This gal I know (who happens to be very, very conservative) happened by me and I asked her what she thought of Newt Gingrich's favorable view of President Obama's speech. She is a big fan of our former Speaker of the House and wants him to run for president in 2012 so I was interested in her thoughts.
She wondered where I had heard what Newt said and I told her it was in the paper (the Minneapolis Star and Tribune). She gave me the standard line about how she doesn't read the "Star and Sickle." I reminded her that the paper is now owned by an oil company and endorsed Norm Coleman last year. It's still a commie rag, she informed me quite seriously. And she wasn't going to give President Obama's speech any thought until she read about it on townhall.com
I had never heard of townhall.com so I went to check it out. On the surface, it looks like a typical conservative leaning news site with contributors like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. Fair enough. But click on a story (as I did) and you get what essentially amounts to a Sesame Street version of events. Take a look at this story.
Houston voters may elect openly gay mayor
Voters are deciding Saturday whether Houston will become the largest U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor.
The runoff election pits City Controller Annise Parker against former city attorney Gene Locke.
Parker is a lesbian who has never made a secret or an issue of her sexual orientation.
But in recent weeks, anti-gay activists and conservative religious groups have endorsed the 61-year-old Locke and sent out mailers condemning Parker's "homosexual behavior."
Meanwhile, gay and lesbian political organizations around the country have rallied to support the 53-year-old Parker.
That's it. That's the whole story. There are several other stories that are presented in the same way...3-5 paragraphs...1-2 sentences in each paragraph and that's all there is. It's basically the news (anger, hate and rage version) in an easy to swallow caplet. Even the font is larger for crying out loud!
Is this how the right gets the news that "speaks to them?" Compare their coverage of the unbelievable events in Iran to the Times' coverage.
Really?
4 comments:
Typical.
Once again, a single data point is NOT data. The article you copied is particularly short.
Furthermore, was there anything factually wrong with that particular news article? Were there any relevant and necessary facts which were omitted?
Or is your complaint really that they just stuck to the facts instead of engaging in "analysis" and "color" that you like (as in slanted hard left and cluttered with irrelevancies)?
Ed is right. You're reading into this what you want to read into it.
This is what journalism used to be. Reporting THE FACTS. Maybe we need to change the language and start bellyaching that we need more REPORTERS.
Real conservatives want nothing to do with Newt. Your gym friend is a Republican.
I'll take this woman over the "safe schools czar" any day of the week.
I don't want Kevin Jennings around my kids or making policy.
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