LA Times Op-ed Page Mirrors Its Front Page

"Bush's Agenda Loses Focus" is one article.

"A Sliding Scale for Victory" is another; it's a "news analysis" with the sub-head, "As the conflict in Iraq enters its fourth year and civil war threatens, the Bush administration is again working to lower expectations."

It's just another day on the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times, right? Wrong. It's the above-the-fold front page (.pdf image) of Sunday's paper (March 19, 2006).

"Bush's Agenda Loses Focus" begins as follows:

"A growing Republican chorus is calling for a staff overhaul inside President Bush's beleaguered White House, but some conservatives say such a change would stop far short of fixing what they view as a serious flaw: an unfocused domestic agenda.

"The war in Iraq is dominating the attention of Bush and his top aides, these critics say, while the recent departure of the president's top domestic policy advisor after just one year has left the White House without an obvious conductor to direct the sometimes disparate policy-making machine."

That, my folks, qualifies as the front-page, above-the-fold, lead news story in today's Los Angeles Times. The other article is labeled as a "news analysis" piece, but can you really tell the difference?

And if there weren't enough Bush-bashing for one page, the Times really made sure you got the message by also including an above-the-fold color photo of a war protester in Athens. This was despite the fact that war protests were only moderately attended this year (see here, here, and here).

And we are supposed to view the Times as an objective source of straight, honest news? Forget about it.

The great LA Times watchdog Patterico saw this egregiousness also.