Topic: NewsBusters
In noting that "Democrat Party [sic] presidential candidate John Edwards has issued a call to turn Memorial Day from a day to celebrate our troops to a day pushing a political message that attacks them," Warner Todd Huston observes in a May 13 NewsBusters post:
How often do you see MSM sources giving direct links to websites outside their own site? How many times have you seen a story mentioning a website, maybe even including the name of the website somewhere within the story, yet the story won't give the full address? Also, how many times do you see a web posting that actually includes a hypertext link to any website outside any paper's site? Not very often. But today the Washington Post has given John Edward's anti-war website a big boost by not only writing a story about it, but creating a direct link to it at the end of their story.
Imagine that: a news story that features a clickable hyperlink. The nerve of the Post to do such a thing! Huston adds:
Now, before it seems that I am decrying a paper linking to any other site, I have to say I am not against the concept. But there has been a practice by most newspaper websites of never linking to a source outside the paper's (except for paid advertisers) and they almost never create a link to a site that is in the news, causing their readers to make their own efforts to seek out the website in discussion.
Actually, it's not unusual for the Post to include hyperlinks to outside websites. (Associated Press articles normally include at the end links to relevant websites.) Logic would dictate that in a news article on a website that includes an address for another website, that address should be clickable. Perhaps newspapers are starting to figure that out.
Huston also shows an, er, unusual level of concern about the icon the Post uses for its political coverage:
Now, take a casual look at it, or perhaps squint a bit at it. Doesn't it look like you are looking at a drawing of a donkey with it's rear end facing you, as if it is looking back at you over it's haunches? Notice how the rear end is ACTUALLY the face of the elephant? Doesn't the trunk of the elephant look like the donkey's right, rear leg? Doesn't the curve of the ear of the elephant look like the donkey's tail? And the eye of the elephant is the donkey's.... well... not an "eye" exactly?
I wonder if the graphics guys at the Washington Post thought it might be funny to make the elephant's head the donkey's rear end? As a graphic artist myself, I cannot eliminate the possible symbolism, especially coming from the editorial position of the Post!
You mean the one that often agrees with the conservative Wall Street Journal?
