Topic: NewsBusters
Why oh why does NewsBusters allow people to post items about things they know nothing about?
Warner Todd Huston writes of the bankruptcy filing of the Minneapolis Star Tribune in a Jan. 15 post: "Many in the Minneapolis area call the paper the RedStarTribune for its often overbearing leftist point of view." Not only does Huston offer no evidence of this being true, describing the paper as "overbearing leftist" ignores its current ideological slant under which the bankruptcy was declared: The Star Tribune endorsed Republican Norm Coleman over Democrat Al Franken in the Minnesota Senate race, and its news coverage has been similarly pro-Coleman (and pro-Republican) and anti-Franken (and anti-Democrat).
Huston does have a history of making ill-informed rants at NewsBusters.
Tom Blumer then follows up with a similarly ill-iniformed post: "As the once mighty continue to fall (the latest being Minneapolis Star Tribune), what will the history books say about the relationship between the perilous condition of most of print media outlets and the seven years or so many of them spent suffering from full-blown Bush Derangement Syndrome?" Not only does Blumer buy into the right-wing myth that liberal bias is the only possible explanation for the problems newspapers are currently facing (not to mention the fact that the Strib hasn't exactly been exhibiting "full-blown Bush Derangement Syndrome"), he ignores the actual facts of the Star Tribune bankruptcy, as outlined by an actual economist with expertise on the subject and no partisan ax to grind:
Avista Capital Partners says slumping revenue in a brutal climate for newspapers everywhere forced the bankruptcy of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune -- but media economist Robert Picard isn't buying it.
[...]
It wasn't the economy, but Avista's own business decisions that brought the Strib to bankruptcy, Picard argues.
"They're blaming the changes in the industry, they're blaming the economy, they're blaming the unions -- when clearly the blame belongs in New York with the managers of Avista," Picard told E&P today.[...]
"This is a company that's still making a profit," he said. "They can't withstand (economic conditions) now because their debts are so high. It was almost all debt in the financing of the acquisition."
Any chance NewsBusters writers will do a little, you know, research on the media the next time they put fingers to keyboard? Naah -- it's so much easier ranting about the "liberal media," and they write for a place that thinks ranting about liberals equals "media criticism."
