On media bias, I told you so

I told you so.

Last Friday, for example, I previewed phony arguments against real health care reform this way:

“Brace yourself, too, for chilling warnings about government getting between you and your doctor. What better distraction from the armies of administrators, accountants and lawyers standing today, in full armor, between you and your doctor,” I wrote.

The next day, U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, a Louisiana Republican  and a surgeon, said: “A government takeover of healthcare will put bureaucrats in charge of health decisions that should be made by families and doctors.”

The good doctor’s statement combines a lie with a misdirection play. Obama isn’t proposing a “government takeover of healthcare.” And while families and doctors may make health decisions for the upper crust, for-profit corporations call the shots for most Americans.

On business journalism, I told you so April 3:

Financial journalism should take some responsibility for our ignorance. In fact, except at a few major newspapers and little, specialized publications — James Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, anyone? — there’s not a lot of it.

The Columbia Journalism Review (May-June issue) agrees and provides brilliant analysis thereof in several articles collectively entitled “Blindness — How the business press missed the meltdown.”

(For CJR’s Dean Starkman, preparing his contribution required heroic masochism – he read more than 2,000 stories from 2000 to 2007!)

I told you so about the Albuquerque Journal, too.

In fact, I have recited the daily ‘s sins against journalism so often I’m reluctant to do so again, but management just won’t remove its editorial thumb from the news scales.

You see it often in headlines.

Take the rubric “Obama’s Visit Draws Mixed Reaction” in the West Side Journal Saturday May 16, with the sub-head “President’s Admirers Outnumber Protestors.”

That’s technically accurate, but doesn’t describe reporter Rosalie Rayburn’s comprehensive story. It rings like a leftover from the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Rayburn opened with a neat play on Julius Caesar — “He came; he spoke; they cheered.”

She summarized. The President spoke about credit cards and took few questions from a cheering crowd of about 2,500 at Rio Rancho High School. He recognized Governor Richardson and Rio Rancho Mayor Swisstack.

Backtracking, Rayburn said Obama remarked briefly on stimulus and health care before outlining his ideas on credit card reform. She talked to audience members who approved.

In the 18th paragraph, Rayburn wrote, “A few people weren’t happy about Obama’s visit.” The next seven graphs reflected the views of “about 80” dissenters. They spoke against abortion as well as government interference in the economy and, specifically, the credit card business.

So where did the headline (and sub-head) come from? Not from the lead paragraph or any other. Nor did it sum up the whole story; in fact, it ignored the president’s message and mischaracterized his reception.

Why? I don’t know. If it happened rarely, I would presume the headline writer was off his or her game that day. But Journal headlines regularly carry a political slant; it’s as if management keeps a righty curve-baller warm in the bullpen.

Yet the same Albuquerque Journal offers consistent public service; a recent story on the PTA Clothing Bank, for example, inspired an “outpouring of $28,000 in donations.” (May 18, A4.)

Its reporter/columnist, Leslie Linthicum, just won another award (2009 Best of the West) for her outstanding UpFront reporting and prose.

And the Journal’s investigative journalists regularly uncover and make sense of corrupt dealings between business and government in Santa Fe.

Journal reporters’ virtues make its editors’ inability to play fair very sad.

I wish I couldn’t tell you so.