Monday, November 2, 2009

Weekend story at the KC Star wins praise

John Landsberg give props to the KC Star for a weekend story underscoring the awkward relationships between food companies and medical groups. Click here for the details.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sadly, when McClatchy types do some good work, less people know as there are less readers subscribing to their mostly biased paper

Anonymous said...

Like Coca Cola does a lot of advertising with the Star. Jeeze, how brave.

Anonymous said...

9:52... you are so right. When they do local stuff without the political agenda, they can still commit some serious journalism.

Recently the Tacoma paper did some digging into the personal life of one of the Superior Court judges. Seems the good judge was into male prostitutes and threatened one if he talked about it.

The judge was just convicted at trial and resigned today. The Tacoma paper's local reporter Adam Lynn did a great job.

If McClatchy would just get rid of their DC bureau and concentrate on real journalism, they might be able to stop this train wreck.

John Altevogt said...

disagree that The Star showed any courage reporting on a topic that had already been widely reported elsewhere. Given their position on socialized medicine and enthusiastic support on both the news and editorial pages for government control, showing private practice medicine in a bad light is simply a typical Star attack piece on an ideological foe.

If they were to show courage, they would have covered the Health Care Foundation's discriminatory refusal to fund actual medical services by the Salvation Army and City Union Mission based on their sincerely held religious beliefs. If they had an ounce of integrity they might have printed Dr George Hoech's letter to the editor explaining what had happened and covered his resignation from the Foundation's Advisory Board. They didn't. Nor did The Star point out the use of those funds for "advocacy" projects instead. ACORN and other leftist groups, not even from our service area, were given money that could have helped provide the poor and the downtrodden with medical care, but that would actually have required courage. Misusing "charities" and foundations would be a major story if Kansas City had an honest newspaper. It doesn't, and using the words courage and Star in the same breath is an oxymoron and an insult to the community that suffers from its absolute absence of either courage, or integrity.

Lest anyone think I'm being critical of the reporters, the reporter covering the Health Care Foundation was more than competent to superbly cover the Health Care Foundation story, and was well aware of it and Dr. Hoech's resignation. The decision to spike the story was clearly made at the editorial level. As I've said before, one of The Star's greatest crimes is the misuse of the many talented people it had at its disposal and failed to use - then, or now.