This morning I was reading The Oregonian and flipped to the Metro section.
Steve Dunn had a fairly wound licking piece about how Republicans in Oregon need to pick up the pieces and regroup. Dunn and I don’t see eye to eye, but his column is commentary. So truth in advertising. Right?
Next I read the front page metro headlining piece (above the fold): Oregon: a one-party state? written by Janie Har and Bill Graves. If anyone is left out there that still believes that there’s such thing as the “Liberal Media”, you’ll want to sit down for this one:
Emboldened by Election Night wins across Oregon, Democrats now have unbridled power to raise taxes and fees when they meet in January
What the fuck? This opening in an article that is labeled as a news story isn’t a quote or any other external reference by the authors, it’s an out and out slam against liberals as “Tax and Spend”. The article goes on to talk about how the Democrats are in control of the state legislature but might be restrained by the expectations of voters, some of which tend towards more conservative views.
At a core I think questioning a one-party dominated legislature is more than fair. Any time one party has a majority it’s important for the media to make sure there’s transparency and accountability. But this article is just absurd. It’s been one day since Barak Obama made his moving speech about people from both parties coming together and working together on the problems that face us. To have such an out and out partisan slam in The Oregonian as a news article is just out of bounds, so much so that I’d say it’s not Red or Blue but Yellow Journalism.
Interestingly you won’t find Oregon: a one-party state? online at Oregon Live anymore, the piece seems to have been pulled from their online edition.
3 replies on “Oregon: a one-party state? – Yellow Journalism at Its Finest”
I couldn’t agree with you more.
Hi Geoff, the article you’re looking for is actually here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/11/democrats_in_salem_gain_votes.html
The Oregonian rewrites the headlines for web, so it’s better to search for a phrase in the body of the story rather than the print headline. Also, to complicate things, our site search engine is returning results for stories from an older system which are automatically removed from the site when there is a version of the story already online. We’re working on that and apologize for the confusion.
When you search for “Oregon: a one-party state?” it brings up “What does a very blue Oregon Legislature portend for Oregonians?” which leads here and is dead.
But thanks for the updated link.