How Can You Believe Anything These Guys Say?

From today's Washington Post:

It was a notable political misstep for Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain: in a CNN interview, he remarked that abortion ought to be “a choice that the family or mother has to make.” Those comments forced Cain to spend last week attempting to shore up his anti-abortion credentials—an effort that included endorsing a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion.


A week ago he believed abortion was a "choice that the family or mother has to make." A little blowback and he wants a Constitutional amendment to ban it outright. It doesn't matter what your views are on abortion; this guy will say anything.That fact that this tendency doesn't make him special among the contenders, on either side is what is so disturbing

A Matter of Perspective

Michael Shear had an interesting and entertaining chat in Today's Washington Post. The last question and answer deserves notice:

Dale City, VA: There were over a thousand protesters marching in SUPPORT of the health care bill in Washington yesterday. Why wasn't that on the front page of the Post the same way as the Tea Party protests were? The Tea Party fringe seem to get a lot more coverage than the left gets.

Michael D. Shear: These things are a day-to-day decision (and not mine.) But keep in mind, we put the president on the front page virtually every day, including, as I recall, just two days ago giving a blistering speech in favor of health reform.

Shear's right: the President is on the front page stumping for health care daily. That's not the essense of the question. When a Tea party demonstration, however small, is covered, the implied message is it is the voice of the people. When a pro-health care demonstration is ignored because the President has already received the daily allotment of health care ink, the impression created is that politicians are cramming this down people's throats. That's not true; there is genune disagreement about the bill, but there are a lot of citizens who are strongly in favor of it.

The Post should be more careful in the context of its coverage; merely equalizing the number of pro and con inches devoted to any issue doesn't serve its readership well.

Why Newspapers Might Not Be Missed As Much As They Think

Sub-headline on the Senate's confirmation of Benjamin Bernanke to another term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from the home page of today's Washington Post:

The Federal Reserve chairman scrapes by with the narrowest margin in the history of the position.

Bernanke was confirmed by a vote of 70-30. This is, admittedly, the closest vote ever for this position. It can hardly be considered "scraping by."

Another Nail in Newspapers' Coffins

This question appeared in today’s Washington Post political chat:

The Democrats passed an Energy Bill that everyone admitted NO ONE READ. Yet, the media portrayal of it is "green jobs" creator and solve our dependence on foreign oil. Has any journalist read the Cap-and-Trade Bill? If not, why parrot the Democrat talking points and not give the public the specifics of the Bill? Is skepticism dead?

Here is the reply:

Colleagues have closely followed the committee hearings and other negotiations leading up to last week's vote, and the measure still has to go before the Senate, which may greatly alter the bill's current form.

Remember also that the House Energy & Commerce Committee briefly hired a speed reader in case Republicans ordered a full reading of big portions of the bill. That threat never materialized, but it would certainly take a fast reader to get through it.

I encourage YOU to read it, and then find a way to share your thoughts about it.

It’s the last sentence that disturbs me. Granted, in a perfect world, we would all take the time to read these bills and understand them, then send informed opinions to our elected representatives. The problem is, we don’t have the time, and we don’t have the expertise to make suitable sense of the arcane facts and language. This is what we depend on newspapers for, to digest and analyze the important parts for us, and here’s a reporter telling us to feel free to figure it out for ourselves, and let him know. They apparently don’t have the time.

Every day newspapers make the prospect of living without them a little less disturbing.