Utah

Forget the Internet, Let the 'Established' Media Tell you About it
By Warner Todd Huston | October 29, 2008 | 4:58 AM EDT

John Hollenhorst, reporter for KSL TV in Salt Lake City, Utah, wants you to forget about all those gosh darn Internet rumors. In fact, forget the Internet altogether and just rely on the "established news organizations" to tell you what is what. After all, it's just too darn hard for the common folks to figure it all out. Alarmingly the "21st Century is putting a higher responsibility on voters to seek out the truth and ignore the ridiculous." Imagine? Requiring citizens to go to all the trouble of actually seeking out the truth and learning about what a candidate really stands for? What a bother.

But, reporter Hollenhorst and his "expert" have the solution: Don't bother and just make the Old Media your source for news. After all, the Old Media is the only one to be believed because they've got "the greatest credibility." Right Dan Rather?

Utah Paper Declares War on State GOP?
By Matthew Sheffield | August 28, 2008 | 12:13 PM EDT

One thing the ongoing feud between MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann has demonstrated that politics can get very personal. Both anchors are very committed Democrats yet seem to despise each other.

A similar case of the personal becoming political appears to have occured in my birth state of Utah where the Salt Lake-based Deseret Morning News is being accused of mounting a petty feud against Utah Republican legislators.

It all began earlier this summer when the News, along with its rival the Salt Lake Tribune, filed an official information request on an unrelated story. Unfortunately for the News, its request was overly narrow and did not yield the information it had desired.

AP's 'US Now Winning Iraq War' Analysis Getting Light Exposure
By Tom Blumer | July 27, 2008 | 10:16 AM EDT

Robert Burns and Robert H. Reid created quite a stir in the blogosphere yesterday with their dispatch from Baghdad, "Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost." NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard accurately called it a "stop the presses" story, and ended his post with an important perspective that you really must read if you haven't already.

Now that the story has had one overnight news cycle since its appearance at about 9 AM yesterday, I looked around to see how much coverage Burns's and Reid's work received.

I looked at what the three "newspapers of record" did (if anything) with the AP item; searched Google News for other coverage; and reviewed headline revisions made by outlets that carried it.

Results are below the fold.

French Health Care Expert: France's System Broken, Should Copy US; Media Yawn
By Lynn Davidson | August 27, 2007 | 7:56 AM EDT
Magnet by Souvenirs de Paris

Alert Michael Moore! Both he and the World Health Organization say France has the best health care system in the world, and America's system is barely better than Slovenia's. However, French professor Alice Teil not only said the French system is “not sustainable anymore,” but copying parts of America's could save it.

Teil turned to a privately-owned hospital in Utah after a survey of international health care experts ranked Salt Lake City's Intermountain Health Care the number one hospital in the world. You would think that a media so hyper-worried about the “broken” US health care system would report the encouraging news, but other than some bare bones local coverage, this story was ignored.

Maybe it was ignored because Teil's startling description of France's situation did not match the media's typical positive depiction of “free” health care. The earliest online report of Teil's trip was a brief August 22 article posted on Salt Lake City radio station KCPW's website, and it did not stick to the usual MSM script (bold mine throughout):

"It's true we really have good access, but what if the system is not sustainable anymore?" says Teil. "It's going to break. It's going to blow. And then no more accessibility for anybody."