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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Strange Syntax, Biased Reporting |
Current rating: 0 |
by Mike Lehman
(No verified email address) |
31 Aug 2001
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Friday’s Champaign News-Gazette carried another batch of boners. |
Strange Syntax, Biased Reporting
Friday’s Champaign News-Gazette carried another batch of boners.
I almost couldn’t believe the headline wasn’t on the front page. In the World Update on page A-3 of the News-Gazette was the headline "Iraqis Attack." Ah-oh, I thought, they’re handing W the excuse he needs to distract the US public from his spending the surplus on tax breaks for the rich, his interminable vacations, and his disdain for the rest of the world’s views that more weapons will not make the world a safer place by giving W an excuse to finish the war his dad started.
Reading the article soon reassured me that the media had not broken out of its rut of manufacturing consent for the US’s brutal and inhumane continuing attack on that old ally of W’s father, Iraq. No, the Iraqis hadn’t attacked anyone, as the headline clearly suggested. They had simply been the targets once again of the day’s pounding by US aircraft. It would have made more sense say "Iraq Attacked Again" since there was plenty of room to do so, but perhaps that headline wouldn’t create the proper atmosphere to justify the aggressive US policy of bombing without end of Iraq that the article described.
Of course, the News-Gazette doesn’t simply deal in retail bias. We received a big shipment in today’s edition. On the front page was a photo of a picket line. I thought at first that the editors might have taken recent criticism of their anti-labor editorial policy to heart and decided to cover a labor dispute. I was wrong again. This wasn’t a strike and it didn’t involve a union. It was simply some small business owners protesting the monopolistic polices of the airlines in ticket pricing. I suppose they have a fair complaint from a justice point of view, but isn’t the News-Gazette always reminding us that’s the way the world is supposed to work under capitalism? I’m still waiting for their picture of an actual union picket line on the front page anywhere near Labor Day. Funny how they keep missing those union picket lines at Walmart in Savoy, isn’t it?
Then there is that picture of Rep. Tim Johnson announcing (surprise!) that he is running for reelection while in front of the statue of Lincoln in Carle Park, Urbana on page B-1. I was hoping that the News-Gazette would follow up on Johnson’s statement last night about campaign finance reform. Claiming that he was for reform and wouldn’t vote against Shays-Mehan, it appears that Johnson will sit this vote out by abstaining in the name of respecting the Speaker of the House, Highroller Dennis Hastert [see: http://urbana.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=1693]. Besides the fact that an abstention is the functional equivalent of a vote against the question at hand, Johnson’s waffle indicates that he is really an opponent of any real reform, but is too chicken-hearted to come right out and say so. There were no probing questions from the News-Gazette today on this important issue to clarify what Johnson really meant. There probably won’t be any probing questions on any other day of his campaign for reelection either.
Finally, in an editorial that further made my case about the News-Gazette’s hypocritical and unswerving bias against Democrats,
[see my previous comments (page down due to the funky server upload problem) at:]
http://urbana.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=1754
the editorial section carried the latest proof. Under the rubric of "A Fallen Star", the News-Gazette editorial board fulminated about the crooked nature of Cook County politics, as they are wont to do at the drop of a hat. Unlike the free ride on party affiliation offered to Betty Loren-Maltese when they didn’t consider her party particularly relevant to their admonitions to her in a previous editorial, the News-Gazette considered it important that you know that Jerry Genova was a Democrat.
If you’d like to know more about Betty Loren-Maltese’s administration of Republican corruption, follow the link below to the Illinois Police and Sheriff's News, which has the decency to mention that she is indeed a Republican and tight with the Governor, too. You won’t find this link in the News-Gazette either, but I guess I’m just expecting to much from the "free" press. |
See also:
http://www.ipsn.org/cicero.html
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