Orlando Sentinel

Question: What happens when you put Joe Biden, Florida Senator Bill Nelson, and Orlando Sentinel Reporter Scott Powers together in the house of a rich Democratic donor?

Answer: They don't stay together for long, as reported in a Drudge flash late this afternoon (also carried at the PJ Tatler, whose time stamp is about 45 minutes later after adjusting for its West Coast location):

Staffers with Vice President Joe Biden confined an Orlando Sentinel reporter in a closet this week to keep him from mingling with high-powered guests gathered for a Democratic fundraiser.

UPDATE AT END OF POST WITH VIDEO of local Florida television news coverage of the story.

The Orlando Sentinel on Friday bravely published a notice created by a Florida doctor advising his Obama-supporting patients to use another physician.

"If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years," read the sign Dr. Jack Cassell posted on the window of his Mount Dora office.

The Sentinel marvelously offered a fair and balanced report on Cassell's ObamaCare protest without suggesting the good doctor had to be a racist to feel this way (picture of full sign below the fold, h/t JWF):

Americans love to talk sports. Polite Americans don't talk religion. So when those two things meet, the news media has no idea what to make of it.

Unfortunately for journalists, sports and religion - Christianity in particular - seem to be publicly mingling more often these days. Some star athletes are more outspoken in their faith, while many others regularly find themselves in need of spiritual, if not legal, redemption.

Liberals in the media don't understand religion and religious people, so when they surface on the playing field, the resulting coverage veers wildly from awkwardly respectful to clueless to downright contemptuous.

Fox's Brit Hume caused a firestorm by suggesting on air that Tiger Woods could find "forgiveness and redemption" in Christianity, rather than the casual Buddhism the golfer has said he practices. Woods, whose marriage and career are in melt-down because of his serial infidelities, should "turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world," Hume said. And in doing so, the former anchorman committed several mortal sins in modern secular America.

Major newspapers and networks have been ignoring the question of abortion coverage in the new health care bill sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. The only newspapers to even mention abortion coverage since the bill was released on September 16 were The Boston Globe, The Oregonian, and The Orlando Sentinel - all of which were editorials.

The Boston Globe only mentioned in passing that the funding of abortion was scratched in order to please the Republicans, who refuse to be pleased anyway. The Oregonian admitted that abortion was funded in the bill but concluded that "being a citizen means paying taxes, and being one of hundreds of millions of citizens means that some tax revenues will fund something you don't like." And The Orlando Sentinel stated that the "truth" behind Republicans "right-wing anti-Obama rhetoric" against abortion is simply "cowardly coded smoke screens intended to mask fear and racism."

Your humble correspondent has had problems with the Orlando Sentinel in the past, especially when it published a silly global warming alarmism story which presented various map scenarios of Florida being flooded over. However, I must extend congratulations to that periodical for its excellent live blog coverage of a phony stacked deck "town hall" meeting conducted by Congressman Alan Grayson which could serve as a model for other newspapers on how to cover such events. First a description of the event as covered in the regular way via Orlando Sentinel article:

Grayson's hastily called meeting took place in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall, which limited attendance to about 120 members of the public. It also was scheduled just after a regular meeting of local Democrats, some of whom stayed behind for the town hall in the scarce seats.

Outside the building, hundreds of frustrated people who could not get inside waved signs and chanted for and against the proposals.

Orlando Sentinel movie reviewer Roger Moore was excited to report on the efforts of some Harry Potter fans that want to "change the world" based on their interpretation of Potter character Dumbledore's philosophy of life. He was happy, you see, because the group is all about "global transformation" and spreading global warming fears, gay marriage and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Moore writes abut a group called the Harry Potter Alliance whose website is a sort of Potter fan message board where fans write about what they are doing with their ideas on Potter philosophy. But, it goes "beyond the personal," Moore approvingly says.

The hubbub over conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh proclaiming he hoped the policies enacted by President Barack Obama fail has gone on for months. It has drawn scorn and condemnation from voices in the media and on the left.

However, one committed and very controversial lefty isn't as up in arms about it as one might have thought he would be. HBO's "Real Time" host Bill Maher told the Orlando Sentinel on April 6 Limbaugh's remarks weren't as outrageous as some of his allies on the left have alleged. However, he did manage to take one shot at the conservative radio host.

"Maher says he is surprised the Republicans didn't give Obama more of a honeymoon," Hal Boedeker, the television critic for the Orlando Sentinel, wrote. "His take on Rush Limbaugh? ‘We all say crazy stuff when we're high,' Maher says, with a laugh. But Maher doesn't criticize Limbaugh for a line about hoping Obama will fail."

It's not even election day yet but Orlando Sentinel staff writer Jim Stratton is already writing off John McCain's chances of winning in Florida. According to Stratton, McCain's campaign now looks hopeless in the Sunshine State despite the most recent Survey USA poll showing that McCain leads Barack Obama in Florida by 49% to 47%. However, according to Stratton the McCain campaign is pretty much over. You got that? OVER! And to back up his assertion of McCain campaign hopelessness, Stratton uses selective quotes in his report (emphasis mine):

It isn't every day that gun grabbers can invent a whole new catch phrase to use against our Constitutional rights under the Second Amendment, but the Orlando Sentinel is giving it the old college try just the same. Sentinel staff writer Henry Pierson Curtis extrapolates "an alarming trend" that he is calling "disposable AK-47s" out of the words of a Florida police officer. So, now we have a new worry that the gun grabbers can use to scare people into accepting the destruction of our Constitutional rights.

Using an incident in Orlando to drum up their newest gun grabbing meme, the Sentinel tells the tale of some criminals that perpetrated a double killing and then ran from the scene abandoning two AK-47s, two handguns and a shotgun behind them. The Sentinel warps a quote from an Orlando Detective into the new catch phrase.

The Orlando Sentinel, in line with the directive of its cost-cutting owner, Sam Zell, has had major cosmetic changes starting with the Sunday edition. Here is how it was described in the Wall Street Journal:

The Orlando Sentinel landed on newsstands Sunday with a new layout featuring more graphics, quick-read digests of top news, blog summaries and other changes aimed at making the newspaper more appealing to harried readers.

Orlando is a proving ground for Sam Zell's effort to reinvent floundering Tribune Co., owner of a string of television stations and newspapers, including the Sentinel, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Between now and the end of September, Tribune plans to roll out redesigns at its papers. Accompanying the makeovers will be scaled-back page counts and further paring of employees.

Mr. Zell took control of the company in December after leading an $8.2 billion deal to take Tribune private. The buyout left Tribune saddled with debt amid an industrywide meltdown in newspaper advertising, but Mr. Zell and his new management team of radio and TV executives have promised a revival built on fresh ideas.

"Softball Chavez Interview From Leader of U.S. Editors"

That's not exactly the kind of headline Charlotte Hall would like to see on Cuba Solidarity Day, but it's how Gawker summed up the Orlando Sentinel editor's sit-down with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

Hall, who also serves as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, pitched a friendly game of softball with Castro regime backer Chavez recently.

From Gawker:

Color me unsurprised.

The Associated Press, reporting the indictment of Puerto Rico Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila (pictured at right via AFP/Getty Images file photo) failed to note Vila is a Democrat, let alone that he is an Obama superdelegate.

But Vila's party affiliation is hardly a state secret. Indeed, ABC's Jake Tapper noted the Obama connection on his Political Punch blog this morning:

From windy Washington, D.C., to sunny Palm Beach, Florida, the liberal print media are refusing to note the liberal bent of an interest group vocal in the health care debate.

The March 26 edition of the Palm Beach Post -- a broadsheet notorious to conservatives for its unbalanced treatment of Rush Limbaugh -- featured not one but two articles which pushed government-run universal health care. In both of them, the Post asserted that Floridians are dying daily due to a lack of health care coverage.

The source for the Post’s assertion was a recent study by the liberal group Families USA. Not surprisingly, the Post described the organization as simply a “nonpartisan” group that advocates for “comprehensive health care” while conveniently leaving out the group’s liberal tendencies, its support of socialist-style universal healthcare and that its political allies include liberal Democratic politicians such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.)