"News"paper? I report, you decide.
"News"papers would have you believe they are meaningfully distinguished from blogs, due to their "journalistic" standards and "accountability." The FTC has even weighed in on this, requiring disclosures of bloggers it does not require of newspaper reporters.
Case in point: today's front-page story by Diane Smith in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, concerning a low quantitiy of H1N1 vaccine being shipped to Texas:
http://www.star-telegram.com/...
I'd like to excerpt the entire article, since my point concerns a willful omission. But Fair Use prohibits this, so I'd like to ask you to click thru and read the article yourself.
Smith tells a tale of Obama's CDC bungling distributing the vaccine, while Texas Republicans are posed as being diligent in protecting the interests of Texans:
FORT WORTH — Last week’s tally by the federal government shows that Texas is lagging other states in receiving doses of the H1N1 vaccine.
Texas was shipped fewer doses per capita than every state except Mississippi
...
The CDC notes on its Web site that there is a lag time between allocation, ordering and shipment of doses as states place orders and those orders are processed and shipped.
...
Some Texas lawmakers worry that the vaccine isn’t getting to the Texans fast enough.
"It is imperative that this needed vaccine is distributed as quickly as possible. Our population has been significantly impacted, and too many Texans have become casualties as a result of the H1N1 virus," said U.S. Rep. Kay Granger (R) in a statement.
U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess (R), who is a physician, said the CDC’s tally raises too many concerns for Texas, which had reported 82 H1N1-related deaths as of last week.
"Texas is a border state. We border the country where the epidemic started," Burgess said. Mexico’s widespread H1N1 cases alarmed the world last spring.
A nice yarn, but dishonest and misleading, and willfully so.
The CDC actually released a statement yesterday, one the Star-Telegram's Smith decided to omit. As was appropriately reported by the Dallas Morning News today, the reason Texas was shipped fewer doses of H1N1 vaccine than any state except Mississippi was simple:
Governor Rick Perry (R)'s Health Department requested less vaccine than any state except Mississippi.
So, let's review:
It's about to come out that Governor Rick Perry requested far too few doses of H1N1 vaccine, and innocent Texans will undoubtedly die due to this omission. Telephone calls are made. By the time the Star-Telegram runs the facts thru its sausage-making machine, it's "Good Republicans, Bad Obama."
Check.