'People are smarter than you give them credit'

I seem to be letting readers do all the work this week, but they give me such rich material to work with. This is from a reader who's unimpressed with our admittedly scanty wire coverage of the Franken tax story. Since he's critical of our editing, he's on his own regarding editing of this post:

How about fair and balanced news articles. Forget about what party the liberal P.B. is supporting and stick to facts. Tell us the good and bad on both sides, but be fair. The general public deserves to see all facts, not what you choose to feed us. Where did you hide the facts about Al Frankens tax evasion ? You seem to think it more important to tell us about some obscure CEO's tax evasion than someone who is trying to represent the citizens of our state.

Do you think people can not see your bias? People are smarter than you give them credit.

Merrill Meier

Comments

[OdaSilva]

Here's a little something from The Hill (available at http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/state-by-state-2008-05-05.html) while we wait for the P-B to catch up on Franken's troubles:

"Minnesota

A new SurveyUSA poll shows voters are turned off by Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken’s recent tax problems.

The 500-person survey showed 59 percent of people say Franken’s tax issues make them less likely to vote for him. Franken failed to pay for workers’ compensation insurance for his personal corporation and to pay income tax in 17 states since 2003.

Just 31 percent said the problems made no difference.

More than half, 51 percent, said Franken should withdraw from the race, while 38 percent said he should stay in.

Another SurveyUSA poll of 700 adults showed Sen. Norm Coleman (R) reopening his lead over Franken, 52-42. Franken had narrowed the gap in recent months to near-even.

Franken had the support of 67 percent of Democrats, while Coleman received 99 percent of Republicans. Franken maintained a sizable edge among independents, though, 57-33.

Franken campaign manager Andy Barr said the campaign would rather ask whether voters “would be more or less likely to vote for Norm Coleman if they knew that he’d spent six years selling them out to help his special interest donor friends. My guess: less. But we’ll find out.”

Attorney Mike Ciresi, who dropped out of the Democratic race earlier this year, is weighing whether to get back in now that Franken’s campaign has stumbled.

— A.B.

[OdaSilva]

I do not rely on the P-B for political news. I always go to the Strib Online. If I only read the P-B, I would not know of Franken's financial and tax "problems."

I'm saddened that the P-B is not a reliable, fair, balanced or comprehensive source of unbiased and well-researched news. Unfortunately, there are too many people in our area whose only news source is our local newspaper.

[Ollie Ox]

In media criticism, this sort of conservative whining about bias is known as working the refs.

See Eric Alterman's opening chapter in "What Liberal Media."