Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

'" '" "', :. M e- C> "' >- . :::;; & gambit 7 '\ by Ron Schneiders ~ w Z W ...J t.J >o W E. CA N' T R I DE. H£ ~E ANy m ORE: THE:Y SAY wiRE. R U I N I NG AN EN DURO RIDER sent me a co py of a story relating to motorcycles that he had clipped from the Sunday edition of the Santa Barbara News Press. I wish that everyone who rides a bike co uld see this article. To an average reader the article in the News Press appears to be a straigh t, rather co m prehensive piece of reporting. You as a cyclist might even have read the article and said to yourself, "My gosh, do we really do all this?" ' In fact it is one of the most slanted, dishonest pieces that I have seen in quite a while. I am going to dissect this article in the hopes that when similar articles appear in your own local papers you will know h ow to eva luate them and , if they are similarly slanted and THE HILLS. dishonest, that you will voice your objections loudly and clearly . Most editors don't like to get caught running this kind of garbage, for professional reasons, and if you let an editor know that his paper is read critically, he'll think twice before making another slipshod attack. One of the first th ing s to decide when you see an article like th is is the purpose of the writer. Is it actually intended to inform o r is it a disguised editorial ? The pictures are the dominant feature of this N ews Press article and they are all big pictures (fro m 2 to 5 columns wide) and they are all from an area near Santa Barbara, California . Ballinger Canyon. The story itself is big, physically. It begins on the first page wit h a five -col u mn picture and a Stuff d esign ed to grab yo ur gree nbacks a~ o th erw ise d ef late your wa llet . Need Three o three-colu mn story. Its continuation takes 75 percent of page 10 . The three-column headline states, "Agencies and conservationists tangle with ORV enthusiasts." From the pictures and the headline (wh ich is all many readers will see) you might expect to find a story about pit ched hattie between cyclists and the Forest Service. Certainly you would expect the story to relate to Ballinger Can y on since that's where all the pictures were taken. In fact, however, there isn't enough of a story in Ballinger Canyon for a filler because the cvclis ts and the Forest Se .... ce have been' getting along quite i well for years and in fact th e cyclists have themselves buil t some of the facilities at the campground. The story is what migh t be called a "Iibrary piece ." It is a mixture of mostly unrelated facts and quotations woven in to a story designed to crea te one im p ressio n : that motorcyclists are bad for Santa Barbara. Ballinger Canyon is not used extensively (o r possibly at all) by the -fo ur-w heel-d rive en thusiasts, but they are quoted extensively as our representatives . T he o n ly " moto rcyclist" 'q uo ted. in the whole p iece is Har ry Wh alen , who doesn 't eve n rid e a bike. Fo r the other side, writer Rober t H. So llen has ranged fa r and w ide, borrowing from Executive Order 1 1644, the BLM's interim regulations, Forest Serv ice regulatio ns, Bureau of Agriculture pamphlets, the Sierra Club, an d even the Milwaukee Audubon Society. All of it is old stuff. There isn't a shred of "news" in the whole eight-column article. There is practically nothing in the article relating to Ballinger Canyon or the Santa Barbara area, The article is just there to lend authority to the pictures. . If this were merely a slipshod job of reporting, it wouldn't be so bad. You could simply chalk it up as one more example of incompetence of a small town newspaper. But this article is deliberately dishonest. Motorcyclists don't ride anywhere; they "roar." "When cycles roar across BLM lands.. ." "Boys of 7 to I 0 years o ld roar up the hillsides... " etc. They "race" " ...but anyone racing around..... etc. There is a more subtle ki nd of dishonesty practiced in the layout of the article . Opposite three pic tures of a hillside with all kinds of vehicle tracks is a head lin e "Offroad vehicle owners de ny they harm t he enviro n men t." There is a clear imp lication th at besides being the w o rst scourge since A ttila th e Hun, we are also lia rs, or at best quite stu pid. The substance he hind this headline is a .t wo-wo rd q uotation from Harry Whalen: "no damage." Lord knows what t he original co n text of these two words was. The worst lie of this enti re exercise in dishonesty however. "is done with photography. T he pictures make it appear that there is a vast area of devastation in Ballinger Canyon. In fact the area that is scarred up is about the size of a large playground. Kids, many t ' I:'!!n d s ? :l> rm Z C of the m quite yo ung, ride up and down the hills in that relatively small area all weekend and th ere is no more vegetation on those hills than there is around a swing set or a baseball diamond. The kids rarely get out of that bowl-shaped area and once over · the most immediate hills, the trails rapidly converge into two or three leading in various directions through the forest. While the pictures appear to have been shot over a large area, all of them co uld have been shot (an d most probably were) from on e lo cation in the middle of the parking area. A wide an gle lens was used to make one picture appear ·t o cover a vast area. Extreme sideligh ting makes trac ks and erosion scars look worse than they are. Attention is called (in the caption) to the riders incl u ded in the pictures for scale. They don't bother to note that the riders are about ten years old and riding minibikes. The caption on the lead picture states in part, "Once covered with vegetation and an amazing display of wild flowers after sustained w inter rains, the hills are now colorless and sca rre d by motorb ike use." True, that area is we ll covered by trails (but no mo re sca rred than the ea rth is "scarre d" by a ten nis court or golf co urse), bu t " co lo rless" it most certainly isn't. On the wee kend of April 22 standing in t he same position Mr. Smith was when h e too k his pic tu res, I could easily see about a dozen varieties of flowers including some that were yellow-orange, pale yellow, laven der , two different deep purple types, a ti ny blue type, a pi nkish re d variety, and an almost black carmen variety . Mr. Dick Smith is either blind or a lia r. If he had ventured away fro m his car to the top of the hill shown in the photo on page I, he would have seen acres and acres of yellow and purple flowers, along . with some substantial patches of California Poppy. In fact, he could have seen all the flowers he desired had he walked 15 minutes from his car ' in any direction! All of this, of course, is obvious to anyone who visits Ballinger Canyon, but the people fo r whom Mr. Soli en's article and Mr . Smith's pictures are intended won't visit Ballinger Canyon because they don't go outside any mo re than is necessary to get from their house to the car. They worry about wild flowers they could never see because they don't grow close to a paved hig hway. And they complai n t o legis lators abo u t th in gs abo ut which ne ither they nor the , legisla t ors h ave any compre he nsion. One of th e best ways to dealwith this so rt of nonsense is to simply stop the dishonesty at the source. Put Mr. Robert H ; Sollen and Mr. Dick Smith out of a job. If enough of yo u in the Sa n ta Ba rbara area cancel your subscriptions to the paper with a letter of explanation, you mig ht do just that. Those of you who don't subscribe can write to the editor and le t him know your views and send a co py to the publisher. The paper is the Santa Barbara News Press. T he article appeared in the April 8 edition. :l> ::D Carry it whether on your Hodaka or your 1 0 speed. The ideal way to carry your bo o ks to school or your lunch & spare p lugs o n the trail. $2.50. = n m ~ 1973 Calendar @ $2.50 Each. No__ . Hot Hats @ $ LOO Each. No_ . Stickies @ 50c Each. N o _ ... Back Bags @ $2.50 Each. No_ Total Total Total Total Print Clearly!! Total $ - - -_ Name.~ Address _ _ _ _ Z ip Code _ Send Check or Money Order. Allow To: CYCLE NEWS S tuff Two to Three Weeks For Our SomeP.O. Box 498 times Post Office. , Long Beach, Calif . 90801 "Will ya quit your bitch'n - I'll be out 'a here in a minute!"

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