I've practiced journalism for more than 35 years, and I have no idea what, exactly, this is: a blog post, an overlong opinion, or just plain bad journalism--probably the worst example of any story I have ever read on NewsTrust.net. If this was handed in as an assignment at our journalism school, we'd flunk the staff writer. (Open up my full review, and then hit the "Quotes" tab and see my comments supporting that statement.) The reporter cites and then criticizes his sources. He editorializes almost in every paragraph. Entire paragraphs of attacks on the McCain-Palin campaign are unattributed or use the anonymous "analysts said"--a tactic that allows the reporter to editorialize under the guise of seeming to have interviewed someone. If you wonder why newspapers are losing readership, this is a prime example. (See links about the SF Chronicle below.)
To some there, President-elect Barack Obama was still a “socialist,” the “liberal media” was still “hiding” stories, and others wished that the campaign had hammered Obama harder for “palling around” with 1960s domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.
In other words, many of the distortions and half-truths repeated by the McCain-Palin campaign – even after being disproved by independent fact-checkers – still packed a powerful half-life.
Now, politicians distort the truth or their opponent’s record or positions all the time. It’s a tradition as old as the republic, and the Obama-Biden ticket did its share of truth-bending, too. But the McCain-Palin camp transformed this tradition into a dark art form in the final weeks of the campaign. Their smears not only distorted their opponent’s policy positions, analysts said they played to the worst xenophobic fears of Americans in a way that no campaign had since President George H.W. Bush used the image of convicted felon Willie Horton to smear Democratic challenger Michael Dukakis in 1988.
They or their surrogates implied or said that Obama was a terrorist, a socialist, a communist or someone who, as Gov. Sarah Palin put it “is not a man who sees America like you and I see America.”
The rhetoric in this campaign had an unusual staying power, most graphically shown when supporters attending McCain-Palin rallies yelled “socialist” “terrorist” “liar” and “kill him.”
Carolyn Rogers said she hated early voting. The Arizonan said people should be able to remember that voting day is the first Tuesday of November.
“Like Obama saying he wanted to bankrupt the coal industry,” Rogers said. “That just came out on Sunday. The coal miners in Ohio and Pennsylvania never got to hear that story.”
They could have. Palin distorted Obama’s remarks about coal technology that were made in January during an interview by editorial writers and reporters at The Chronicle.
“But,” Rogers said, paraphrasing what Palin said on the stump days before, “the media kept it hidden.”
No. The Chronicle wasn’t shy about promoting the 48 minutes and 33 seconds of the interview sitting on its Web site since January. If McCain supporters wanted to make an issue of it – and they didn’t until two days before the election – well, that’s on them.
“I can’t believe this guy is going to be president. He’s a socialist,” said Stonham, a 31-year-old software engineer from Phoenix. “He wants to turn us into a Western European socialist state.”
So Palin kept quoting Joe the Plumber calling Obama a socialist, as though the unlicensed plumber’s name was Joe the Political Theorist.
A primary goal of NewsTrust is to note biased journalism, not whether the outlet upholds your own political viewpoint or suspicions. There are other outlets for that, from blogs to magazines, and when a newspaper abandons journalism to appeal to the advertising base, it enters a World Wide Web of competition, loses trust, lays off reporters and finally stops printing on paper, consigned to the Internet. This article is a prime example of what leads to that effect.