I don’t disagree with the Seattle Times editorial board on this headline:
Wash. Republican congressional delegation, stop Obamacare opposition
It’s just that, you know, if congressional Republicans are on the opposite side of the board on almost every issue, maybe it’s time for the board to stop endorsing Republicans for Congress. Just sayin’.
Roger Rabbit spews:
That’s like asking bankers to stop robbing the little people.
progress spews:
The Times edorsed Judy Clibborn, whose transportation bill would hike a handful of regressive taxes. That wasn’t a mistake as well?
Ima Dunce spews:
Apparently, logic and reasoning still get trumped by myths and superstitions at The Times.
Mark Adams spews:
While individual newspapers are favorable toward one party or another and European newspapers take it more to an extreme of being for a specific party. It just doesn’t fit well in with American values and would be a poor position for most papers editors to adopt as then they really become just a shill unable to even discuss the good ideas or good candidates from other parties, even if they be as rare as unicorns.
I would prefer that Editors be more forth coming with their biases than some are, but bias is subtle and we all have them.
Roger Rabbit spews:
@5 You must be new here. This blog is a pig pen. We’re the pigs. We love to wallow in mud. Want to join us? Oink! oink! Except I’m a rabbit.
Better spews:
5,6. It’s a spam post to spread the link in the name
DistantReplay spews:
@4,
I wonder if you don’t misconstrue how much society has changed with respect to media and our expectations of it.
Thomas Griffith, a Seattle kid who went on to make good as an editor with Time and Life, wrote extensively about these changes. And it’s too bad for the print media industry that very few paid enough attention. But the hallowed J-school editorial model of straight reporting without bias was based on a basic business model that it seems to me no longer operates.
The industrial age created a completely new kind of news consumer. The Salary Man needed to be informed of the facts of daily events in order to be regarded by senior executives as “serious”, but lacked the time and circumstance to while away afternoons in a club room sipping whisky and reading The Times with the critical eye born of a public school education in the classics. The basic business bargain was that newspapers would produce well organized summaries devoid of bias. And in return The Salary Man would, for the sake of efficiency, accept that promise and set aside skepticism. Thus the newspaper could deliver to advertisers a properly framed audience with a neutral mindset more open to advertising messages.
But with the dawn of the information age advertisers began to discover an audience mindset even more susceptible to advertising messages. Advertisers learned that audiences in an emotionally triggered state were more open to suggestion than audiences in a neutral mindset. This difference was exploited first and best by radio and television. But it was only natural and inevitable that it would come to dominate reading media if it was going to survive. This, in essence, is why Newscorp is successful, while legacy media like The Seattle Times are withering. While you and I may not prefer it, The Seattle Times would serve it’s business interests best if it adopted a more nakedly biased editorial policy emphasizing the sensational that closely matched the biases of it’s target readership. Goldy correctly points out that The Seattle Times editorial board is quite frequently out of step with it’s readership. Whatever the Blethen family’s biases may be, as a local daily it would be better for their business to reflect local biases.
Thorn spews:
The seattle times is a distracting travesty. I noticed that they reached out to the people, several days ago, by posting “news” about golf as BIG front page for a few days in a row. We know what’s important to blethens.
better political theory spews:
the transportation package is awful, relieving road projects of the sales tax which would fund the general fund but imposing half a billion kickback on ST to the general fund because we have the temerity to desire, transit.
think about the impact on regressivity. they’re displacing half a billion in general funding by ending sales tax from road projects (broadly funded, with a user fee gas tax) by in effect, taxing transit.
transit funded by the most regressive taxes we have got.
what will the impact be on regressivity, hiking that 17% paid by the lowest quintile to 18%?
and despite that local democrats will go for it. again helping create the most cruel tax system of the 50 states. it’s like you pay a $2k a year penalty for being poor (say $24K income) in washington state rather than say, idaho.
one reason the dems can’t message this and get to an income tax is they’re the ones enacting all these regressive local taxes.