Governor Candidate to Run Ads Against Arizona Republic

Barry Hess, the Libertarian candidate for governor in Arizona is so upset with the "blatant and shameless" bias of his state's biggest newspaper, the Arizona Republic that he's embarking on a new effort to run ads--against the newspaper.

Judging from Hess's media bias section on his site, it seems his biggest complaint isn't necessarily about issues and more about that the paper's refusal to give coverage to other candidates besides the Democrat Janet Janet Napolitano and Republican Len Munsil. Still, this is the first time I've ever seen a candidate of any party want to run advertisements against a media outlet.

There is another interesting item in this story as well. Hess had an email exchange with Ken Western, the Republic's editorial page editor. In a reply to Hess after the candidate has expressed frustration with being called a "spoiler" by a Republic reporter, Western explicitly states that Hess should refrain from criticizing reporters since doing so will result in bad publicity for himself. Here's the relevant part of the page:

Barry - you cover a lot of ground there. It's been my experience that you won't be doing yourself any favors holding a reporter up to ridicule. This is a new reporter on the race and I think he has done a very good job. If you want to marginalize yourself and the party, you're going to be well on the way with that approach. If you have problems with the coverage, that's for you to take up with the reporter or his editor.

That's quite an admission. Supposedly reporters are able to keep their personal opinions and ideologies out of their coverage. But somehow they're not capable of being neutral if you criticize them by name? Sorry, Western, it just doesn't work that way. Either reporters are god-like beings unaffected by their own beliefs or criticism against them or they're normal human beings and affected by both.

Hat tip: NB reader "sarcasmo."