Tom Hanson, Chaska magazine publisher, says, “The continuing problems of blatant liberal bias at the Star Tribune can be solved very simply …. Start staffing the newsroom with professional journalists instead of professional advocates.”
He sent three examples of “blatant liberal bias”:
“I checked my paper this morning [July 10] and there it was — just as the Almighty Rush had said. Condit was identified simply as a representative.”
Comment: Hanson — and Limbaugh — are right. The copy editing has been sub-standard.
The Star Tribune style for the first reference to a member of Congress is Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif. But his party was absent in four of 10 news stories. One was from the newspaper’s Washington bureau. However, it is a leap to attribute this to “liberal bias.” Condit is a conservative “Blue Dog” Democrat whose political leanings are similar to those of Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn. Neither man would be considered “liberal.”
Comment: Research/think tanks should not be described as conservative or liberal, but by their positions on issues.
On the Kyoto Protocol, a Brookings research paper said the “mechanisms within the Protocol are too complex and require too many new institutional developments to be plausible.”
On Russian relations, it said, “The conviction of Putin that only a market economy and closer links with the West will provide a basis for prosperity and international stature gives the United States substantial influence over how the fluid political situation in Russia develops.”
Those positions would stamp Brookings as center-wing, to create a phrase.
The background of Brookings executives also debunks the left-wing label. Michael Armacost, Brookings president, was ambassador to Japan under President George Bush.
Its director of foreign policy, Richard Haass, recently resigned to take a key policy position in the State Department.
Too, former Rep. Bill Frenzel, R-Minn., a confirmed centrist, has long been associated with Brookings.
Hanson said the St. Paul Pioneer Press also relied on the Washington Post, but retained a paragraph deleted in the Star Tribune:
“It would be impossible for me to comment on the substance of the report without seeing their data. But one is always skeptical of any report when it is done by one political party, and the other political party is completely excluded. However, I don’t want to discuss their findings without having seen them. They don’t sound completely unreasonable or shocking.”
Hanson said, “Too bad Star Tribune readers were not allowed to read it.”
Comment: The Star Tribune copy editor properly decided the paragraph wasn’t significantly noteworthy to warrant saying in 61 words what could be said in 18.
Growth or sprawl
The word “sprawl” in the headline over the Brookings Institution story nettled Clarkson Lindley.
It said, “Sprawl here exceeds pace of other areas.”
“Sprawl” is a negative word, Lindley contends. He’d have said “growth.”
“Sprawl is negative,” agreed Mike Pawlukiewicz, an official of the Urban Land Institute, Washington, D.C. “It tends to be a product of the automobile culture … people live, work and shop in different places.”
The report said the Twin Cities is consuming land “at a furious rate compared with cities with similar levels of population growth.”
Comment: In the context of the Brookings Institution report, sprawl was the apt word.
