It’s hard to tell where the professionalism day where employees are paid by taxes ends and recreational time where things may be portrayed differently begins. Sometimes it’s even difficult to tell whether something is ‘official’ and represents the actions, functions and decisions of the officials and employees representing the taxpayers, or whether it’s just a similar sounding Facebook group name to make you think it’s official.
There’s one Facebook Group that sounds like it would include everything that happens in Monmouth County, talking about the great events offered here, as well as highlighting unusual photos or historic happenings that might not make history books but do bring smiles and happy memories to many residents. It’s a great sight, full of information, and fun to read.
So why would it decline a story about the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Highlands? Here’s a little town that has gone above and beyond with bringing in bands both locally, county wide, and even out of state, along with its own terrific Henry Hudson Regional School band, together with floats, dancers, military, cadets from MAST and so much more from in and around Monmouth County. Yet a story giving the time, location and some background on it was rejected as not good enough, I suppose. There was a photo of four young Naval officers all celebrating getting through their first school to be naval aviators. That was rejected.
Then there was another really nice story about the hardworking Atlantic Highlands Public Works employees, and praise for a councilman who not only knows how great they are, but rode that awful trip on the truck to the dump one day just so he can tell the town some of the inconveniences and pains the workers go through daily to be sure they are appreciated even more. But that, too, wasn’t good enough to be included as a story on one Facebook page.
Perhaps the administrators don’t like to see anything negative on their page and that could be the reason why so many stories on the delays and frustrations of the public aren’t included about school regionalization in the Bayshore. Neither was a story on the cannabis applications going on in Highlands.
There are other stories I send that make it to most Facebook Groups. The story on the Guinness Run another Irish festivity was posted for a while. Then it was removed. Another one of those regionalization stories was up for a while before it, too, was removed. OK, so maybe a memory of a journalist remembering a personal meeting with President Jimmy Carter as he lay dying isn’t really a story of great interest to many. But it did get on one page for a while. Then, for no apparent reason, that was removed.
To its credit, there were many stories Facebook Groups included from this writer. There were stories on the Atlantic Highlands Employee of the month, well deserved, another on Commissioner Lillian Burry, a fine lady, and another on other peoples’ memories of the late and great Jim Truncer who helped make Monmouth County so incredibly wonderful with all its parks. All stories that drew a lot of interest and many comments.
Then there are several Facebook Groups that I guess, once they see it’s a story I’ve written, they simply eliminate it all together. In fact, they ban me from the page! The ban a writer who has never written an offensive word, an untruth, scandalous story, or libel. Yet I am banned and nothing I write can make it to a page, be it one read by a dozen or so people or one read by hundreds.
So with the stories posted, the stories posted and removed, and the stories downright declined and tossed … what exactly makes the difference in deciding what goes on some Facebook groups.
I don’t know much about the design of these groups, nor how these decisions are made. But I know that every page has administrators.
On several of Facebook groups, the administrators are elected officials, politicians, hangers-on trying to impress a powerful politician, or paid government employees at every level.
Which gets me back to my first statement…how does one know whether content on these Facebook groups are decided by politicians who just want to get a point across or down right nice folks who just want to spread the word about good things happening, events in the offing, or history of a great county and state?
There doesn’t seem to be any law against conflict of interest when it comes to Facebook.
In either case, I will never understand why any administrator, be he politician or plain old resident, would turn down a story about an American hero, a recipient of the highest award given to any military member, the Congressional Medal of Honor, a recipient who has had a school in Monmouth County named for him.
Accurate and complete as it is, I would hate to think was declined for a Facebook group simply because the administrators don’t like the writer
