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The Times, The Inquirer and Pa. Politics

I’ve never been the kind of Republican to complain about biased newspaper coverage—it sounds like feeling sorry for yourself, and besides, they aren’t going to change. But The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times have really outdone themselves this year. Last Sunday’s Week in Review section (The Times) ran an article suggesting that President Obama is brilliant because he understood that capitalism has limits. The Inquirer has been a virtual cheering section for Obama, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, and any other Democratic office-holder, while barely deigning to cover Republican opponents. When I briefly ran for Congress last year, the paper wouldn’t bother to talk to me. It eventually endorsed my opponent, Congressman Chaka Fattah (PA-2), without even bothering to interview the GOP candidate who eventually replaced me on the ballot.

The problem here I think is less biased coverage than plain old bad coverage. By making Obama look like a saint, and the Republicans know-nothing bigots, the papers pretty much preclude serious debate on issues they should be addressing. This isn’t even a favor to the Democrats, who badly need discussion of the problems facing the country, but won’t get it from a sychophantic media.

I think there’s also a connection between the newspapers’ financial problems and their lack of balanced coverage. Typically these problems are blamed on the Internet, labor costs, and so forth (that was the typical excuse for not covering Congressional races.) But people read sites like the Huffington Post that offer a variety of perspectives, even if they disagree with them. Why pay to read something when you know what it will say before reading it?

April 25, 2009 at 9:13 pm

--Michael Livingston

Tags: Chaka Fattah, Congress, New York Times, PA-2, Philadelphia Inquirer

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