Fox Television tends to do a good job reporting the news.
However an investigative report aired Tuesday night and purporting to show how some residents of the Chelsea Soldiers Home are being abused by an administration that doesn’t care, was, frankly, way off base, misleading and unlike anything we know to exist at the Soldiers Home.
We know the Soldiers Home well. We know the administrators of the Soldiers Home. We respect and admire Mike Resca, the commandant.
Nothing Fox Television showed Tuesday night changes our admiration for what Resca has been able to do with limited resources at the Soldiers Home.
Almost to a man, residents of the home support and endorse the good job Resca does running the place.
His day to day attention to the men and his consideration for their families is well known.
If the facilities here and there have hanging wires and chipping paint – this can be corrected.
What cannot be corrected is the impression given by the so-called investigative report alleging that some residents of the home are not receiving care or attention.
This is a lie and in part, a fabrication by Fox News, which uses television to its full advantage in order to shock and to cast aspersions in order to sustain higher viewer rating numbers.
As far as we are concerned, the Fox Special was an effort by the station to indict Mike Resca and the staff of the Soldiers Home and the administration that has the duty of running it.
We know the home well – better than Fox could ever hope to describe it.
We know Mike Resca and what’s more, we respect him for the great job he’s done with everyone in need who seeks out the safety of the Soldier’s Home.
Running the Chelsea Soldier’s Home and servicing veterans, many of them elderly and suffering from multiple afflictions, is not an easy task and servicing this population is not something perfectly done day to day.
Over time, however, the Chelsea Soldier’s Home remains a safe harbor for those who served and who have no family remaining or no place to go.
Fox News has done a good job of besmirching the Chelsea Soldier’s Home and the dedicated folks who are dedicated to it.
It proves that it is far easier to bring down a good institution than it is to extol it.
The Fox News report didn’t tell the whole story – not even the half of it.
Many veterans have nothing without the Chelsea Soldier’s Home.
Hurting the Home puts these men at risk one step closer to the street.
Is this what Fox Television was hoping for?
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