FL newspaper publisher rebuts professor who urged us to replace career firefighters with volunteers
The ridiculous views of Fred McChesney sure make the rounds. Since I described the former propagandist for big tobacco’s greatly flawed September column in the Washington Post as “one of the dumbest articles ever written about firefighting“, other papers have published McChesney’s views. Not that I expected anyone to listen to me over McChesney. After all, he is a professor of law and economics at the University of Miami, while I’m just some stupid fire blogger who attended the University of Oxon Hill VFD while most of my friends were in college.
In fact, the Washington Post declined to publish my rebuttal to the professor and never acknowledged that McChesney’s idea of replacing big city firefighters with volunteers is absurd. The whole thing didn’t meet the smell test and the Post opinion editors should have apologized for running something so poorly researched. The only explanation I can come up with for the Post publishing such crap is McChesney also took a shot at fire based EMS. The editorial board at the Post was a big supporter of former DC fire chief Kenneth Ellerbe and his views that firefighters were the problem with EMS in the Nation’s Capital.
Click here to read column by Brian Burns
While the Post refuses to acknowledge the hatchet job by McChesney, or publish an opposing view (other than a letter to the editor), The Tampa Tribune, another newspaper that ran the Post column, has printed a rebuttal. This new column comes from a former firefighter named Brian Burns. Burns also happens to be the publisher of The Tampa Tribune.
Click here to read the column “Brian Burns: Commentary questioning use of career firefighters ‘personal for me’” and then take a moment to thank Brian Burns for his nice thoughts.
