Nearly daily, the regularly creamed Los Angeles Titanic and The New York Times, whose revenue and circulation have skidded to scary levels, send us unsubtle reminders about why they are shedding serious readers instead of recruiting them.
They have abandoned their mission as reliable sources for news, sinking into harshly partisan sheets as raw as the faded Nation magazine, once the respected flagship of the Left.
Almost every time a major story breaks, the Titanic and The Times divebomb, giving us only the liberal perspective in their news stories while the 100 percent reliable Wall Street Journal tells the tale objectively with utter balance. The Journal leaves opinions to the op-ed page, which is why they are the most popular newspaper in the country.
This week’s primary example: The labor union-dictated protest in financially crippled, union-dominated Wisconsin — heavily choreographed by unions who want you to believe it is a spontaneous people’s uprising — now in Day 8.
The Titanic and The Times obfuscate, distort and rant on Page 1. Their reporters not only routinely exaggerate, tilt or lie — but say flatly that Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed changes are “anti-union.” Meanwhile the Journal says “Here is what is happening from both sides.”
Hurting for money, the two struggling newspapers’ main Saturday story was written by reporters not on the scene but working in other states while the Journal offered on-scene coverage.
From Saturday’s Los Angeles Titanic story by Nicky Riccardi, one of their most fiction-conscious reporters, using a passive voice when it suits his left-wing bias:
“In Wisconsin on Friday, there was no end in sight to an impasse that paralyzed state government as Democratic legislators vowed to stay out of the state to defeat an attempt by Gov. Scott Walker to remove collective bargaining rights from government workers.”
From Saturday’s New York Times story by Michael Cooper and Kit Seelye:
“The unrest in Wisconsin this week over Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to cut the bargaining rights and benefits of public workers is spreading to other states…
“The images from Wisconsin — with its protests, shutdown of some public services and missing Democratic senators who fled the state to block a vote — evoked the Middle East more than the Midwest. The parallels raise the inevitable question: Is Wisconsin the Tunisia of collective bargaining rights?”
Facts: Aggressively avoiding context and shunning data, the Titanic appeared to lie. Both newspapers avoided revealing the governor’s plan, choosing, instead, to howl about the governor’s “assault” on labor unions. Both newspapers declined to give Mr. Walker’s numbers because that would have blown their onesided narrative.
From Saturday’s Wall Street Journal story by Douglas Belkin and Kris Maher:
“The measure would limit collective bargaining rights for most workers — except police, firefighters and others involved in public safety — and require state employees, who currently pay little or nothing toward their pensions, to contribute 5.8% of their pay to pensions, and to pay at least 12.6% of health care premiums, up from 6%.”
For added context, the Journal also reported Saturday that 5.8% and 12.6% “are roughly the national average for public pension payments and less than half of what government workers contribute to healthcare.”
Here is further context from the Journal regarding the governor, who has been portrayed each day by the Titanic and The Times as a power-mad, union-busting cowboy leading a GOP conspiracy: “Mr. Walker also wants to limit the power of public-employee unions to negotiate contracts and work rules — something that 24 states already limit or ban.”
None of these salient facts has been reported yet by the Titanic and The Times. They only have blathered about “an assault on working families” and an “anti-union” conspiracy by Republicans.
Attention, boys on the news desks at the Titanic and The Times: Shame. You are supposed to tell a rounded, fact-based story, not just your partisan side.
The Backstory
In both income and readers, the Titanic, The Times and their armies of young, demeaning, smart-aleck ideologues grimly have dropped miles behind a newspaper they all dread, the Wall Street Journal, because an entrepreneur both loathe, Rupert Murdoch, has put his genius to work again in the evening of his brilliant career. Since taking over the wheel of the almost-drifting Journal less than three years ago, the ambitious, driven Mr. Murdoch has converted the formerly bland newspaper from a quietly successful businessman’s special into a world-class all-purpose newspaper that leaves the aforementioned dethroned giants panting like a 90-year-old with Alzheimer’s.
Today’s portrait: The Titanic and The Times are lying on their perspiring backs in the middle of the boxing ring, knocked down by the lopsided, ill-serving coverage of the Wisconsin protest. Black, blue and bruised all over, they are seeing the dazed kind of stars that overweight, under-trained Palookas at the late Olympic Auditorium did in the 1960s and ‘70s while Journal coverage shines.
