After revealing that Argus Leader executive editor Randell Beck simply made up the fact that the Argus Leader had covered Senator Daschle's fundraising trip to the Hamptons "at least twice," the silence at the Argus Leader is deafening. It seems no response will be forthcoming, and the AL is content to wallow in its hypocrisy and loss of credibility.
Today, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit published a piece entitled "A Media Meltdown?" that succinctly explains the problem at the Argus Leader. Excerpt:
But the real problem here, to paraphrase a Massachusetts politician who ran for President a few elections back, is not ideology, but competence.The press's neutrality has been revealed as a fiction. That might not matter if they were still better at what they did than anyone else. After all, what about all the fact-checking, the professionalism, the editors meticulously ensuring fairness and accuracy?
Yeah. What about 'em? It's tempting to point to Jayson Blair, or any of the other media scandals of the past couple of years. (Or, for that matter, to Walter Duranty). But the problem goes even deeper than that. Beyond these major scandals, a combination of laziness, bias, and complacency haunts reporting on all sorts of subjects.
Randell Beck's willingness to make up facts calls into question the entire reportage of the Argus Leader under his watch. (Recall the doctoring of an LA Times story in order to place Senator Daschle in a less negative light.) That's a worrisome thought, and as the election nears, one can observe the journalistic shortcomings of the Argus Leader that have been documented by this blog as well as others over the last 18 months.
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