Saturday, February 17, 2007

This is News?

I'm not sure that it really qualifies as "news" that conservatives are mobilizing to oppose Hillary Clinton, but that's the way the L.A. Times reports it.

What I find most interesting is the sympathetic pro-Clinton way the Times frames the story.

The article is breathlessly headlined "GOP Hawks Circling Clinton's Campaign," with the subheadlines "Conservative attacks come early. She says she knows how foes think and how to defeat them."

In other words, the GOP's "hawks" are the "attacking" bad guys, but the Times' Girl Hillary is on the case and can win.

Buried deep in the article we learn the Clinton campaign has employees "monitoring enemy blogs" (gotta love that phrasing) and that she has "spent lavishly to hire a large team of opposition researchers."

In other words, she's doing at least the same as those who are working against her. She's campaigning.

Her spokesman even says -- perhaps somewhat menacingly, given the Clintons' history -- "One thing people know about the Clintons is they know how to fight back." And we're told she'll be relying on the "street-fighter instincts of longtime political aide Harold M. Ickes."

What, no "attack" headline from the Times about Mrs. Clinton? I guess she's strictly going to play defense, huh?

So much for a fair and balanced perspective from the Times on the rigors of the election trail.

Sunday Update: Welcome to readers of Patterico.

2 Comments:

Blogger Howard said...

Nobody, and I mean NO BODEE, I know reads the LA Times. Twenty years ago almost every desk had, at the very least, a Times Sports Section in partial states of being read. No more. You rail against a windmill, one that doesn' even work.

8:41 AM  
Blogger Laura said...

Hi Howard,

I confess I still get the Times chiefly for its Sports section, although at the rate it's shrinking there won't be a Sports section left in a couple of years.

I find it useful on occasion to take a good look at what passes for the Times' "news" coverage and remind myself why I don't read much of the rest of the paper...and perhaps I harbor the faint hope that the Times editors will one day wake up and realize what they've done to their paper.

Thanks for stopping by!
Best wishes,
Laura

8:45 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Newer›  ‹Older