This story provides a fact -- that McClatchy is cutting costs -- then makes two assertions: (1) their papers are left leaning and (2) that is what has led to their financial problems. As a daily reader of the Charlotte Observer, I can vouch for the fact that it is cutting costs. In addition I judge the Observer to have a "progressive" editorial policy tempered by the conservative bent of their circulation area (my wife considers the paper too conservative). However, I have seen no evidence that the Observer's editorial policy in and of itself has led to the financial retrenching. It still enjoys a healthy letters exchange on the editorial pages with opinions ranging over the full political spectrum. So in the absence of some ... More »

This is a hit piece, pure and simple. There's nothing there but the accusation that McClatchy is having trouble because they're left-leaning. Nothing to document the assertion that McClatchy is "left-leaning" or "anti-American" (in the words of the first commenter), nor to document the claim that this is what's causing their financial difficulties. Most significantly, nothing at all about the fact that in the run-up to the Iraq war, McClatchy was consistently the only mainstream news source that questioned what we now know was the propaganda being put out by the Bush administration and reported the facts that showed much of it to be wrong from the start.