Every few days, the Washington Examiner gets tossed onto my driveway. I open it up, and find the same thing: endless Obama and Democrat bashing. Consider a few headlines from their home page:
- Enforcing immigration law would be a bargain
- U.S. military growing concerned with Obama's Afghan policy
- Democrats resist plan for border security bill
- Sense and nonsense on Arizona law
- Jed Babbin: Obama dances with missile defense, weakens alliances
- Rob Bluey: Obamacare has a poison pill for doctor-owned hospitals
- Jed Babbin: Obama's politically correct 'leadership' invites military disasters
I'll be the first to admit that the current administration isn't perfect - but reading the Examiner you'd think we were living on the verge of a government collapse. It's just so over the top, I just can't take it seriously. Do people buy that their an accurate representation of the news? (I know, I know, people do)
So my socks were only slightly knocked off when the Right leaning, Tea-party loving, newspaper published this cartoon:
Wait a minute - that was both funny and intellectually clever. And it didn't bash Obama. What the heck?
I was so impressed I almost blogged about it. But, I figured what was one cartoon, really? Then, I came across this gem:
Again, timely, funny, clever and intellectually right on - in other words, a great political cartoon.
Could it be, there's a bright spot in the Examiner after all? Does Nate have to keep drawing toons bashing Palin or the Republicans for me to be impressed with him? Of course not. He just needs to be doing what political cartoonists have always done - highlight issues in only a way that they can.
Think I can call up the Washington Examiner and ask to have my "subscription" changed so that they only deliver the editorial cartoon?
Oh, and if you do need your fix of Palin political cartoons, for some reason, there's a huge collection here.
Ben, all but one of the articles you cite are opinion columns or editorials, not news articles. The one news article you did cite is a factual report about congressional Democrats opposing Republican immigration proposals. Your criticism of our work is welcome, but criticizing editorials and opinion columns for not being "an accurate representation of the news," as you put it, is like bashing a Chevy because it's not a Honda.
ReplyDeleteWow Mark, I'm impressed you took the time to personally respond to my post. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI should have been clearer. From what I can tell, the Examiner makes little attempt to present alternative points of view (which no law says you have to). It's true that the news articles may be news, and the editorials may be editorials -- but the selection of both seem to have a common goal: praise the Right, tear down the Left.
And the thing is, you're totally welcome to do this. This is more or less what liberal sites like crooksandliars.com do. Every bit of news is filtered through the left-leaning lens.
The tricky part from my perspective, though, is that you're content isn't packaged as a blog but as a newspaper. I keep thinking it should be held to the standard of presenting more views than it does.
I really do appreciate the time you took to leave the comment here. And we can agree on one thing - it sure is great that both you and I can publish whatever we'd like. Wonderful country we live in, no?