bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 ::

Liberal media bias? Where?
Hooray for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The newspaper many of my fellow Missourians criticize as a left-wing rag out of step with mainstream America is now being cited by neocon bloggers far and wide, thanks to what Michelle Malkin calls a "devastating article" in the Post-Dispatch that debunks former Marine Sgt. Jimmy Massey's fraudulent claims about U.S. soldiers commiting atrocities in Iraq. The story ran in Sunday's Post-Dispatch, and it didn't take long for the right wing of the blogosphere to pick up the scent. But many of these bloggers and columnists forgot one thing. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a big, fat, liberal newspaper. (Well, it isn't as fat as it used to be; as circulation drops, so does advertising.)

Do the pro-war bloggers not realize the hypocrisy -- the hypocrisy! -- of linking to such a biased source just to support their efforts to derail Massey and his ilk from spreading their so-called lies? Will the neocon bloggers stop at nothing?

Now, at least one reader of at least one conservative blog is claiming the Post-Dispatch exhibited media bias of another sort by using a rather wussified photo of Massey to accompany the story. (The writer would have preferred the Post use this one, of Massey in uniform, rather than the one the Post-Dispatch used, but to tell you the truth, neither photo does much to flatter the guy.)

Anyway, I'm just tickled as all get-out that the same conservative and pro-war bloggers who claim left-wing media bias all the time are now citing one of those lefty rags to support their cause.

For the record, I'm no more a fan of Massey, Cindy Sheehan or others who have lied to people to advance their causes than I am of our executive branch of government for lying about the reasons for the War in Iraq. I think the Post-Dispatch tries to stay true to founder Joseph Pulitzer's editorial platform , which claims that the newspaper should "always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, 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."

When they're doing their job, the news media rawk, I tell you. Kudos to the Post-Dispatch. Liberalism lives on.

Jimmy, Massey, Iraq, Media, news, current affairs, war

:: Andrew 16:19 + ::
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