SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PRESS

     Have Denver’s major newspapers abandoned Colorado’s conservatives? This is not a plea to turn bad news into good news; it is about the growing anti-conservative approach to news coverage in The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. Beyond in-house editorials, little choice remains between the two publications.
     Almost any public figure that espouses political or social conservatism is apt to be fair game for hostile reporting in either paper. (Jon Caldara, James Dobson and Rep. Tom Tancredo come to mind.)
     Reporters who cover Republicans are apt to import comments from left-leaning political scientists, usually of the academe; rarely do similar comments from right-leaning sources appear in stories about Democrats. How “analyses” are allowed to run any place outside the opinion page(s) is manipulative journalism.
     Both papers are bad about running anticonservative “ghost quotes” that often appear in wire copy. Associated Press senior writers David Espo and Ron Fournier, both remnants of Florida’s hanging-chad anti-Bush fame, are masters in using this “speaking on condition of anonymity” gimmick.
     One bright aspect of the Rocky: Vincent Carroll still has charge of the editorials and the ancillary commentary. While conservatives can rely on locals Carroll and columnist Mike Rosen to make sense, running amok are leftist columnists such as CU law professor Paul Campos and renown entertainer Garrison Keillor, he of nonprofit PBR fame and fortune who slams conservatives at least once in every offering. Then there is columnist Nat Hentoff’s eternal obsession with waterboarding, as he ignores the Islamic extremists who do flout the Geneva Conventions big-time. (This is America, Mr. Hentoff, and nobody has been suicide-bombed at Guantanamo.)
     The Post’s editorial page has improved under Dan Haley, gaining back some of the fairness Sue O’Brien always showed, but it boasts only one quasi-Republican, Bob Ewegen, who rarely has seen a Democratic tax increase or liberal policy he didn’t like. A bone has been thrown to right-wing writer John Andrews, but mainstay conservative columnist Al Knight apparently has been dispatched to outer Slobovia. And of course, the Post still periodically runs a column by Gail Schoettler, even after she was flagged ethically for accompanying her husband on several exotic excursions at taxpayer expense.
     In the Rocky’s news pages, Mike Littwin makes his living eviscerating conservatives, while the Post finally had the courtesy to replace its “Littwin” version (Spencer) with a moderate writer, David Harsanyi.
    The overwhelming majority of the American press including Denver’s two big dailies seem to enjoy driving conservatives away. I cannot believe this is a good way to win advertisers and subscribers, and the ongoing results are very telling.

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