"Good Deeds," Sharks and the Patriot-News

A 14-year-old boy with discipline problems takes his mom’s car for a ride and ends up killing his friend. A tragic tale of caution to discourage would-be copycats? Not for the Harrisburg Patriot-News. More like: “good deed ends in death,” according to its front page headline.

Fabian Gonzalez had just been released from “boot camp” where he was sent because “he had been unable to stay away from his girlfriend and had been put in the program for trespassing.”

His mother left him home, with his friend, unsupervised. When his sister called and said she was stranded in Manchester Township, Gonzalez and Zachary Mullison, 14, decided to drive to her.

About 2:30 a.m. Fabian and Zac were heading west on Route 30 in Manchester Twp. Fabian, who was driving, turned onto the northbound ramp of Interstate 83. The car careened out of control, slammed into an embankment and rolled. Zac, who was not wearing a seat belt, was catapulted from the car. The car smashed into him, crushing him to death. Fabian was wearing a seat belt and was not injured.

Along with the dangers of leaving a problem teenage boy home alone, add the dangers of not wearing a seatbelt to the list of angles the story could have more responsibly taken. Perhaps the writer took a sympathetic approach because the mother of the driver gave him an interview. Perhaps the headline writer goofed (however, the “trying to do a good deed” line was also in the lead.)

The bottom line is, a tragedy with several lessons for children and parents was twisted by misguided compassion. An opportunity was missed Media outlets – by what they report and avoid -- can kill kids with kindness.

It was not a good day for the Patriot-News. The headline across the top of the front page featured a hokey photo of a shark fin and the words “Just when you thought it was safe…” The article was written by a staffer but was about a reported shark bite in New Jersey. Involving a kid from New Jersey. And it may not have been a shark bite. Other than that, solid work all around.

Why Do Those Stupid, Scary Conservatives Think We’re Biased Against Them?

The effort by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to tone down the liberal politics traditionally displayed by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) gets the standard, mocking treatment by the Philadelphia Inquirer. The lead by Washington bureau Steve Goldstein lets you know where it’s headed:

For many Americans, public TV means Sesame Street, Masterpiece Theatre and Antiques Roadshow. But for Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it came to mean liberal bias in its news and public affairs programming.

Translation: “Decent, intelligent Americans know how benign public TV is, but those crazy Republicans…”

Supporters of Tomlinson – a Clinton appointee – are all labeled “conservatives.” Critics of him are labeled as…"critics." Even former LBJ spinmeister-turned-journalist Bill Moyers – whose political ramblings on his PBS show “Now” helped prompt the action – escapes the liberal label. Which is quite a stunt, given that even Democrat-friendly outlets like the Washington Post (“Liberal commentator Bill Moyers is out on PBS stations”) and the Los Angeles Times (“Moyers has never denied being a liberal”) use the label.

Also getting a free pass is PBS President Pat Mitchell. The October 14, 2003 issue of Electronic Media notes that “actor Robert Redford, former boss Ted Turner and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev are among the members of her fan club.” Why would those crazy Republicans think that being friends with Ted Turner and Mikhail Gorbachev makes one a "liberal?"

As for NPR, studies that find “National Public Radio’s audience has shown the most significant shift to the left” must only exist in the minds of right-wing nuts, not the Inquirer’s.

Apparently, Moyers' obsession with Tomlinson goes back some time. The blog Gregarius did more research than the Inquirer's reporter.

PBS and NPR produce a lot of great programs. The concept for “public broadcasting” is a noble one. It deserves a more serious treatment than the partisan coverage offered by the Inquirer.

Won't ANYONE Take Our Free Health Care?

For years, politicians at the state and federal levels have been puzzled about why so many parents fail to sign their kids up for free health care under the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The traditional explanations have been that the process “is too difficult” or is confusing to parents who don’t speak English. On top of the money spent on CHIP, more is spent to urge parents to take advantage of it.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports yet another theory offered by advocates: insurance companies are misleading parents into believing they’re better off avoiding CHIP.

It’s an interesting angle. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, the paper takes an anecdotal approach, featuring just one family which appears to have been recommended by an advocacy group.

Also, many readers, while sympathizing with the single mother of four, will naturally wonder how the mother ended up in her plight and whether the children’s father helps out. That question is often considered off-limits by liberal-leaning papers, and is omitted here.

Live 8: Forget Persuading Taxpayers, Just Elect More Democrats

After 20 years, the organizers of 1985’s Live Aid concerts hastily planned their second event: Live 8. The upcoming concerts aren’t meant to solicit direct contributions; they’re supposed to demonstrate support for increased Western aid for underdeveloped nations. The idea is to use a hefty turnout to persuade G-8 nations to contribute more money.

Not radical enough, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. The paper lifted commentary from “senior writer” William Bunch’s blog that criticizes organizers for trying to sway taxpayers and elected officials into agreeing that loan forgiveness and more contributions are the wise approach. Bunch advocates scrapping persuasion and simply soliciting tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions for Democrats:

President Bush, the 800-pound gorilla of G-8, isn't going to be swayed by one million people on Philadelphia's Parkway. The only way that Geldof could really change policy in Africa would be to raise that $1 billion and use some of it to help elect new leaders for the G-8 nations, leaders who'd make Africa a priority. Throw a politician who wants to make a real difference - Barack Obama? - on stage and have him introduce a surprise guest, say Bruce Springsteen. Then pledge $50 million or so to elect a U.S. Senate that backs African aid.

Of course, the reporter (when he’s not soliciting DNC contributions, he’s paid to be a nonpartisan reporter) is slick enough to not come out and say “give money to Democrats.” He just informs readers that Republican George Bush is the major roadblock and someone like, oh, Democrat Barack Obama is a shining light, and readers can make up their mind (wink, wink).

How would the DNC report such cheerleading on its FEC filing?

Who Knew Rape Could Be Funny?

Former Respected Journalist Howard Gensler uses his Philadelphia Daily News “Tattle” column to report this:

Christian Slater was arrested on Manhattan's Upper East Side around 1:50 a.m. yesterday and charged with groping a woman's buttocks. If convicted, Christian could face up to 60 days in jail - where he might have his own buttocks groped.

Get it? He’s going to be raped. By a man! It’s funny on so many levels, people!

Obviously, Gensler does not really wish this on Slater. It’s just a joke. It’s just that, coming from a paper so religiously politically correct as the Daily News, such a joke could only, only be permitted if the victim is a white, male, heterosexual.

For more material, Howard can check the Human Rights Watch report: No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons.

Media Troubles: Daily News vs. Daily News

One newspaper, two different excuses for media troubles.
Under the headline “We can blame ourselves,” respected political columnist John Baer of the Philadelphia Daily News blamed the loss of readership on papers behaving like cable television: “Round-the-clock media pay full attention to stories such as Georgia’s runaway bride and Paula Abdul’s alleged fling with a would-be ‘American Idol.’”

Just weeks later, Baer's colleague William Bunch blamed.... George W. Bush:
“Fueled by an aggressive White House spin machine, many Americans distrust the media and have questioned the use of unnamed sources like ‘Deep Throat.’”

When the Philadelphia Daily News needs to take a complicated national story and dumb it down for its readers, it relies on William Bunch. So it’s no surprise that the writer who once dredged the Internet for items implying the Bush White House was complicit in the September 2001 terrorist attacks managed to work in a ridiculous partisan jab while writing about the revelation concerning the Watergate “Deep Throat” mystery.

For the record, we turn again to the Pew Research Center for People and the Press. Their 2000 survey found that: “One-in-four Americans give their local daily newspaper high marks for believability. This is down somewhat from 29% in 1998.”

So the lack of trust in newspapers, allegedly fueled by Evil Bush Republicans, had declined to a knuckle-dragging 25 percent during a period in which Democrats controlled the White House spin machine.

Freshmen students of Journalism 101 know that the "distrust of media" Bunch refers to has been steadily increasing for years. Many of them will ultimately reach the inescapable conclusion that some of it is due to the blatant, partisan editorializing displayed by Bunch himself.

NATIONAL: "Deep Throat" II -- Know what we do to snitches?

...Um, nothing. This definitely doesn’t live up to Hollywood’s obsession with depicting Evil Government Forces (you know, conservatives) as Lucifers capable of anything, even murder, to silence those heroes (you know, liberals) who would expose conspiracies.

Watergate tapes reveal Richard Nixon suspected -- correctly, we now know -- that Mark Felt was the Washington Post’s “Deep Throat” source. His reaction?

On Feb. 28, 1973, Nixon and Dean again tagged Felt as the potential leaker.
He was, Dean told Nixon, “the only person that knows” such details. But Nixon was skeptical. No one would risk his career to become an informant. According to a tape recording from that day, Nixon said, “You know, suppose that Felt comes out and unwraps the whole thing? What does that do to him? . . . He's in a very dangerous situation. . . .The informer is not wanted in our society. Either way, that's the one thing people do sort of line up against. They . . . say, ‘Well, that [expletive] informed. I don't want him around.’”

Hooooo hoooooo haaaaaaaaaa! Take that! I’ll see to it that this man never gets invited to another charity golf tournament again! For a guy whose entire political career is supposed to be Evil Defined, that was pretty lame. He suspects the man who could bring down his presidency and this is all his famous paranoia can come up with?
He could have used an Oliver Stone rewrite to punch up that script.

NATIONAL: "Deep Throat" I -- "Domestic Dissidents"

The “Deep Throat” source that helped break the Watergate story was Mark Felt of the FBI. Washington Post writer David Von Drehle notes: “In 1980, Felt and another senior FBI veteran were convicted of conspiring nearly a decade earlier to violate the civil rights of domestic dissidents in the Weather Underground movement; President Ronald Reagan then issued a pardon.”

“Domestic dissidents?” Like maids who refuse to clean the basement? For the record, the Weather Underground and its associates were responsible for bombings of the U.S. Capitol and Pentagon and other locations. They murdered two police officers and a guard in a robbery to fund their “movement.” Three of them accidentally blew themselves up making a bomb that was supposed to go off at an Army base dance.
And, according to this New York Times article, they “received instructions from intelligence officers attached to Cuba's mission to the United Nations.”

So they were neither “domestic” nor mere “dissidents.” They were left-wing extremists and terrorists. It’s hard for media types of the Baby Boom generation to admit that “left-wing extremists” even exist. Which is why you never see the term. We all know they only come in the right-wing variety.
Domestic dissidents.

Defending Herbie the Pimpmobile

Former Respected Journalist Howard Gensler has been reduced to fawning over teenage vixens and other pop tarts in writing the “Tattle” page in The Philadelphia Daily News.

In one of his many items on barely-legal sex object Lindsay Lohan, Gensler relays news that “producers of the upcoming ‘Herbie: Fully Loaded’ spent more than a $1 million to computer-enhance her clothes and computer-reduce her breasts after test-screening moms complained about her cleavage.”

Our suddenly sensitive scribe then adds: “Hope these same moms don't feel that way about their own daughters’ bodies. No wonder so many girls guzzle diuretics.”

Yes, Howard, that’s why girls starve themselves. Not because of pop industry enablers like you who dutifully man the PR machinery necessary to make stars out of talentless teens who make your pages due only to their nearly unattainable beauty. No, the real villains are parents who cringe when Herbie the Love Bug is turned into a pimpmobile. Buncha prudes.

Communists and Other Right-Wing Myths

The Philadelphia Daily News today ran an editorial criticizing Gold Star Mothers of America for excluding the mother of a man killed in combat because she is not an American citizen. Fair enough. The paper describes the group as “a 77-year-old organization that honors mothers who sacrificed their children in the fight against fascists, Nazis and now terrorists.”

Fascists and Nazis? Wasn’t there a third group? Probably the most oppressive, bloodiest ideology of the 20th century, though quite popular on college campuses and Manhattan dinner parties? COMMUNISTS, you revisionist ninnies. You know, Korea, Vietnam, 27,000 nuclear warheads and all that?

Even if the Daily News wants to argue that Americans who died fighting Communists in Korea and Vietnam don’t count, there’s still the little matter of the 50-year Cold War. Gold Mothers include those who lost children in combat “or while in service to our country,” which includes many non-combat Cold War fatalities in training, transportation, etc.

The American Left has never come to grips with its romantic attachment to Communism in the 20th century. Having argued for so long that neither side was morally superior in the Cold War, it’s not about to admit anything now. It just takes some creative writing, pretending the fight against Communism resulted in no grieving mothers. Or managing to describe a Communist general as a “radical right-winger.”

Any talk of a Communist military threat, or Communist spies was met with screeches of “red baiting” from the left. Here’s a reading assignment for Daily News editors: A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact 1955-1991. New documents reveal Soviet “plans to initiate a nuclear strike were pre-emptive” and “penetration of the western military was unusually high.”
Enjoy.

One Public Radio Station's Leftward Tilt

A 2004 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that “National Public Radio’s audience has shown the most significant shift to the left.” Forty-one percent of regular NPR listeners are Democrats, 24 percent are Republicans.

Which brings us to Damon Boughamer, the state Capitol reporter for the central Pennsylvania NPR station WITF FM.

The station's web site listed 40 stories filed by Boughamer between April 5 and May 23, 2005. Even though voters have elected a large majority of Republicans to the General Assembly, the stories filed from there run nearly three-to-one in favor of Democrat/liberal-leaning issues.
And while you’d expect large majorities in the House and Senate to produce more sound bites from Republicans – given their numbers and the fact that their proposals are much more likely to be implemented – the reality is that Boughamer interviews Democratic lawmakers more often.

The Breakdown
Issues: Of the 40 stories listed on the station’s web site, 15 could be considered “issue-neutral,” not traditionally liberal or conservative. Of the remaining 25, 18 could be considered traditionally liberal (such as proposals for more government spending or regulation) and 7 could be considered traditionally conservative (such as incentives for businesses or reducing medical malpractice lawsuits.)
Groups Cited: Liberal-learning groups turn up in 11 stories; conservative-learning groups in 6 (and one of those is to support a liberal issue. No liberal groups cited supported a conservative issue.)
Legislators: From April 5 to May 23, sound bites from six Democratic lawmakers were included, while Republican legislators – who hold solid majorities in both houses – can be heard in five stories. And of those five, THREE were speaking in supported of liberal-leaning issues (increased environmental spending, increased consumer regulation and laws mandating “equal pay” for women.)
Of the six Democrats, five were given air time to support Democrat-leaning causes and one was included to criticize Republicans. No Democrat is heard supporting a GOP initiative.

There is great hand-wringing going on among liberals and Democrats as the new boss at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting tries to encourage more professional objectivity among taxpayer-supported public television and radio stations. NPR has begun to spin the story in its own newscasts. Maybe they should stop fighting it and give it a try for a change.

The WITF news archive can be found here, but it only seems to keep stories for a little more than a week, so most of them have been removed.

Below are the headlines as they appeared, as well as whether it is considered a Democrat or Republican issue (“D” or “R”) and group, and if a lawmaker was included. Also, whether the lawmaker was cited as supporting or opposing the issue.

(Obviously, this is subjective. Environmental protection is not solely for Democrats, but it not generally championed by conservatives. The opposite is true for helping businesses create jobs -- it’s supported by some Democrats but not usually championed by liberals. It excludes coverage including members of Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell’s administration.)

Lawmakers now faced with the hard part when it comes to Growing Greener II
D issue D lawmaker (Rep. DeWeese)
Growing Green Two gains approval
D issue D group (PennEnvironment)
Growing Greener Two goes before voters today
D issue D groups (Chesapeake Bay Foundation/Green Party)
Lawmaker defends proposal to regulate payday lenders
D issue R lawmaker Rep. Ross (supports)
Lawmakers target Wal-Mart insurance issue
D issue
Call in PA to license payday lenders
D issue D group (Center for Responsible Lending)
Proposal would require insurance providers to tell customers calls will be logged
D issue D lawmaker (Rep. DeLuca)
Push is on for voters to pass Growing Greener II
D issue D group (PennEnvironment) R group (Commonwealth Foundation)
Rally in support of the Congressional filibuster
D issue D group (not identified) R group (self-described Republican)
Pennacchio makes case for replacing Santorum
D issue D group (Democrat candidate)
Optimism does not abound in new survey of PA business leaders.
R issue R group (Lincoln Institute)
A Push For Funds For First Responders
D issue D lawmaker (Rep. Sturla)
Rally at Capitol for equal pay
D issue R lawmaker supports (Sen. Orie)
Research shows those living near nuclear power plants are at-risk for certain health problems
D issue D group (Radiation and Public Health Project)
Bankruptcy attorney questions new law
D issue D group (Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance Program of Phila.)
Environmental bond package now goes to the voters
D issue R lawmaker supports (Rep. Quigley)
Efforts to preserve the filibuster in the Senate gains traction in PA
D issue D group (Citizens for Consumer Justice)
McGinty responds to coke plant permitting process concerns
D issue
Environmentalists balk at granting of coke plant permit
D issue D group (Clean Air Council)
Dems hold ground in PA Senate
D lawmaker (Mellow)
Buzz surrounding Act 72 builds as deadline nears
D group (PSBA)
New proposal to alter how state conducts redistricting
D lawmaker (Rep. Leach)
Lawsuit filed to put the brakes on Act 72
D group (PA School Boards Assoc.)
Senate ratifies lobbyist disclosure bill
R issue (as presented)
Number of medical malpractice cases in PA is encouraging to doctors and advocates
R issue R group (PA Medical Society)
Lawmakers scrutinize agreement between state and the Blues
R issue D lawmaker opposes (Sen. Stack)
State House Republicans unveil Keystone Manufacturing Initiative
R issue R lawmaker (Rep. Turzai)
Creighton puts forth intelligent design bill
R issue R lawmaker (Rep. Creighton)
College students remember the only pontiff in their lifetime
R issue R group (Newman Catholic Student Assoc. at Penn State)
Third parties hope task force meeting could lead to further ballot access
R group (Libertarian Party)

Reader Exposes the Raw, Naked Truth

The wit and sarcasm displayed in this letter to the editor barely conceals the justified contempt the reader has for the product peddled by the folks at The Philadelphia Daily News:

KUDOS to the editors of the Daily News for their continuing contribution to the moral education of our youth. The "Sexcetera" column clearly reflects the paper's acute awareness of its community responsibility.

It's great that our kids no longer have to spend several dollars for Penthouse or Hustler for answers to their sexual questions - they can get the same advice for just 60 cents in the People Paper. Keep up the good work!

The "Sexcetra" column features a man and woman answering what are purported to be letters from readers on the subject of multiple sex partners, bondage and topics you just can't find addressed anywhere else, except everywhere on the Internet.

Not surprisingly, the paper dismisses this harmless, humorous critique by affixing its "Rant of the Week" logo to it.

Inquirer Sued By Reporters Alleging Bias

The Philadelphia Daily News reports its corporate sister paper The Philadelphia Inquirer is being sued by seven female reporters alleging sex and age discrimination.

This would mark a stark departure from the 1990s, when the Inquirer touted “the most aggressive plan” for hiring women and minorities of any paper in the nation. Following controversy sparked by an editorial on the use of Norplant birth control to reduce pregnancies among teenage welfare mothers, the paper in 1991 implemented what its editor called hiring “quotas” for all openings: 50 percent female and 50 percent minority.

A search of the Inquirer web site finds no mention yet of the lawsuit.