Chicago Tribune

Have you noticed that when a Federal Election Commission complaint against a Republican presidential candidate is made, the press jump on it like a child on presents beneath a tree on Christmas morning?

Yet, when someone files an FEC complaint against Hillary Clinton, you're more likely to see a news item featuring a global warming skeptic talking about how Al Gore is lying to the public about climate change than anything related to the former first lady's seemingly incessant campaign finance indiscretions.

For example, did you hear about this complaint filed on Halloween against she who will be President if the press have their way:

Now, I know finding a Republican in Chicago city government is probably less likely than spotting a nudist in a porcupine convention, but is it asking too much for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times to add a D-tag when reporting on six-term (and freshly re-elected) Mayor Richard M. Daley's push for an 11 percent city sales tax and a 10-cent-per-bottle bottled water tax?

It's particularly puzzling given the Sun-Times excellent reporting by Tim Novak and Fran Spielman on the "hidden tax" imposed by corruption within the Daley administration:

When Mayor Daley asked Chicagoans to cough up $293 million more next year to finance the cost of city government, there's one tax he failed to mention: The Corruption, Waste and Mismanagement Tax.

Today's Chicago Tribune includes the editorial, "Protect us from Sally Field?" The Tribune is displeased that Ms. Field, who pretty much exhausted her acting ability 40 years ago with "The Flying Nun," was censored by the Fox Network.

In an acceptance speech on Sunday's Emmy Awards program, Sally shared her wisdom: "If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no god-damned wars in the first place." Fox cut out the last half of her sentence. Concluded the editorial:

Some would have been offended by Field's choice of words. Some would have been offended by her political sentiment. But everyone ought to feel a chill over the fact that they didn't get to hear the end of her sentence at all.

So, OK, the Chicago Tribune opposes that chilling effect. Hurrah.

The Trib's outrage might be more persuasive if it didn't selectively edit a story in the same day's paper.

Hiding behind a fake company name, Planned Parenthood came into Aurora, Illinois, a suburban Chicago neighborhood, and built an abortion clinic without telling the city of Aurora that it was to be an abortion clinic. Yet, all the news about this story is centering on the pro-abortion/pro-life debate instead of Planned Parenthood's lies. This story has been going on for a few days in Aurora, Illinois. It seems Planned Parenthood told a teeny, tiny white lie to the City Planning Board of Aurora about what use a new building they were constructing near a residential neighborhood would be put to. In fact, they even misled city officials as to who they even were, and those officials are none too happy about it.

The city granted a building permit to a company called Gemini Office Development LLC to build what was being called a “medical office building.” It turns out, however, that Gemini Office Development LLC is actually a shell company for Planned Parenthood and this new building was not going to be just a regular, non-descript “medical office building” but a Planned Parenthood abortion mill, instead. Curiously, Planned Parenthood neglected to tell the city of its plans until the building was complete and they were ready to open for business.

It'll be interesting to see how many people spend an hour and a half in the theater this Labor Day weekend watching Leonardo DiCaprio's documentary about how we are teetering on the edge of global warming catastrophe. It sounds like a bummer way to end the summer. But if moviegoers turn to the Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips' review of the film for guidance, then the movie may well be tossed into the rubbish heap along with the year's other flops.

Essentially, according to Phillips, "The 11th Hour" tries to cover everything under the sun...and then some. It's a "panicky blur" that goes "broad, but not deep," and begins with a "frenzied montage of global calamity." Gee, for a guy who's been in the movie business since he was knee high to a grasshopper, you'd think Leo might have come up with a more winning formula.

Here's the money quote:

What's your nomination for today's Dumb Headline of the Day?

Here's mine, from the August 27 blog entry by Chicago Tribune religion reporter/blogger Manya Brachear. The topic was Mother Teresa's diary and how some entries revealed a fear of being distant from Jesus:

"Can saints have bad days?"

Today's front page of the Chicago Tribune carries the story "Vast army of 'Hillary haters' has claws out." Written by Tribune national correspondent Jill Zuckman, the article cites a handful of people and organizations opposed to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's White House ambitions:

Armed with new technologies and fueled by animus, they are bent on preventing "four more years" of Clintonism. Every old charge, it seems, is being repackaged and sold as new. Every rumor is given a new, blog-stoked currency.

Correspondent Zuckman writes of the "venomous opposition" to Mrs. Clinton:

It should come as a surprise to nobody that revenue is down again for the Tribune Company, owner of news properties such as the LA Times and Chicago Tribune. This time the bleeding stopped at 5.9 percent. Circulation was down 5.4 percent. Classifieds are down 18.2 percent. Retail advertising sales are down 6 percent.

But it's not their fault, of course. This time the blame is "due to difficult year-over-year comparisons." Though one must wonder if their circulation would continue to have dropped had they heeded my suggestion that newspapers "get rid of the bias, the America-hating columnists, the socialist editorials, and the reporters pushing a gay/lesbian/transgendered/illegal alien/pro-abortion/anti-God/anti-gun agenda?"

Or they could continue doing what they're doing.

It's not a scientific survey, but a recent poll of Chicago Tribune readers showed an overwhelming majority of readers support the arrest and deportation of illegal immigrant and Social Security fraudster Elvira Arellano. You'll recall I wrote about the Trib's bias on Monday.

The results of the four poll questions were published in an August 21 post at Eric Zorn's "Change of Subject" blog:

We asked chicagotribune.com readers for their views on the Elvira Arellano case. Here are the results after approximately 23,900 votes were registered:

"Activist arrested in L.A.: Deported to Tijuana, pastor says."

That's the headline for an August 20 Chicago Tribune story on convicted Social Security fraudster and serial border-jumper Elvira Arellano. Reporter Antonio Olivo mentioned the conviction, but deep in the article in the 14th paragraph:

Much of the anger from across the political spectrum surrounding illegal immigration has been crystallized by Arellano's story. After entering the country illegally twice, she became an activist shortly after she was arrested in 2002 during a federal sweep at O'Hare International Airport, where Arellano cleaned airplanes. She was later convicted of using a fake Social Security card.

Today's Washington Post story about the latest legal filings in a securities case echoes the bias of liberal blogs and publications on the case.

The Post leads the story this way:

The Bush administration yesterday sided with accountants, bankers and lawyers seeking to avoid liability in corporate fraud cases, arguing that investors must show they lost money after relying on deceptions by third parties in order to proceed with private lawsuits.

The National Association of Manufacturers proposes a different lead:

"The Bush administration yesterday sided with U.S. manufacturers and their 14 million employees, arguing against a reinterpretation of securities law that could lead to an explosive rise in litigation."

Update (14:15): Welcome to Rush Limbaugh listeners. You can find more on media bias about the Minnesota bridge collapse on our site here.

By now it's been so widely adopted by the media that it's easy to be numb to it, but Chicago Tribune's E.A. Torriero breathed new life into the Bush-caused-it meme in the I-35W bridge collapse story by adding a new twist. The bridge collapse, suggested Torriero, is insult added to injury for mostly Muslim Somali immigrants already angered by American foreign policy.

In a story filed the evening of August 7, Torriero portrayed the collapse as insult added to injury for Somali immigrants, weaving in suggestions that America under President Bush is becoming akin to a third world country, unable or unwilling to build and maintain safe infrastructure:

Don't get me wrong. I like that mainstream media do take some efforts to report more religion and faith news items these days, including blogs like "The Seeker" at Chicago Tribune's home on the Web and the ongoing "On Faith" feature hosted by the Washington Post and Newsweek.

But just as I ripped "On Faith" for asking if good works were preferable to being saved, I have to admit this August 6 discussion starter by the Trib's Manya Brachear is a little clumsy as well:

Is church the right venue to talk about pornography? Is a small dose really that wrong?

This from the same blogger who asked, "Does sex bring you closer to God?"

On the heels of an earth-shattering exploration of the 237 reasons people have sex --I swear, someone's going to make this into a coffee table book and get rich off of it -- Chicago Tribune faith and religion blogger Manya Brachear wondered, "Can sex bring you closer to God?"

Brachear opened her August 1 "The Seeker" blog entry:

Why do so many people of faith seem obsessed with sex? Or it just the people who cover them?

Although Brachear tossed out the possibility that it's the media that are sex-obsessed, she quickly turned her attention to just how prudish she thinks America's numerous faith traditions are:

The Chicago Tribune's Frank James thinks the Democrats really need to stop this insistence on retreat... from the word liberal. In short, James wrote at the paper's "The Swamp" blog today, if Democrats don't hunker down and fight Republicans on the dreaded L-word, the GOP will keep moving on and make "progressive" an epithet as well.

Here's James' argument, portions in bold are my emphasis:

Of late, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been arguing that the mainstream media persistently exercise the "management" of the news. That is to say, aside from slanted and biased reporting on the news of the day, they frame news developments in a way that manage events to fit a preconceived meme or storyline.

The media's coverage of Army recruiting numbers is no exception.

Bear in mind these facts included in some of the stories I cite below but usually well after the lede:

• The Army is nonetheless ahead of its year-to-date recruiting goal
• July, August, and September are traditionally the best months for recruiting
• Many potential enlistees are turned away from being overweight or lacking a high school diploma
• Some experts, such as former Defense undersecretary Edwin Dorn, marvel that "the big surprise is that Army recruiting has remained as healthy as it has been" given the Iraq war's falling support in the polls.

Nope, instead the lede is two straight months of numbers that aren't up to par and immediately Iraq is blamed.

Voila! A "trend" story waiting to happen for a media bent on managing the news.

Let's take a look at some major news outlets.

Dateline: San Francisco. A city which HumanEvents.com ranked as the "most liberal city in America" is taking another shot at business and consumer rights and another step towards socialism with it's most recent ban. This week’s victim? The plastic shopping bag.

Jane Meredith Adams, a contributing editor to Parenting Magazine penned this June 25 special to the Chicago Tribune in which she ignores the impact of the law’s demands on businesses and consumers but instead highlights the fashionable nature of "eco-chic grocery totes."

Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley is finding out the hard way that it’s not so easy being green.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune last week (h/t MRC summer intern Joe Steigerwald, emphasis added throughout):

Mayor Richard Daley vowed six years ago to make Chicago a leader in emerging efforts to fight global warming, but city government is churning out more heat-trapping pollution every year.

I’m sorry. Should I have warned you to stow potables before providing that quote?

Forgive me, but you better do it now ‘cause it gets better:

In its rush to paint yesterday's Supreme Court ruling that struck down an issue ad ban contained in the so-called McCain-Feingold Law, the Chicago Tribune described the case as a win for President Bush and the GOP, even though the Bush administration's lawyers lost the case in question and even though the case benefits liberal activist groups as much as it does conservatives. What's more, Bush's appointees to the court actually restrained the conservative majority from taking a bigger swipe at the campaign finance law.

Here's the lede from the Tribune staffer David Savage:

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court gave President Bush and Republican leaders two important 5-4 victories Monday by clearing the way for corporate-funded broadcast ads before next year's election and by shielding the White House's "faith-based initiative" from challenge in the courts.

Oh really? President Bush signed the campaign finance bill into law, it was his Federal Election Commission that pleaded and lost the case, and he's not able to run again for reelection, yet somehow he won yesterday by virtue of his Federal Election Commission losing?

What's more, Republicans, conservatives, and business interests can certainly benefit from the change in the law, but so can Democrats, liberals, and labor unions, a point that the Washington Post's Robert Barnes picked up on in his reporting, which tracked favorable reaction from labor and business leaders:

As we've documented at NewsBusters, last year the media, particularly the Washington Post, raked then-Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) over the coals for his infamous "macaca" insult, and his ensuing profuse apologies for same. We've also documented that Democratic politicians' jokes about India and Indian-Americans have been largely ignored (see below the jump).

The latest racial incident kicking up dust on the 2008 campaign trail is yet another Democratic gaffe, dubbed by some, "Punjab-gate," after an Obama presidential campaign research memo cheekily described rival Hillary Clinton as a Democrat from Punjab, a province in India.

Of course, as the oppo memo itself notes, and as John McCormick of the Chicago Tribune reported in the Trib's "The Swamp" blog, Obama's staff were referring to another "lame attempt at humor" (my emphasis, see below jump) by the junior senator from the Empire State about her electoral chances were she to decide to relocate to India:

Chicago Tribune “public editor” Timothy McNulty claimed on Friday that he has been sensitized to a gross indignity: stories referring to Hillary Rodham Clinton as merely “Hillary.” Prodded by feminists, he claimed that this indignity deserves exploring, even as he acknowledges that Hillary uses “Hillary!” as a first-person promotional tool in her own campaign. As Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post blew it off in his online chat today: “I used to have the same concern until HRC began running for office and promoting herself as "Hillary" on her Web site, in literature, etc. If it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me.”

The prodding feminist McNulty quotes in the piece is online Tribune editor Jane Fritsch, formerly of The New York Times, who wrote McNulty in an e-mail that "The simple fact is that Hillary Rodham Clinton is running in a field of men who are never referred to by their first names...The argument that we call her Hillary to avoid confusion is a weak one. There are easy alternatives. ... Certainly the problem created by the existence of two presidents named George Bush has been a difficult one, but we found ways to solve it without diminishing George W. Bush."

Today Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass explains his theory that Rosie O'Donnell is secretly working for Karl Rove.

Moreover, Kass claims that Rosie's tactics are comparable to those espoused by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy:

According to Kass, "McCarthy was famous for his vicious conspiracy theories. He kept opening his mouth, too, just like Rosie. But instead of yelling about 9/11, he insisted that Soviet spies were crawling under every rock in Washington."

Really? That's the party line advanced by Commies, pinkos, socialists, leftists, liberals, and their lackeys and handmaidens for the past half century. The reality is quite different.

On May 29th a Catholic Priest from Chicago's St. Sabina Church joined a rally in front of a gun shop and called for the owner of the shop and all pro-gun legislators to be "snuffed out", yet, the media is strangely silent on the "Father's" extreme comments -- words one would think would be explosive enough to get media coverage. Father Michael Pfleger, known the city over for his overt political activism, made the obscene comments while demonstrating with Jesse Jackson and his Organization Operation Push in front of Chuck's Gun Shop in Riverdale, a Chicago suburb.

This from the Capitol Fax Blog (one of Illinois' best political sites):

Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina’s Church, went way over the top this week. During a protest against Chuck’s Gun Shop, Father Pfleger twice threatened to “snuff out” the shop’s owner and threatened the same fate for legislators who oppose his position on gun control.

“We’re gonna find you and snuff you out,” Fleger said about the gun shop owner, likening the man to a “rat.” He later repeated his threat to “snuff out” the owner.

As Al Gore and his band of not so merry global warming alarmists in buses and in the press try to convince Americans that they need to alter behaviors in order to save the planet, an inconvenient truth is being cynically withheld: this is going to cost a lot of money.

Of course, one of the delicious hypocrisies is that these are the same people who decry the current economic boom as only helping the rich, and state regularly and fervently that the poor and middle-class are being left behind.

At the same time, such mid- to lower-level wage earners should be saddled with exorbitant additional expenses to shelter them from a wolf that might never come knocking at their doors.

Makes sense, right?

With that in mind, the Chicago Tribune’s Laurie Goering wrote a fabulous piece recently exposing some of the potential costs of this exercise that most media don’t want you to know (emphasis added throughout, h/t Benny Peiser):

Nancy Pelosi, in the run up to the 2006 midterms, decried the Republican Congress' "culture of corruption" and triumphantly claimed she was going to bring back an "ethical" Congress upon the close of the elections. The Democrat Party delighted in the real ills of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the fictional ills of the evil genius Karl Rove and spared no expense to tout their warnings to the electorate. Their efforts seemed to succeed in gaining them a majority. So, what are the reforms this new, glorious era has produced now that the Democrat Party has retaken Congress?

For one thing, instead of decreasing junkets by Congressmen such trips have not abated at all in this new "ethical" Congress. As Examiner correspondent, Charles Hurt, reports, "Congress is keeping Andrews Air Force base plenty busy this year ferrying lawmakers all over the globe at taxpayers’ expense."

After grossly overestimating the number of people killed in the recent tornado in Greensburg, Kansas, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made another unforced error this week at a speech in Detroit.

As reported by Chicago Tribune columnist Jim Mateja, Obama criticized the U.S. auto industry for not being sufficiently environmentally friendly but made a significant mistake (h/t Paul Mirengoff):

The domestics certainly haven't flooded showrooms with gas/electric hybrids like the Japanese. But in fairness, the newest Japanese assembly plant in the U.S. produces 14-m.p.g. Toyota Tundra pickups, not Prius hybrids rated at 60 m.p.g.

"While our fuel standards haven't moved from 27.5 miles per gallon in two decades, both China and Japan have surpassed us, with Japanese cars now getting an average of 45 miles to the gallon," Obama said.

A curious editorial appeared on the Chicago Tribune website, written by their “senior correspondent”. In keeping with a classic anti-gun-rights gambit, the author claims to be speaking for everybody besides Texas when declaring that a new debate has begun about gun control due to the Virginia Tech shooting, while attempting to stigmatize and ostracize Texans:

HOUSTON -- Much of the rest of the nation might have begun debating whether new gun-control measures are in order in the wake of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history at Virginia Tech last month. But here in Texas, a place where guns seem a part of the state’s very DNA, folks have got some other ideas.1

Kids and parents love the highly-successful series of “Shrek” movies, starring Cameron Diaz, Mike Myers and many others. “Shrek the Third” opens May 18, and that means the cast is on a promotional tour. Several cast members gave an interview to Michael Ordona for the Tribune Newspapers, which own the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times, and disclosed that “Shrek 4” might continue a relatively recent Hollywood trend.

The trend in children's movies has been propagandizing them, usually about environmental issues, and it looks like the the upcoming “Shrek 4” will be no different, especially if Diaz has anything to say about it.

Cameron Diaz wants “Shrek 4” to involve an eco-friendly story line about a threatened swamp environment. Fellow cast members Myers, Julie Andrews and Amy Poehler are also in the below interview excerpt where Diaz revealed her propagandist goal (emphasis mine):

OVERVIEW: I believe that the sale of The Tribune Company last week to investor Sam Zell is an unrecognized low-water mark in the newspaper publishing business. In fact, after subtracting the value of the Tribune's non-newspaper properties from the deal, what little value remains indicates that the value of having access to a newspaper's readers is a mind-boggling 70% less than it was a mere seven years ago.

Is it possible that Tribune Company investors are paying the price of many years of relentless misreporting and biased reporting at its newspapers, especially those it acquired when it bought Times Mirror in 2000? While the numbers presented here of necessity involve a fair amount of approximation, it's hard to avoid concluding that the answer is "yes."

A chart of The Tribune Company's stock performance during the past eight years shows that it has clearly been an underperformer: