The official figure of economic growth was revised upwards to 5.3% for last quarter – a blistering pace. And where was this tidbit of information – why, on page 3 of the business section in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Any guess about where it would have been if a Democrat was President? Mine is above the fold front page.
Posts Tagged Post-Dispatch
No Bias Here
May 26
Clarity From The Post
May 19
As regular readers (the both of you) know, I often jump on the Editorial page the of St. Louis Post Dispatch with both feet. But my hat’s off to them today, they got it right:
“It is tempting to point out the Bush administration’s credibility on Iraq and the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib is also suspect. It is especially tempting after the White House high-handedly told Newsweek “it would help to point . . . out” that military has procedures for respecting the Quran.
But trying to shift blame back onto the White House doesn’t further the pursuit of the truth. Nothing the White House does or doesn’t do absolves the media of responsibility for its errors.”
Of course, they did manage to slip in a moment of cluelessness amonst the clarity:
“Journalists must face the fact that the failings of the Times, USA Today, CBS and now Newsweek have made an already skeptical public deeply suspicious of everything they read and see in the mainstream media. Many cynics say they find more truth in the unsubstantiated rantings in the blogosphere than the careful reportage on the front page of the daily newspaper. That breach of trust could prove deadly to journalism and damaging to democracy.”
How much careful reportange is there on the front page of the daily newspaper anymore? That’s the question, and it’s increasingly being answered with very little. How much unsubstantiated rantings in the blogosphere is there? Plenty, but there is plenty on most editorial and op-ed pages too, and there seems to be more careful reportage and substantiated opinion in the blogosphere than in MSM these days.
I long for a paper I can read and trust, but I can’t buy one today. The problem is simple — they’ve become hollow organizations that just don’t have the processes in place to deliver that kind of quality. You will always have mistakes, yes even among American troops in wartime, but what you don’t always have are the systems in place to minimize and correct those mistakes. And it seems that most of the people in the business don’t even realize there’s a problem, let alone what it is. But at least for today the Post Editorial staff gets it.
I about had a heart attack this morning – the St. Louis Post Dispatch editorialized about the concealed carry law that:
“It would be wonderful if the law were unconstitutional, as Judge Steven R. Ohmer says it is. But it’s hard to read the Missouri Constitution that way without a lot of wishful thinking.”
This is the same editorial board that supported common crook and high handed Speaker of the Missouri House Bob Griffin because he was a staunch supporter of abortion on demand. I have to say it’s great that despite their repeating the claim that concealed carry “is the road to hell” and is “an abomination” (hey, aren’t these the people who hate it when right wingers speak in that kind of language?) they have the intellectual honesty to admit that it isn’t unconstitutional (if they would only do the same about Roe vs. Wade, I really would have a heart attack).
I don’t care that much about concealed carry, but I went from an opponent to a supporter when I looked at the data. It doesn’t lead to shootouts in the streets, people killed over nothing, and an increase in crimes of passion. I don’t think it does much to lower the crime rate, either, though. But what it does do is allow the average citizen, and most importantly the single mom living in a lousy neighboorhood, the ability to choose a firearm as a method to protect herself. That’s me, pro-choice when it really is a choice.
Kevin Vs. The Post
Sep 23
The Saint Louis Post Dispatch is St. Louis’ only major daily newspaper. It’s not a very good paper, and tilts alarmingly to the left (though many a leftist also dislikes it). While I would have canceled my subscription long ago, the Other Fearless Leader has informed me that because we save more in coupons from the paper than we spend on it, we are not cancelling. Tightwad that I am, I have complied. At the last Midwest Blogbash, the idea of a PostWatch site was discussed and quickly dismissed because somebody would have to actually read it reguarly.
This morning over my breakfast, I felt compelled to write a couple of letters to people at the post. The first was over an article about the drop in City homicides. I sent the following letter:
I’m glad to read that homicide is down across the St. Louis Metro area. I found it odd that the focus of the article was on the city of St. Louis when, as you relate in the last quarter of the article, it showed one of the lowest homicide rate decreases. I suppose it is to be expected that the police and prosecutors pat themselves on the back, but it isn’t clear that the other jurisdictions are doing the same thing as the city and thus it isn’t clear that the undoubtedly fine police and prosecutorial work is the cause. Perhaps a follow up article could shed more light on this.
That’s right, the article was all about how the City of St. Louis had a big drop in homicides, had quotes from prosecutors saying what a great job the prosecutors were doing and how the locals and feds were cooperating, had quotes from the police about how their aggressive police work was paying off. And then at the end they let on that St. Louis County had a larger drop in the homicide rate, along with the all the neighboring counties in Missouri. No back pats for these guys, though.
Then, a headline for a front page article set me off (I can’t give a URL for that because the miserable Post website only puts selected articles on the net), and here’s my letter for that one:
I noticed on today’s front page a sub heading about the suicide bombing in Iraq says “attacks across nation intensify”. In what way have they intensified? Are they more frequent, more deadly, involve larger numbers of attackers? Given that it is over an article about a repeat bombing that wasn’t as bad as the first one, it seems to be particularly inappropriate. I’ve been reading that the attacks have been intensifying ever since early May, shortly after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations. This is odd, since just before the intensification process started we were fighting a major war. I have yet to see a chart showing the intensity of combat versus time in Iraq, yet many media outlets tell me over and over that the attacks have intensified. Quite frankly, not only is it not supported by anything in the article, I don’t think it’s supported by the facts in Iraq. Please keep the headline(s) closer to the facts of the article.
I’m sure I’ll get a nice email blah blah blah but nothing will change. The Post gives me a choice – either get my news off the net, or get my news from late night talk hosts.
UPDATE: No replies to my email so far, but Andrew Sullivan linked to an oped in the NYT that claims attacks have declined from an average of 25 a day in July to about 15 a day today – still too many, but certainly refutes the claim of “intensifying attacks”.
