Mark Reardon Says Pointing Out Inequalities Is "Class Envy" and "Jealousy"

The Post-Dispatch included an excellent editorial today pointing out the fact that sales of luxury items, such as $2,500 boots and $1,500 face cream, have been increasing even while 17% of Americans are living in poverty during a brutal economic period. The whole editorial is excellent, so I hope your read it, but here's a small sampling:

So for the sake of the economy and, especially, for the men and women working the selling floors of luxury retailers and the showrooms and service departments of expensive automobile brands, we all should hope that the latest spasms of the stock market don't scare upscale Americans into tucking away their Amex black cards.

At the same time, we can't help noticing how far removed a Mercedes S-class sedan is — for gas savings, consider the S400 Hybrid, starting at $91,000 — from Americans who don't know if they'll have a job next week.

We think about families who have no option but to keep squeezing miles out of aging cars that are just a paycheck away from being unfixable — AAA (the auto association) reported this week that a quarter of all Americans couldn't afford a $2,000 car repair bill if they were faced with it.

We imagine couples now living on one income instead of two, worried about meeting the payments of adjustable-rate mortgages. We know middle-aged, middle-class parents who've lived modestly and saved responsibly and wonder from semester to semester if there will still be federal Pell grants and subsidized loans to allow their kids to stay in college.

But of course pointing out the fact that there are economic inequalities rankled KMOX's Mark Reardon, who claimed that it was nothing but "class envy:"


Great to know that such caring and thoughtful people are given their own radio shows. I'm sure it's because Mark Reardon is just so much more intelligent and works so much harder than all of the people who live in poverty, right?

The Case Against Bogus "Correction"

Big Journalism is demanding that the Post-Dispatch issue a correction for their most report about the despicable Dana Loesch/Andrew Breitbart smear campaign against UMSL and UMKC. Here is the paragraph Big Journalism takes issue with:

This isn't the first controversy created by Breitbart's heavy editing of videos. In another recent incident, a U.S. Agriculture Department employee was fired over what appeared to be a racist remark made in a speech. It was later revealed that the edited video left out a part of her speech that explained her comment as being part of a lesson on racial healing.

Big Journalism falsely claims that Breitbart actually did include the "redemptive tale" of Sherrod in his full video, because he included the following quote:

Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help.

They conveniently left out the next two sentences of Breitbart's post:

But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

So, again, Breitbart is trying to frame this as Sherrod actually being racist. In fact, he referred to her actions as racist multiple times in his initial post and in his interviews on the subject, including one with Dana Loesch. Furthermore, Breitbart's claim that he captured the "redemptive tale" simply by including a snippet of her referring the farmer to "one of his own kind" is completely false. In fact, Breitbart left out the crucial portion of the redemptive tale where Sherrod describes the great lengths she went to in order to help save the white farmers farm:

SHERROD: So, everything was going along fine -- I'm thinking he's being taken care of by the white lawyer, then they lift the injunction against USDA in May of '87 for two weeks and he was one of 13 farmers in Georgia who received a foreclosure notice. He called me. I said, well, go on and make an appointment at the lawyer. Let me know when it is and I'll meet you there.

So we met at the lawyer's office on the day they had given him. And this lawyer sat there -- he had been paying this lawyer, y'all. That's what got me. He had been paying the lawyer since November, and this was May. And the lawyer sat there and looked at him and said, "Well, y'all are getting old. Why don't you just let the farm go?" I could not believe he said that, so I said to the lawyer -- I told him, I can't believe you said that. I said: It's obvious to me that he cannot file a Chapter 12 bankruptcy to stop this foreclose, you have to file an 11. And the lawyer said to me, I'll do whatever you say -- whatever you think -- that's the way he put it. But he's paying him. He wasn't paying me any money. You know, so he said -- the lawyer said he would work on it.

And then, about seven days before that man would have been sold at the courthouse steps, the farmer called me and said the lawyer wasn't doing anything. And that's when I spent time there in my office calling everybody I could think so to try to see -- help me find the lawyer who would handle this.

The white farmer in question later told CNN that Sherrod had saved his farm.

Dana Loesch and the Big sites caught caught in a despicable, dishonest smear campaign, and now they're doing everything they can to try to distract and change the subject. Don't let them do it.

Post-Dispatch's False Notion of "Neutrality" Contributes to Demise of Journalism

The Post-Dispatch has a full-length article today about the Breitbart smear attacks on UMSL. The author Tim Barker says that academic freedom is at the heart of the dispute, and I agree that it certainly is an important consideration here and applaud Barker for emphasizing this point. Professors at American universities have advocated for all kinds of controversial positions, pro-union and anti-union, communist and libertarian, pro-life and pro-choice. Professors at American universities have also advocated for using torture against political prisoners, for the death penalty, and have argued that we should go to war to protect our political interests even when our country is under no threat from others. So yes, academic freedom is a central part of the American higher education system, and the right-wing's attempt to single out and suppress views on the liberal side of the spectrum is disgusting and stands opposed to the idea of free speech that they pretend to care about.

However, this particular case is about more than just academic freedom. This is about Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch continuing their pattern of blatantly distorting video to put words into people's mouths as part of a systematic attack on all of the institutions they don't like. They lied and claimed that Judy Ancel told her class that "Violence is a tactic. It's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic." In fact, as was clearly revealed in the longer videos, Ancel was quoting a character in a movie. They chopped of a quote from Don Giljim after the word "and...." and added a completely new sentence to the end to claim that he was advocating industrial sabotage. In fact, as was clearly revealed in the longer videos, he explicitly said that such tactics are "counterproductive" in the segments chopped out by Breitbart. Yet, the Post-Dispatch fundamentally fails to point out these blatant lies and distortions, and instead settles with quoting some people who said the videos were taken out-of-context and saying, "Other sites, including Mediamatters.org, have since published their own pieces attacking Breitbart's work."

The problem is that Media Matters didn't just "attack" Breitbart's work; they released video that showed it to be completely false. And it is not a matter of subjective interpretation whether the videos were edited out-of-context; if you chop off a person's sentence to say something different than what it actually said, you have thereby falsely presented their views. These are not matters of interpretation where you can settle for getting quotes.

I understand the notion of "neutrality" at work in the Post-Dispatch's article. They don't want to be accused of "bias," so instead of showing the longer videos or simply saying that Breitbart's videos were distorted, they'd rather get quotes from both sides. Such is the idea of "neutrality" that is one of the central flaws of modern journalism; they divorce themselves from an objective reality where there are these strange things called "facts," and instead settle for a world in which neutrality always means halfway between two positions, no matter how closely those positions align with the real world. Thus if Breitbart claims that Giljim is secretly a member of Al Qaeda who's been training in Yemen for the past 50 years, and Giljim releases video documenting his time in the St. Louis region for the past 50 years, the modern "neutral" reporter just gets quotes from both sides and calls it a day.

But not only is this notion of neutrality fundamentally flawed as it denies the existence of facts about the world, it also is inherently contradictory. As Barker (the author of this piece) decides to write a story, he has to commit to standards of journalism and reporting that guide his work. He knows that he can't simply chop up people's quotes and rearrange their words to make it appear that they said something that they really didn't. His commitment to standards of journalism makes him fundamentally not neutral when it comes to the practice of reporting. Barker cannot be "neutral" as to whether it's OK to distort quotes or not, because being neutral on that question would mean that he's a terrible reporter, which he's not.


So once he's staked out a position on the practices of honest journalism, he also can no longer be neutral on what it is that Breitbart's minions do. They engage in the very practices that Barker has to reject in order to be a good reporter. They violate the trust of the people who listen to them and willfully manipulate their beliefs to push a particular political agenda. Barker, as someone who cares about the practice of journalism, can not coherently apply the false notion of "neutrality" to what Breitbart does because, by doing so, he would be rejecting his own standards.

Furthermore, Breitbartism is a competitor to the kind of journalism that Barker and the Post-Dispatch practice. Breitbart makes no bones about the fact that he's trying to make his style of journalism the norm for the right. So he has declared war on legitimate reporters like those who work at the Post-Dispatch, and would be happy to destroy them. And as long as the Post-Dispatch fails to stand up for their standards of journalism by (legitimately) criticizing liars and smear-merchants, they are allowing dishonest characters to continue to erode the idea of "journalism."

Like the USDA during the Sherrod scandal, like NPR, and now like UMSL, the Post-Dispatch is trying to remain neutral with people who have ultimately declared war on them. The continue to try to avoid short-term controversy by failing to call out liars. But these minor short-term reprieves are ultimately meaningless, because the longer they continue to empower people who are fundamentally opposed to the type of honest reporting the Post practices, the more they are ensuring their own demise.

Post-Dispatch Transcribes Breitbart Smear While Videos Prove Exact Opposite

Sadly, Tim Barker at the Post-Dispatch dutifully transcribed a smear job from professional con man Andrew Breitbart today by linking to Big Government and failing to point out that the videos were edited to create completely false narratives:

He has been under fire along with a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City for their teaching of a shared class dealing with labor unions, politics and society. The issue popped up after the biggovernment.com website published a pair of videos edited from some 30 hours or classroom lectures.

Unbelievably, despite the fact that I sent Barker links to videos that prove that Big Government was lying as early as Monday, Barker does not say a word about the blatantly dishonest edits from Big Government. For example, Big Government (and Dana Loesch) repeatedly claimed that Judy Ancel told the class "Violence is a tactic. It's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic," while the full videos clearly showed that she was quoting a person from the movie At the River I Stand to promote class discussion. Her full quote:

ANCEL: The one guy in the film, one of the guys who had been one of the young, um, SNCC types, said

[crosstalk]

-- he represented the kind of thinking that went into this student on the coordinating committee and then later probably -- well, coinciding with the Black Panthers. You know, he said violence is a tactic and it's to be used when it's appropriate, when it's an appropriate tactic. Whether -- they never come back to him to ask him what he thought of the window-smashing in that march or whether or not that was done by them or others or provocateurs. We don't know that.

Why do so many modern day reporters find it so difficult to simply point out the truth?

Nixon Should Veto The Prop B Repeal, For St. Louis and Missouri

I was thinking of writing a post pointing out that a lot of people in St. Louis have been frustrated with Governor Nixon and that a good way for him to show that he's committed to our city and not only to the rural parts of the state would be to veto the recent bill rolling back the voter approved Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, but it looks like the Post-Dispatch editorial board beat me to the punch:

Mr. Nixon should veto the bill....

Missouri’s rural lawmakers — mostly Republicans — do a disservice to the value of elections when they override the will of the voters and send a message that voters’ opinions don’t matter. It undermines their credibility when they say, as Rep. Tom Loehner, R-Koeltztown, and others have, that city voters didn’t know what they were passing and that they don’t understand agriculture.

Indeed, city voters understood the issue well. They understood that every time a rogue puppy mill was shut down, their shelters in the cities and suburbs took in scores, if not hundreds, of malnourished, abused puppies left to die by scofflaws who flouted the law with a lack of human decency. They also understood that the measure had nothing to do with farm animals.

I know that the desire to appease the rural parts of the state make this a tough political decision for Nixon's people, but there's really an simple idea to appeal to in order to defend a veto: respecting the will of the voters. The current legislature has been going nuts trying to roll back every voter approved initiative that clashes with their extreme views. But while people in rural areas might disagree with a Nixon decision to veto the bill, could they really have any serious argument against the simple idea of protecting a bill that state voters approved? Nixon should do the right thing and not throw St. Louis, puppies, and the majority of voters in the state under the bus for cynical political expediency.

For more on this issue, please read Shelley's excellent response to the the Post-Dispatch editorial. Also, you can contact Nixon's campaign about this here.

Peter Kinder's Problems In a Nutshell

Here's the short version of the excellent investigative reporting on Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder by Jake Wagman:

The Lt. Governor is only supposed to spend taxpayer money on activities that are essential for performing his official duties:

According to Missouri regulations, the state government will foot the bill for travel only if "limited to those expenses authorized and essential for transacting official business of the state."

But the "official duties" of the Lt. Governor are pretty limited:

The governor, the state's chief executive, also has broad responsibilities under the state constitution. The lieutenant governor's role is more prescribed. In addition to serving as senior citizens' advocate, he is the tie-breaking vote in the state Senate, heads the line of succession to replace the governor and sits on several economic development boards.

Kinder used taxpayer money to stay at hotels when he was in town for things like tea party rallies (where he was introduced as "our next Governor") and baseball games:

Kinder has billed the state three times to attend events organized by Tea Party groups, which have criticized government spending. On April 15, when he spoke at Tea Party events in St. Louis and St. Charles counties, Kinder charged taxpayers $118 to stay at the Chase and $28 for dinner at Oceano in Clayton.

When the Cardinals were in the World Series in 2006, Kinder billed taxpayers to stay at the Chase so he could attend an invitation-only party thrown by Major League Baseball at the City Museum.

On the night before the 2009 Cardinals opener, invoices from Kinder's office show he billed taxpayers to stay the night at the Chase. While his expense report lists no events for the day, according to Ethics Commission filings, an Anheuser-Busch lobbyist gave Kinder a $150 ticket to the game.

Later in 2009, Kinder spent three nights at the Chase - costing taxpayers $357 - the week that baseball's All-Star Game was held in St. Louis.

In fact, Kinder provided no reasons whatsoever for many of his taxpayer-funded stays:

More than two dozen times since 2006, Kinder billed taxpayers for hotel stays when no official events appeared on expense reimbursement forms or invoices. Kinder's office says his "schedule often excludes appointments and meetings that are made while he is traveling" or that he schedules himself.

Kinder also refused comment for the story:

Kinder, a Republican who is widely expected to run for governor next year, declined to be interviewed for this story. "I'm not talking to you," Kinder told a reporter before hanging up the phone

Kinder says he didn't do anything wrong. But if that's true, then why did he decide to rent an apartment in St. Louis using campaign funds, rather than taxpayer funds, only after the story broke? As Sean asks, why didn't Kinder do this a long time ago? And, of course, all of this is made much worse by the fact that Kinder has frequently criticized the travel of Governor Nixon and continuously accuses Democrats of wasting taxpayers' money.

Only the Post-Dispatch...

The Post-Dispatch writes one, count it, one single article about Peter Kinder staying in St. Louis hotels over 300 nights on the taxpayer dime at a cost of more than $35,000 and already one of their editors is now lamenting that the paper has treated Kinder unfairly. The Post-Dispatch wrote over 10 articles about Senator McCaskill's plane problems, including two in the "lede position" according to editor Ronald Wade, yet Wade somehow comes to the conclusion that Kinder is getting "harsher treatment" than McCaskill. Absolutely pathetic! Why don't they just make Phyllis Schlafly the editor of the paper and get it over with?

Fortunately, though, Wade left us his email address: rwade@post-dispatch.com Please send him a polite email and tell him not to apologize for reporting unpleasant facts about Republicans, especially since the paper just spend the last two weeks writing negative stories about Senator McCaskill, continually coming up with flimsy excuses to write the same story over and over.

Update: Looking at it again, perhaps I've been a little harsh. My interpretation of Wade's article as being apologetic hinges on this sentence:

To paraphrase one commenter, Kinder's behavior -- "slime-ball" but legal -- appears to have gotten far harsher treatment than the "slime-ball" illegal behavior of Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Now, I think in normal usage if I say something like, "It's a rough year to be a Cardinals fan. To paraphrase Gordon, they're soft at third base," then most people would understand me as agreeing that the Cardinals are soft at third base. Thus, I read the quoted sentence as suggesting that the editor agreed with the commenter. However, applying the principal of charity, I believe that sentence might also be interpreted as "One commenter said Kinder got harsher treatment." So I think the best way to read the post is probably as simply asking a question, rather than as agreeing with the right-wing comment brigade. Now I personally believe that the Post-Dispatch should stand up for Jake Wagman's reporting on Kinder rather than meekly asking a question; but, given the current reporting ethos of balance-as-getting-quotes-from-both-sides-rather-than-standing-up-for-the-facts, I can see why they'd be hesitant to do so.

Props To The Post-Dispatch

I've been pretty critical of St. Louis Post-Dispatch political reporting recently, but I'm happy to say that there have been several recent events that suggest that they may be bringing better balance and accuracy into their stories. First, I recently complained that the Post's website included an article about a puny 200 person tea party rally in Washington D.C., though they had previously ignored a 4,300 person union rally in St. Louis. After a Twitter exchange with an employee I posted the following update:

The Post-Dispatch Weatherbird suggests that AP articles automatically feed into the site:

It would be a little strange to me if there was no selection process whatsoever for which articles appear on their national news section, but perhaps this is accurate. However, this clearly would not be a good excuse for them deciding to run the story in the print edition tomorrow.

Well, it looks like the print edition got it right. In fact, it included the following passage in the story about the budget (h/t Hotflash at Show Me Progress):

Congressional leaders are inching closer to a deal on how much to cut federal spending for the next six months.

They seem to be pretty much ignoring the spending-cut absolutists of the Tea Party, the grass-roots movement that's losing influence despite having helped elect dozens of Republicans last November.

Tea Party activists had hoped to send a loud message Thursday to Republican lawmakers, telling them at a long-scheduled Capitol Hill rally either to stick to tough budget-slashing principles or face the movement's wrath.

Instead, only a few hundred people showed up.

I'm not sure I agree with this analysis since it seems to me that the House Republicans are paying far too much attention to the tea party given how much their "movement" has dissipated, but I appreciate the Post-Dispatch at least using an article that acknowledged the fact that the rally was overhyped and largely a failure.

I also recently criticized Post-Dispatch reporting generally, and Jake Wagman's reporting specifically, about the fact that they were stretching out the Claire McCaskill plane flap over a long period of time with numerous articles containing a dubiously small amount of additional substance. I would argue that no similar scrutiny or perseverance has been applied to examining the records of Ed Martin or Roy Blunt. However, today Jake Wagman published an impressive investigative piece on Peter Kinder billing taxpayers for what seems to be political or personal expenses, and Wagman did a fantastic job of collecting and organizing the information. Of course, in order to completely refute my previous criticisms and show me to be a frothing-at-the-mouth unhinged liberal blogger with an overzealous desire to criticize honest reporters, Wagman would have to continue to report on all of the twists and turns of the upcoming discussion of Kinder's records as he did with Senator McCaskill, and also to apply similar diligence to the records of Roy Blunt and Ed Martin, but he at least appears to be off to a good start.

Of course, none of this is to say that we don't need to continue building a progressive media voice in St. Louis via ForwardSTL. ForwardSTL was never intended as a replacement of the traditional media; it ideally will be a supplement to the traditional media that will ensure that a certain demographic of news and opinion consumers get the content they desire. Unlike the St. Louis Tea Party and Ed Martin, I don't want to see the Post-Dispatch go out of business, and I recognize the fact that they provide the region with crucial information. However, I do think we need to be diligent in keeping them honest, and that will include both criticizing them when they do their jobs poorly, and praising them when they get it right. Jake Wagman did a fantastic job on the Kinder story, and I hope this good work continues during some remarkable and important political times.

Post-Dispatch Covers 200 Person Tea Party in Washington D.C.

Three weeks after the St. Louis Post-Dispatch provided no coverage of a 4,300 person rally in support of unions in St. Louis and offered an incredibly lame excuse for doing so, they have now posted an AP article on their website about a puny tea party rally in Washington D.C.

According to reporters at the event, only about 200 people showed up. In D.C.! Think about that: if the American Society of Left-Handed Ninjas held a rally in D.C., they could probably get at least 400 people! Yet the Post-Dispatch gives coverage to this pathetic P.R. stunt while ignoring a 4,300+ person rally in their backyard.

Shameful.

Update: Also worth noting is the misleading framing in the AP article about the tea party, which claimed that their popularity has remained the same since the elections. Actually, if you look at the monthly CNN polls, you'll see that the tea party's unfavorables have increased dramatically since November, even as the 30% fringe supporters number stays the same (the same %, by the way, as the birthers and people who think the moon is made of swiss cheese).

Update #2: The Post-Dispatch Weatherbird suggests that AP articles automatically feed into the site:

It would be a little strange to me if there was no selection process whatsoever for which articles appear on their national news section, but perhaps this is accurate. However, this clearly would not be a good excuse for them deciding to run the story in the print edition tomorrow.

Post-Dispatch Asks if NPR Smear is Ethical Without Noting that Videos Were Deceptively Edited

How's this for being completely out-of-the-loop? The Post-Dispatch wrote a post today asking if James O'Keefe's video smear pieces are "ethical reporting." Of course, they don't bother to mention that O'Keefe's despicable tactics include attempting to sexually humiliate a female CNN reporter by isolating her on a boat full of sex toys and attempting to "seduce" her. But even worse, the author Steve Parker doesn't even seem to be familiar with the basic facts about O'Keefe's smear job on NPR. The original video presented by O'Keefe falsely suggested that former NPR executive Ron Schiller called the tea party racist. As originally caught by conservative website The Blaze, and since reported on by numerous outlets including CNN, NPR, Media Matters for America, Slate, Schiller was actually passing on what another person told him.

Here's how O'Keefe originally presented the words:

SCHILLER: The current Republican party is not really the Republican party. It's been hijacked by this group -- that is --

"AMIR MALIK": The radical, racist, Islamophobic, tea party people?

SCHILLER: And not just Islamophobic but really xenophobic

And here's reality:

SCHILLER: I won't break a confidence, but a person who was an ambassador -- so a very highly placed Republican -- another person who was one of the top donors to the Republican Party, they both told me they voted for Obama, which they never believed they could ever do in their lives. That they could ever vote for a Democrat, ever. And they did, because they believe that the current Republican Party is not really the Republican Party. It's been hijacked by this group that is

"AMIR MALIK": The radical, racist, Islamophobic, Tea Party people?

SCHILLER: Exactly. And not just Islamophobic but really xenophobic.

O'Keefe's edit completely changed the sound of the conversation and falsely implied that Schiller was using that terminology himself.

Yet the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, while asking people whether O'Keefe is "ethical," leaves out the fundamental criticism of his "sting," and information that completely undercuts his case. Great way to foster healthy dialogue.

Post-Dispatch Reports on Protest Without Saying *Why* There Was a Protest

Almost one week after completely ignoring a 4,300 person pro-union rally in Kiener Plaza and then offering a lame excuse, the Post-Dispatch today reported on Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) protesting at a "100 Most Influential St. Louisans" event." The only problem? They didn't even bother to explain why MORE was protesting. Jake Wagman titled his post "Polite Protesters Interrupt Nixon at SLU" and only provided this as an explanation:

An appearance by Gov. Jay Nixon at St. Louis University was briefly interrupted Friday morning by a group protesting foreclosures and bank bailouts.

How exactly are readers supposed to know anything about the group's motivations based on that description?

For those would who like to know the actual statement of the group, Damien Johnson grabbed some video of the actual speech:


What they were asking for is that foreclosures be stopped until a just system be put in place, in contrast to the shameful actions currently being practiced by Bank of America and other bad banks.

Again, compare this to their coverage of the tea party. Would the Post-Dispatch ever even dream of covering a tea party event without passing on the tea party explanation of what the event was about? Why is it so hard for the Post-Dispatch to give fair coverage to anyone who opposes the abuse of power by corporate America?

Christopher Ave's Inadequate Explanation of the Post-Dispatch Ignoring a 4,300 Person Labor Rally

I received an email response from Chrisopher Ave with a purported explanation of why the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shamefully ignored a pro-union rally of over 4,300 people last Friday in Kiener Plaza:

Thanks for taking the time to email. I'm sorry that we failed to cover Friday's rally. As you know, Friday was a very busy news day with two local court sentencings and the tragedy in Japan. We had a reporter at the rally, but he was called away to help cover local reactions to the tsunami. Our photographers were engaged covering the court developments that unfortunately were scheduled at the same time.

Again, thanks for expressing your views. While we don't cover every rally, this is one we should have covered. I'm sorry that we let you down in this case.

Sincerely,

Christopher Ave
Political Editor
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
STLtoday.com

While I agree that the Tsunami was an shockingly tragic story and one well worth covering in the paper, this response strikes me as incredibly odd and stands in contradiction of previous comments. First of all, when the Post-Dispatch was criticized earlier for completely ignoring the protests in Wisconsin, their response was that they are a "local paper" focused on local news. This confirms what former columnist Sylvester Brown reported at the online organizing training in December, where he said he was continually told not to write about national issues at the Post. Yet when there's a huge pro-worker rally in St. Louis, all of a sudden they need all hands on deck to get local reactions to a story from across the world. Don't get me wrong: there's no question Tsunami coverage needed to be in the paper, but why send a reporter away from a rally in progress with 4,300 people? Also, Ave's response claimed that the reporter was called away "to help" get local reactions, which implied that there were already other reporters working on that story. Did they really need multiple people working on a nonlocal story? Shouldn't the main daily be prepared and able to cover multiple events? How hard would it have been for them simply to have included a photograph or a short paragraph that noted that 4,300 people rallied in downtown St. Louis?

Furthermore, compare this non-coverage to the fact that the Post-Dispatch bends over backwards to write a 600 word article about a tea party rally with 1/8 as many people last April. Would they even dream of ignoring a 1,000 person rally from the tea party, let alone a 4,000 person rally, in St. Louis? Of course not.

I don't think Ave's response is adequate. If Ave and the Post-Dispatch were really concerned, they could still find ways of writing about this story and informing their readers. But if they keep this shoddy coverage up, they're not going to have many readers left.

The Fox Guarding St. Louis's Henhouse

In the wake of the Post-Dispatch's shameful non-coverage of 4,300 union supporters rallying in Kiener Plaza, I want to return to a story that I meant to discuss in much greater detail a while ago. After Lee Enterprises bought the Post-Dispatch, they tried to persuade a number of employees to retire early. As part of this persuasion, they said, in writing, that they would provide free health care for life to the employees that accepted early retirement. However, despite Lee's continued profits, late last year they sent a letter to retirees informing them that they would no longer be paying for their health care. That, as you might imagine, had devastating effects for many retirees.

One such retiree is Fred Jackson, a man currently undergoing treatment for cancer. Lee Enterprise's greedy decision will quite literally bankrupt Mr. Jackson at a time he needs to pay for his treatment, but they simply do not care. Please take four minutes and watch the excellent video produced by Hotflash at Show Me Progress:

Just think about that for a second. The company managing the "paper of record" for the St. Louis region cares so little about humanity that they are willing to lie to cancer patients and then screw them over for the sake of a couple fractions of a percentage of extra profit. Lee Enterprises directly embodies the picture of corporate greed unburdened by an inkling of conscience. Can we really expect them to give fair coverage to workers fighting for a fair salary? Can we really think that they, when the chips are down, will provide unbiased coverage of a battle between corporate entities that share their exact same philosophy (profit! profit! profit! and screw the collateral damage!) and the middle class?

Increasingly, I think we can't. The Post-Dispatch has an excellent editorial board and many great employees, but their local political reporting has been going down the toilet and is doing so in a way that tips off the owners' allegiances. I really hope the Beacon, the Riverfront Times, and the St. Louis American can increasingly fill the giant gap left by the failure of the Post-Dispatch's political reporting. And I hope even more that citizens of St. Louis who believe in anything other than mindless, heartless, unwavering support for corporate profits will begin to create and distribute their own news, and cease to be dependent for their primary local news on an entity with so little respect for human life.

We will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

-Joseph Pulitzer (though I first heard it from Sylvester Brown)

Corporate Media Versus Working People

Yesterday, 4,300+ people rallied in Kiener Plaza against corporate greed and the recent attacks against working people by the right wing. We know that when the tea party attracted crowds of 1/2 or even 1/10th that size, they would reliably get the equivalent of front page coverage from the local media. However, for this rally for the basic rights of working Americans, many of the news outlets barely made a peep.

Before getting into that, however, I want to focus on some good coverage. Jo Mannies at the Beacon did a nice job covering the union rally and the story was featured on the Beacon's front page. KSDK had a report about it during their 5 and 10 O'clock broadcasts. And KMOX and the St. Louis Business Journal both covered this important story. Charles Jaco was at the event so I'm guessing that he will talk about it for one of his special reports, but Fox 2 News did not provide regular coverage.

But the two outlets I really want to focus my ire on are KMOV and the Post-Dispatch. As we have seen, KMOV has had a string of pathetic right-wing coverage in recent weeks, which really is nothing new for them. In the past, they breathlessly reported on rallies where the tea party only had 700 people present. If the tea party had gotten 4,000 people to this rally, you know they would have been all over it. Instead, they completely ignored a rally of 4,300 union members on an issue that's related to a national story. And they ignored it at a time where a battle for the very soul of America is taking place, with the right wing trying to destroy the last group capable of pushing back against corporate power grabs.

And the Post-Dispatch ignoring this story? Ahhh, where do I start? Perhaps Post-Dispatch political director Christopher Ave needs to meet with some union members just like he invited Dana Loesch to coach him on how to cover the tea party. Of course, we don't need to ask how the Post-Dispatch owners feel about workers: they quite clearly do not care at all about them, to the point where they're willing to break written agreements and drop health care coverage for people with cancer in order to save a few pennies.

Apparently, the corporate media is not neutral in this dispute over whether corporations should be able to run completely rampant over everyone else. They have lost their last vestiges of objectivity.

Fortunately, we have awesome bloggers like Hotflash at Show Me Progress who can provide real coverage.

Wagman Doesn't Bother With Getting Quotes

Jake Wagman regurgitated a story yesterday suggesting that Senator McCaskill wants to get rid of the individual mandate component of health care reform. The story had been reported by The Hill and by WillyK at Show Me Progress the day before. Despite possessing the title of "reporter," Wagman apparently did not bother to actually get a quote from the McCaskill campaign about the statement.

On the other hand, Jo Mannies at the Beacon did get a quote about McCaskill's position on mandates, and it was pretty interesting:

McCaskill press secretary Maria Speiser said Thursday that the senator's MSNBC comments, in their entirety, "are not significantly different from what she has said in the past."...

Overall, said Speiser, "Claire believes the bottom line is that the mandate is unpopular, and if there are other ways to stop insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, it’s worth considering."

Mannies also presented the full quotation from McCaskill that sparked the recent controversy:

I think they don't like the mandate and by a wide margin they voted that way (a reference to Proposition C, which passed handily in Missouri on Aug. 3). I do think we have to look at it to see if there's a different way to make sure to get more people in the pool. What the most popular part of the bill (is, barring) pre-existing conditions, allowing people who have had the nerve to be sick before, allowing them to get insurance, that's the most popular part. That really is what drove the desire for a mandate because you've got to get everybody in the pool. Can you imagine if you could go get car insurance after you had a wreck? Who is going to buy insurance until after they're sick. Maybe there's other ways to get people in a pool other than a mandate -– I hope -– and we need to look at that.

Seems like a pretty interesting facts that add flavor and context to the story, no?