Editorial Pages Report the News
from After Downing Street
By David Swanson
Increasingly, all the news that's fit to print does not include the news that editorial writers deem significant. The New York Times and many other newspapers have developed the habit of writing lengthy editorials about news stories that never make it into the news section. One example of this trend is the story of last Monday's presidential signing statement. If you don't know what a signing statement is, you should consider flipping first to the editorial page to get your news.
Congressional Quarterly, which has a readership of about 8, first reported the story in an honest-to-goodness straight news report, with all the bells and whistles of pretended "objectivity." The Boston Globe did the same. The Globe's article presents its readers with the basic facts of what happened, written in the manner which people have been trained to find most credible and important. The Guardian newspaper in England did the same. But the United States outside Boston and Capitol Hill was out of luck. An Associated Press article touched on the topic but avoided the main points. A Virginian Pilot article buried the lede. And a late-coming Washington Post article missed the boat.
But editorial page writers clearly believed the public deserved to hear about the end of its representative democracy. The New York Times led the way, followed by the Roanoke Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a chain of New England newspapers, the Times Argus, the Denver Post, the Charleston Gazette, and the Las Vegas Sun. These editorials both presented the information and took an opinion on it, all of them sharing the same basic perspective: the President of the United States had just shockingly seized unconstitutional powers, effectively elimintating the legislative branch of our government.
(Continued here.)
By David Swanson
Increasingly, all the news that's fit to print does not include the news that editorial writers deem significant. The New York Times and many other newspapers have developed the habit of writing lengthy editorials about news stories that never make it into the news section. One example of this trend is the story of last Monday's presidential signing statement. If you don't know what a signing statement is, you should consider flipping first to the editorial page to get your news.
Congressional Quarterly, which has a readership of about 8, first reported the story in an honest-to-goodness straight news report, with all the bells and whistles of pretended "objectivity." The Boston Globe did the same. The Globe's article presents its readers with the basic facts of what happened, written in the manner which people have been trained to find most credible and important. The Guardian newspaper in England did the same. But the United States outside Boston and Capitol Hill was out of luck. An Associated Press article touched on the topic but avoided the main points. A Virginian Pilot article buried the lede. And a late-coming Washington Post article missed the boat.
But editorial page writers clearly believed the public deserved to hear about the end of its representative democracy. The New York Times led the way, followed by the Roanoke Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a chain of New England newspapers, the Times Argus, the Denver Post, the Charleston Gazette, and the Las Vegas Sun. These editorials both presented the information and took an opinion on it, all of them sharing the same basic perspective: the President of the United States had just shockingly seized unconstitutional powers, effectively elimintating the legislative branch of our government.
(Continued here.)
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