[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]Slanted reporting, an egregious and commonplace journalistic crime, annoys me as much as a hard fist to the stomach.
Newspaper readers are cheated in every edition of our two favorite violators, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
The Culver City News, which has not yet been elected to the Newsboy Hall of Fame, treats its readers more fairly and with greater integrity than either the Times or the Times. And aren’t these depressing Times in which we live?
About two years ago, the Wall Street Journal — which offers too few pictures for the left to read — owned by the much-reviled Rupert Murdoch, drove around The New York Times as if the Times were comatose, which it often is, and officially became the No. 1 newspaper in America — in circulation, in purity of writing, in objectivity of writing and in clarity of writing.
I Don’t Think So
Do you think it is a coincidence that Fox News, the only fair network on television, is No. 1 by a mile in its field?
Do you think it is an accident that the Wall Street Journal is No. 1 in its field and putting space between its ranking and second place?
Do you think it is a communist plot that both offer conservative commentary but are drop-dead fair in their news reporting, clear and fair?
Mr. Murdoch owns both. Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and other wannabes can make fun of him, but let’s see them make fun of the people who put them there. Mocking is the only weapon the left brings to the negotiation table where it otherwise is routinely outmanned.
I offer you an example from The New York Times last Friday and then yesterday.
Above the fold, ostensibly the No. 2 story on the front page last Friday, the Times headlined an embarrassing report “Exotic Deals Put Denver Schools Deeper in Debt.”
The storyline was that two years ago, one Michael Bennet, superintendent of Denver public schools, coaxed his school board into a catastrophic financial scheme that has buried the school system ever since.
To Mr. Bennet’s extreme good — and quite cleverly calculated — fortune, he was able to slide out from under this monstrous gaffe by winning, would you believe, a promotion.
Well, school people operate with different mindsets than normal people.
Mr. Bennet was appointed a U.S. Senator.
Return to last week’s Times piece. Nearly book-length, the story jumped from the upper part of the front page to a full page on A15 with three pictures yet. Mugging in the largest photo at the top of the page is a fellow identified as “Senator Michael F. Bennet of Colorado,” as if every shnook on the continent knew who this obscure boob was.
Throughout this enormous and disastrous blowup, all we know about Mr. Bennet is that he is Mr. Bennet.
By golly whillikers. Our dear, devoted far left friends at the Times, gosh darned, must have forgotten to mention that Sen. Dud is a Democrat, a huge point of contention in Colorado. But a liberal reporter just can’t think of everything, especially four days before Sen. Dud is up for elecvtion in a sizzling race.
Spin forward to yesterday’s post-primary edition of the august (how timely) New York Times , and we find three screaming headlines at the top of the page:
“Incumbent Wins Democratic Vote in Colorado Race.”
“Obama’s Senate Choice.”
“Victory by Bennet Seen as Boost for President in a Critical State.”
I ask you, dear reader, will the fun never stop?
I quote from the opening of the story:
“DENVER — Despite predictions of doom for incumbents and establishment candidates this campaign season, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, a Democrat who had…”
Believe me, the balance of this horribly slanted story is puerile blather.
Oh, Times’ reporter Kirk Johnson, who used to report on the auto industry and was better at it, celebrated all through his story about what a terrifically promising Democrat Mr. Bennet has blossomed into.
Hey, Doc
I plan to sneak into the Times’s medicine cabinet tonight. I want to know what those boys on the left are smoking, sniffing or drinking that allows them to turn their memories off and on when one of their liberal toadstools does something immoral, illegal or, likelier, stupid that they don’t feel like reporting on.
These are the giant intellects who wiggle their ears at the fair and balance Journal and Fox News as they watch their rivals draw away into the sunset. As with Sarah Palin, they are green-eyed jealous.