I'm back. Yayyy, as Special Ed from the the Comedy Central show "Crank Yankers" would say.
So I flip open the New York Times on Saturday and, much to my pleasant surprise, notice a big picture of the Corn Palace in Mitchell, above the headline "McGovern, Once Again, Is Getting Respect at Home." The piece discusses the planned George and Eleanor McGovern Library and Center for Public Service at Dakota Wesleyan University, where McGovern once taught.
Can you believe the Argus Leader didn't have on the front page (A1) the purportedly historical and "unprecedented" visit to South Dakota by a Senate leader campaigning against another Senate leader? I'm referring, of course, to Dr. Frist's visit to South Dakota on Saturday. Worse, the AL failed to report on a very interesting proposal by Frist for unmanned aircraft at Ellsworth Air Force Base. By way of comparison, the Rapid City Journal billed the Frist visit as its top story on Sunday, and reported the unmanned aircraft development.
The AL story on the Frist visit is a one-two punch of bias. First, the Frist story is buried in the B section of the paper, and second, the story omits the umanned aircraft development. The burial of the story is the editor's decision, and I think I'm on to something when I discuss the likelihood of institutional bias at the AL. DVT has more HERE, and also shares a remarkable e-mail received from a reporter who is now convinced that the AL is a partisan pamphlet, due to the burial of the Frist story, as well as what the Frist story did NOT report.
In digesting AL executive editor Randell Beck's latest serving of cheap shots and straw man arguments, I couldn't help but take issue with the following text:
Before I proceed, let me say what you already know: Americans are deeply divided about our role in Iraq. And, as often happens in these cases, folks on both sides, unable or unwilling to distinguish the message from the messenger, have turned on the media as A) the willing dupe of those who would destroy our country; or B) the willing dupe of those who would pull us into another Vietnam.
The AL is Tom Daschle's messenger. The AL delivers Tom Daschle's messages. As observed in Sunday's paper, the AL generally does not report, or buries, information that is damaging to Tom Daschle. Conversely, the AL blares Daschle's message on the front page when an event reflects positively on Tom Daschle. With the AL, the problem is not that people are unable or unwilling to distinguish between the message and the messenger; it is simply a fact the message and the messenger are indistinguishable.
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