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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Why Can't The News-Gazette Take Its Own (Cartoon) Advice? |
Current rating: 0 |
by Mike Lehman
(No verified email address) |
23 Aug 2001
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The News-Gazette proves once again that the advice they hand out to others does not necessarily apply to them.
If you preach, you ought to obey the sermon. |
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Drat That Lousy Cut-And-Paste, Here's It Is |
by Mike Lehman
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
23 Aug 2001
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The Wed., Aug. 22 classified section of the News-Gazette carried the usual "Mallard Fillmore" cartoon. At least they place this democratically-impaired duck where he really belongs, with the used cars and less-than-Living-Wage jobs that make up a major part of the ads in this section of the paper.
Mallard, in that day’s set of panels, is his usual preachy self, fulminating about the "liberal press", never mind the fact that study after study demonstrates that the US press is, in the main, dominated by reactionary and conservative owners, publishers, and editors, the News-Gazette being an excellent case in point itself. Chastising the press for their "liberal bias", Mallard whines about the fact that, with his massive overexposure in the press (not incidentally due to rabid right-wing moralizing in the alleged "liberal" press), it is no longer necessary to mention US Rep. Gary Condit's Democratic Party affiliation most of the time. Mallard thinks there is some sort of deep, liberal conspiracy about this. Goodness gracious Mallard, do you think there is actually more than a handful of people in the country that are not aware of this fact by now?
A couple of examples of similarly biased reporting come immediately to mind. The first is the very edition of the paper that carried Mallard's misanthropic complaint. On page A-3 is a story about a top aide to Montana Governor Judy Martz being charged with negligent homicide in a drunken driving accident which killed Montana House Majority Leader Paul Sliter as Martz was driving them home from an (apparently booze-laden) dinner outside of Helena. There are such details as Martz's BAL (0.15, or 50% higher than Montana's legal limit of 0.10). Nowhere in this story is a salient fact (at least according to Mallard), the party to which all these public officials belong-the REPUBLICAN Party-mentioned. See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010821/aponline204818_000.htm
Sure, that News-Gazette article is from a wire service. It even appears to be the exact same AP article at the link above, but with a strategic cut that eliminates "Republican" from the article. Sure, maybe it was a question of space or hasty editing and the N-G didn't even write it. Not enough to say the N-G has an inherent bias every bit as bad as the one that Mallard alleges of the "liberal" press you say?
Let me take you back a month or so (sorry I didn't feel like digging to find the date) when the News-Gazette ran a editorial, written by their own editorial board, that lambasted the endemic corruption up north in Cook County. This referred to the arrests of the mayor of Cicero and a number of associates on racketeering and tax evasion charges. The editorial held this affair up as typical of Chicago area politics and the stench of corruption that surrounds the area. The typical conservative News-Gazette reader would probably assume that the whole thing can be blamed on the corrupt Chicago Democratic Party machine, based on the slant that the N-G often gives to its news, one which preaches that everything political around Chicago is corrupt and everything south of I-80 is the home of down-to-earth honest Republicans. In this case, the mislead reader would be wrong. The News-Gazette editorial, harsh and uncompromising in its tone, conveniently leaves out a very relevant fact-the Mayor of Cicero and her apparent partners in crime are REPUBLICAN.
Ahhhh, but do News-Gazette readers really need that fact to make up their mind about what to think about Chicago-area politics? Apparently the News-Gazette editorial board didn't think so. Maybe they should ask Mallard next time they make any weighty political decisions. Maybe he'd do the right thing, but, if he's anything like most Republican-dominated editorial boards (which is the majority of newspaper editorial boards in the country, despite all the quacking about "liberal" press bias), what's sauce for the goose, is usually NOT sauce for the duck. |
