Bias in a local Newspaper

                                        2/28/05

 I’ve been writing letters to the editor of the Albany Times Union, as well as other newspapers, since before the advent of the personal computer. I used to hand deliver some of those old missives to the editor himself and discuss them while I was there. I remember that they used to fact check letters before they went to press. For example: When Bill Clinton was running for President against President Bush he made a promise to cut taxes on the middle class but promptly reneged as soon as he was elected. Clinton claimed that he had to because he was shocked to find out that the deficit he was inheriting was predicted to be much higher than previously thought. He even went so for as to suggest that President Bush’s budget office had been cooking the books in order to keep the quarterly deficit prediction low to help get reelected.

          I wrote to the Schenectady Gazette, another local paper, and pointed out the fact that Clinton was lying. He had written a book earlier in the year that predicted the budget deficit would be four times as high as it actually ended up being. The Editor of the Gazette’s opinion page called and challenged the veracity of my claim. I told him of the page in Clinton’s book where he could read it for himself. He checked and called me back, told me how surprised he was and ran my letter unedited.

          The thing was, I had never read Clinton’s book. I had heard about the big lie by listening to Rush Limbaugh. Now if any Republican had told such a devastating lie (when the actual budget numbers came in, Bush’s were right) the Liberals in the press would be calling for his impeachment.

          Which brings me back to the whole point of this letter. Rush Limbaugh is still being vilified by the mainstream press. You would think that the success of Conservative media outlets would be a wake up call to the TU but their left wing bias is more pronounced than ever and their readers are still leaving. They used to proudly display their circulation numbers on the top of the front page but not any more. They have to keep those figures much closer to the vest these days. They even give the papers away in order to inflate circulation numbers. Maybe there are enough Liberals living in the Capital District to keep the paper afloat but wouldn’t it be nice if they abandoned their bias instead of going to great laughable lengths to try to deny it? They might even become a viable factor in our local economy once again.

 DRC