Friday, November 14, 2008

How the Kansas City Star censored itself into oblivion

Jack Cashill shows how The Kansas City Star took a pass on at least 5 Missouri campaign stories that occurred in the Star's home state. In each case, the stories reflected poorly on the Star's preferred ticket of Obama/Biden. As a result, the KC Star got scooped by other outlets, and, worse for the Star's bottom line, signalled to subscribers they wouldn't get the straight scoop from the KC Star. Here is Jack Cashill's list of the 5 Missouri campaign stories the KC Star fumbled:
  • Barack Obama's "Girareau family here in St. Louis" gaffe (KC Star's star political reporter Steve Kraske was there when Obama gaffed, but chose not to rat Obama out)
  • Joe Biden's "Stand up, Chuck!" gaffe in Columbia, Missouri
  • Barack Obama Missouri Truth Squads (composed of Dem sheriffs and prosecutors)
  • Obama Youth Video (students from the Urban Community Leadership Academy)
  • The ACORN scandal in Missouri -- dismissed by the KC Star as "a distraction"
The stories were either minimized or ignored, or reported on so late that readers figured out the Star was trying hard to suppress the news. Read the whole article.

Hat tip: comments

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The 'reader's representative' is supposedly doing a story on the Star's "bias"--and he noted in the news not the editorial staff. These days the editorial staff is pretty much allowed to write what they want because "it's opinion" even though its about 7 to 1 lib vs cons.

On his blog, someone mentioned the bias is related to not what is written, but to what is not written. Just like this story. Something tells me he's going to give the Star a clean bill of health and sing its praises.

Anonymous said...

He has too. His predecessor got fired for telling the truth. Besides that, if you go read the garbage that his Ombudsman Society puts out, their only function is to mitigate the one sidedness of papers with Ombudsman and blame the readers that point it out.

I've worked at several papers with a leftist bent, and all adopted the NYT Ombudsman scam to try and stem the loss of subscribers while continuing to proselytize them their ideology.

Eric Rogers said...

It's too bad you take Jack Cashill as a credible source. That guy is a first class quack. He is the one promoting the far-fetched myth that Bill Ayers wrote both of Obama's books. He is a far-right wingnut, and in no way a real journalist.