter but no contact was made prior to the article being published.

This same single-source, single-perspective approach was used in another article on the Knupp matter where Mr. Chavez published details of the meeting with Mrs. Knupp, Director Horn and myself and assumed everything Mrs. Knupp said was the absolute truth and was interpreted by those in the meeting in the manner she noted. I can tell you as one of the participants in the meeting that there were several discrepancies in the information presented in the article written by Mr. Chavez.

The goal of this request is to hopefully establish fair reporting of OPA-related issues and business that includes accurate information, that is based in facts and has involvement from more than one perspective and source of information. Perhaps Mr. Chavez can consider the approach used by former Gazette reporters Greg Ellison and Josh Davis. Both gentlemen wrote articles that were based on fact rather than opinion and were not afraid to publish articles that in some cases did not shed a good light on OPA. However, at the very least Greg Ellison and Josh Davis strove to get both sides of an issue before writing an article, which in my opinion lends credibility to the content of their articles.

While you may deny the request to have Mr. Chavez not report on OPA business and related issues, I recommend you remove him from covering and attending OPA Board meetings. Within our governing documents the Board can deny a member of the media from attending the meeting with a majority vote. The preference is to take care of this issue between us ahead of time with the intent to avoid any embarrassment associated with Mr. Chavez being asked publicly to be removed from the meeting.

I also look at this issue as temporary given that once notified of the opinion OPA leadership has on the matter, adjustments and changes can certainly be made. Please let me know if you have any questions or need additional information as I would be glad to discuss the matter further as necessary to get to a reasonable solution to the issue.

Respectfully,
Doug Parks
President, Ocean Pines Association
Image