St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Ferguson Media Darling Joshua Williams Sentenced to 8 Years For Arson
By Tom Blumer | December 13, 2015 | 11:24 PM EST

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday that Joshua Williams "was sentenced ... to eight years in prison for starting a fire at a QuikTrip in Berkeley (a St. Louis suburb) after an officer-involved shooting there." The Dispatch apparently didn't think it important to tell readers that the crime spree which occurred after that shooting took place despite the fact that the suspect had pulled a gun on that officer.

I noted in a NewsBusters post a year ago that Williams' arrest on charges of "1st degree arson, 2nd degree burglary and misdemeanor theft," and his confession "to setting fires at the store in a videotaped interview" constituted a major establishment press embarrassment. You see, until then, outfits like the New York Times, MSNBC and others had, in the words of Ryan Lovelace at National Review, "depicted him as a hero of the summer protests" in Ferguson, Missouri.

Dorian 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot!' Johnson Is Arrested; AP's Coverage Is Only at the New York Post
By Tom Blumer | May 7, 2015 | 10:15 AM EDT

In a "completely unexpected" (no, not really) development, Dorian Johnson, the person who was with Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri when Brown was killed by police officer Darren Wilson, has been arrested. I know, I know, it's a real shock to learn that the guy who completely fabricated the "hands up, don't shoot" lie and, along with Brown, "stole a box of cigars" from a store before their fateful encounter with Wilson could possibly have broken the law.

The Associated Press has written a story on the arrest. What's really odd, at least based on searches on Johnson's first name, is that the story isn't posted at the wire service's main national site or at its "Big Story" site.

Media Embarrassment: Lionized Ferguson 'Peace' Protester Confesses to Arson, Burglary
By Tom Blumer | December 28, 2014 | 9:52 AM EST

In St. Louis County, police have arrested 19 year-old Joshua Williams and charged him (HT Gateway Pundit) with committing "1st degree arson, 2nd degree burglary and misdemeanor theft" at the QuikTrip convenience store in Berkeley, Missouri on Christmas Eve. Williams "has confessed to the crimes."

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch gets today's prize for most absurd headline, as seen after the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

St. Louis Reporter: Dorian Johnson, Now Hired by City As a Temp, 'Rose to Fame' in Michael Brown Saga
By Tom Blumer | December 10, 2014 | 11:41 PM EST

St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Nick Pistor has quite an odd take on Dorian Johnson, the closest eyewitness to the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson in early August.

The occasion enabling Pistor to publicly purvey his perception was news on Monday that Johnson had taken a job with the City of St. Louis. Before getting to those details, let's look at Pistor's astonishing opening paragraph (bolds are mine throughout this post):

CBS, NBC Ignore Results of Michael Brown’s Autopsy
By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2014 | 10:15 PM EDT

On Wednesday, the results of the St. Louis County autopsy of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who died after being shot by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, were leaked to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper and largely supports Wilson’s claims that he had a physical altercation with Brown inside his police SUV. 

When it came to the major broadcast networks offering any mention of this big development, CBS and NBC failed to cover the story on both their morning and evening newscasts, respectively.

In Anti-Germ News, Media Gush That Obama 'Popularized' the Fist Bump, Like It Started in 2008
By Tim Graham | July 28, 2014 | 5:30 PM EDT

Fun (if obvious) medical news emerged on Monday that fist bumps are much healthier than germ-spreading handshakes. But the liberal media couldn’t report it without dragging in the cool factor of Barack Obama.

Take AP’s Mike Stobbe, as posted on The Huffington Post: "So fist bumps — popularized by Barack Obama and others — seem to be the wisest greeting, especially during cold and flu season, said researcher David Whitworth of Aberystwyth University in Wales." CBSNews.com led its story with the "popularized" claim:

Liberal St. Louis Paper Dumps George Will In Bow to Feminist Rage
By Tim Graham | June 19, 2014 | 6:35 AM EDT

The liberal St. Louis Post-Dispatch has bowed to the "Fire George Will" folks and discontinued his syndicated column after he wrote about liberal universities now being pressed to stem an alleged tide of campus sexual assault. They're switching to big-government conservative Michael Gerson, the former chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush.

"The change has been under consideration for several months," they claimed in a note from editorial page editor Tony Messenger, "but a column published June 5, in which Mr. Will suggested that sexual assault victims on college campuses enjoy a privileged status, made the decision easier. The column was offensive and inaccurate; we apologize for publishing it."

Editorials on Popes Dominated by Focus on Gays, Women
By Bill Donohue | September 12, 2013 | 12:11 PM EDT

Let’s look at the way the print media reacted to Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis after their first six months as pontiff.
 
We looked at the editorials in 15 of the nation’s largest newspapers to see what they said about the current pope, and his predecessor, after their first six months in office (Pope Francis will celebrate his first six months on September 13).

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Columnist: 'Most Veterans Did Nothing Heroic,' and Are Undeserving of Military Funeral Honors
By Tom Blumer | March 29, 2013 | 9:34 PM EDT

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan is mighty proud of himself this week. Today, he wrote that the negative response to a column he wrote on Wednesday ("One last call to service – end military funeral honors") is "pig heaven for an attention-craving columnist." The porcine parallel McClellan made seems more than appropriate in the circumstances.

You see, Budget-cutter Bill is either too dense to realize or doesn't care that his cost-cutting suggestion to end all military funeral honors except for "men and women killed in combat" would disqualify someone he specifically cited as a hero who was not killed in combat as deserving of such treatment. But first, some lowlights from McClellan's original column (HT The Blaze; bolds are mine throughout this post):

Parody or Reality? Obama Should Be Winning ‘99 to 1’ Over the ‘Plutocrats’
By Brent Baker | October 14, 2012 | 9:41 AM EDT

A week ago this morning, St. Louis Post-Dispatch readers awoke to the newspaper’s presidential endorsement editorial, “Obama for president: A second term for a serious man.” Yet it was very hard to take the editorial seriously.

“Ideologically, the P-D is similar to the New York Times, but it’s so knuckleheaded that it almost makes the Times look sophisticated,” the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto observed the next day, passing along how “we had some good laughs at the P-D’s editorial yesterday endorsing Obama’s re-election.”

NYT's Former SCOTUS Reporter Celebrates 'Accidental Heroines' Fluke and Anita Hill vs. 'Thuggish' Rush
By Clay Waters | March 9, 2012 | 2:10 PM EST

Linda Greenhouse the New York Times's former Supreme Court reporter (and left-wing ranter at commencement speeches), now writes a twice-a-month column for nytimes.com. Wednesday she hailed birth-control activist and new liberal martyr Sandra Fluke as a civil rights pioneer on the level of (naturally) Anita Hill, while tarring Rush Limbaugh as a thug, in "Accidental Heroines."

Newspaper Edges Back from Anti-Limbaugh 'Slavery' Smear; Sports Writer Says He’s Right Even if Quote Is Wrong
By Rich Noyes | October 14, 2009 | 12:53 PM EDT
Today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an “Editor’s Note” on their sports pages about the false quote attributed to radio host Rush Limbaugh, that Limbaugh had supposedly said that slavery “had its merits.” The paper says the quote came from a left-wing book that offered “no specific details” about its origins and that “the Post-Dispatch continues to research the origin of the quote.”

Back on October 7, Post-Dispatch sports writer Bryan Burwell was the first to inject the quote into the debate about whether an investment group including Limbaugh should be able to buy the St. Louis Rams; in his column today, Burwell suggested it didn’t really matter if the quote was a “fabrication.”
So what are we left with? Well, essentially, I think we just threw a deck chair off the Titanic. There is still a huge pile of polarizing, bigoted debris stacked up on the deck of the good ship Limbaugh that he can't deny or even remotely distance himself from.
That doesn’t sound very contrite for a writer who jump-started a nasty round of character assassination with a quote that his own newspaper says needs further “research” to confirm.