Topic: NewsBusters
An Aug. 28 NewsBusters post by Bill Hobbs countered a blogger's claim that the roster of syndicated columnists at the Tennessean newspaper is overwhelmingly conservative by claiming:
While it's true that the paper does run a healthier selection of nationally syndicated conservatives than it does liberals, the Nashville blogger has defined the equation too narrowly - he's left out the paper's own editorials, which consistently lean leftward on national, state and local issues.
And the Tennessean does not employ a local conservative political columnist.
The paper's roster of national syndicated conservative columnists masks the paper's liberal leanings. Strip away all the syndicated stuff, liberal and conservative - which readers can get online and from a myriad of other print sources anyway - and what you have left is the local editorial and commentary content. And it leans heavily leftward.
Hobbs offers no evidence to his readers that the Tennessean's "local editorial and commentary content ... leans heavily leftward. Is he running on the normal conservative assumption that because a newspaper is not explictly conservative, a la the Washington Times and New York Post, it must ipso facto be liberal?
It would appear so. Who needs evidence when you have conservative shibboleths?
