The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “fetus” as “a human being or animal in the later stages of development before it is born.” So the Los Angeles Times (and other media outlets) are defying the dictionary with “Two fetuses found beside road in Fallbrook.”
Times reporter Tony Perry dropped the F-bomb for a baby repeatedly in this short item (only the sheriff's spokesman was acknowledging birth).
Chris Megerian at the Los Angeles Times, in a report first published online on Tuesday, had a difficult time trying to downplay the fact that Democrat and leftist mega-donors outspent their Republican and conservative couterparts by an overwhelming margin during the past election cycle.
But Megerian made the best of it, giving readers the impression that David Koch, of the supposedly evil Koch brothers, was the fourth-largest such donor. Times editors did their part to keep the news as quiet as possible by publishing the obviously national story in the California secion of its Wednesday print edition.
What follows is an object lesson in why year-end best, worst and other lists shouldn't be published until the year actually ends.
A Kwanzaa "parade" was held in Los Angeles yesterday. In reporting on the event, CBS Los Angeles published a work of fiction (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) which absolutely belongs on any 2014 list of most embarrassing moments in journalism (HT Twitchy; bolds are mine):
Tuesday afternoon, Kyle Drennen at NewsBusters observed that the Big Three networks "Appear Finished With Gruber Coverage," and that their Tuesday morning shows had no coverage of the de facto Obamacare architect and his congressional appearance.
One factor likely influencing the nets' posture is how original news sources like the Associated Press and the nation's largest dailies have managed to shield their readers from almost anything relating to Gruber for weeks. One particularly comical example of that has been the Los Angeles Times.
Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever didn’t hate NBC’s three-hour “Peter Pan Live” musical. Allison Williams as the flying title character was fine (after becoming become the most promoted stage musical actress in decades, just by being on an NBC stage.)
Stuever turned the second half of his review into disgust at how relentlessly tacky NBC-Universal is in promoting its own products that it takes the smell out of Brian Williams pushing his own daughter in America’s face, since well, he makes a fraction of what Jon Stewart takes home. NBC is now "the tackiest house on the street."
In the Rolling Stone-University of Virginia fraternity gang-rape saga, National Review's Jonah Goldberg's journalistic instincts expressed in his December 1 Los Angeles Times column ("Rolling Stone rape story sends shock waves -- and stretches credulity") obviously ran circles around Los Angeles Times op-ed columnist Diana Crandall's.
On December 3, shortly before the story imploded, Crandall went after Goldberg with a vengeance for supposedly "being out of touch with college realities" and for writing the kind of column which "prevents rape victims from coming forward" (bolds and numbereed tags are mine):
The Washington Post deserves credit for filing a Freedom of Information Act request to get details on Hillary Clinton’s very expensive lectures, but it’s fascinating when and where they decide to report on the results: tucked into the middle page A-2 on Thanksgiving Day.
It’s under a story titled “462,000 choose health plans as enrollment begins.” Talk about trying to hide your light under a bushel. The headline was “An inside look at a Clinton speech: E-mails show detailed requests for $300,000 talk at UCLA."
Sometimes, one has to remember that op-ed writers don't always get to pick their headlines, though I would hope that they're allowed to register their objections. So it's not clear that Los Angeles Times guest blogger Joel Silberman is responsible for the headline at his Monday blog post about how, or even whether, to deal with relatives who disagree with you politically on Thanksgiving.
But Silberman's resume indicates that he would probably have been comfortable with the headline used: "What to do if your crazy right-wing uncle comes for Thanksgiving." Excerpts and some background on Silberman follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine; links in final two excerpted paragraphs are in original):
Brett M. Decker is a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors and "consulting director at the White House Writers Group." Early this evening, he effectively did double duty for the paper, both as a columnist and a journalist.
Decker appears to be the first person to report visibly in a national publication that "influential gay rights advocate and top Obama donor" Terry Bean was arrested on Wednesday and "charged with two felony counts of having sex with a minor last year." There were three links to Decker's column at USAT's front page at 7:43, while a story appearing at the site about 20 minutes earlier than Decker's forwarded from KGW-TV in Oregon is absent from its front page. The portion of Decker's discussion of the media double standard follows the jump (HT Instapundit; bolds are mine):
Some of the nation's most influential newspapers sympathetically broke out the euphemisms for Obama as he prepares for unilateral executive action to "shield" some illegal immigrants from the rule of law, which they call "deportation relief." He's "cheered by reform advocates."
In a scathing article for the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, reporter Robyn Dixon slammed Australia as “The adolescent country. The bit player. The shrimp of the schoolyard.” She contemptuously added: “For Australians it's not so bad – most of the time – to be so far away, so overlooked, so seemingly insignificant as to almost never factor in major international news. The lifestyle makes up for it.”
I think this makes six videos (CNN says they have Number 4, and I believe this is Number 5) of Obamacare co-architect Jonathan Gruber giving away the Obama administration's comprehensively deceptive game in drafting and promoting the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
The most relevant 40-second snip is at the YouTube account and a Thursday afternoon post by the indispensable Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit. It's a small portion of a 33-minute June 2012 interview of Gruber at PBS's Frontline. The most important revelation is that President Barack Obama was in the room and actively participating in, if not leading, a discussion about how to effectively take away the tax benefits of the most generous healthcare plans which were then being offered in the marketplace. What resulted is now known as the "Cadillac Tax." But there is much more to that Frontline video.
