If I wanted my news "fair and balanced" I'd watch Fox or CNN, both channels decidedly coming down on opposite ends of the political spectrum while protesting that they don't. Where I didn't expect to find biased reporting was on the front page of a newspaper, further exacerbated by the fact that the article was an Associated Press feed.
The culprit The San Diego Union-Tribune and under the Wednesday, December 12, 2012 front page, above the fold headline "Michigan OKs Ban on Mandatory Payments to Unions" comes this codswallop:
Lansing Michigan
Over the chants of thousands of angry protesters, Republican lawmakers made Michigan a right-to-work state Tuesday, dealing a devastating defeat to organized labor in a place that been a bastion of the movement for generations.
The GOP-dominated House ignored Democrat's plans to delay the final passage and instead approved two bills with the same ruthless efficiency that the Senate showed last week...
"thousands of angry protesters"
"devastating defeat to organized labor"
"bastion of the movement"
"ruthless efficiency"
Hmmmm, any question on what side of the issue reporters John Flesher and Jeff Karoub support?
And you'd think from these glistening pearls of journalistic pap that the Michigan House and Senate had gutted unions, making them illegal to operate, or decertifying them. Nope, here's what the bills did, and this from the sidebar to the article: It isn't about the right to work but rather a right for workers to choose whether they want to join a union or pay fees similar to union dues. The legislation prohibits what are known as "closed shops", where workers have no choice but to join a union.
Giving workers a choice. Wow, that kind of sounds like America.
But now on to the continuing irrelevance of the newspaper.
I am exactly the kind of guy that should be holding on to my newspaper until you pry it from my cold, dead hands. I'm a bit past middle-age, an inveterate reader, and actually believed that I could get straight reporting from the pages of the local fish wrapper. Sure, if I wanted an opinion I know where to go...it's called the Opinion-Editorial Page (not the front page, people! Sorry, mild rant.)
But the sachems of the newspaper keep gutting the content. Once the Union-Tribune boasted a Books section, 8-pages of reviews, news items, lists, and recommendations. Local authors were featured and local reviewers featured prominently, especially the late Bob Wade, whose "Spadework" monthly column was an anticipated event for anyone who loves mysteries and thrillers. Gone. Barely two pages, with an increasing number of reviews reprinted from other sources.
Even the funny papers have fallen on hard times. They literally shrunk the comics. You need a microscope to enjoy "Bizarro", that quirky one-panel comic with its hidden pies, upside-down birds, firecracker, etc.
Is is also too much to ask that the newspaper know its reader? San Diego is and has been a Navy town. Yet the sports section carried not a single photo from last Saturday's Army-Navy Game.
And then there is the content, drifting more into a print version of "Hollywood Tonight". I could give a rat's ass about Brad and Angelina, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, any of the Kardashians, ad nauseum.
Is it any wonder we are becoming a nation of ignoramuses? Where the hell do we go to get the news?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The other less pertinent question might be. "what do we wrap our fish n chips in?"
Here in the UK we recently had the Leversken enquiry into newspaper reporters illegal hacking of phones in order to get that unique story or insider celebrity pish that readers want. Apparently. Well no longer from "News of the World" publications. No wrap there! The right to freedom of speech is something we in the west should all cherish, but, with that comes the responsibility of good and balanced journalism to inform and hopefully quell the numbers of ignoramuses.
Pappy,
We get our news, increasingly, from a handful of legitimate national papers (NYT, WashPost, and WSJ will one day be all that's left) and, of course, the internet.
The problem, of course, is that it's far easier to luxuriate in an echo chamber of like-minded ideologues than ever before. Sure, you could subscribe to NRO back in the day, but your local paper was probably fairly bias-free. Adios to that.
But the worst bit? Even when a publication dares to point out that a candidate lied through his teeth in a debate, that publication is called out for "bias." Heaven forbid papers should fact check and report that. Instead, let's hear how Romney's provably wrong statement plays with Ohio Latinas. That's the sort of inside-baseball horseshit I need.
Post a Comment