Thursday, February 15, 2007

The CSM attempts to become the WSJ

by Ken Houghton

I generally appreciate the reporting of The Christian Science Monitor; maybe it was that high school must-be-inside lunch period when, especially in a month when I'd finished Analog (under Bova), it was one of the few periodicals to give a good sense of what an alien world must be like.

But the falsehoods and elisions of this editorial there make me think that, as with the WSJ, I might be better to skip the Opinion columns.

I'll leave it to Tom or someone else (subtil, no?) to expand on the number of lies and omissions in the piece; I don't think there are more of those than there are sentences, but it's close.

UPDATE: Lance comes through with flying colors on the even more odious piece of tripe George Will published. See Tom's comment in comments, with his hint of more to come.
Comments:
"But the falsehoods and elisions of this editorial there make me think that, as with the WSJ, I might be better to skip the Opinion columns."

It's not an editorial. It's by Courtney E. Martin, a liberal feminist who blogs at feministing.com (see credit at the bottom of the piece). Blame her, but you can't blame the Editorial Board of the CSM, since they didn't write it.

Their editorials reside here, labeled "The Monitor's View."
 
Gary, point taken on the matter of editorial vs. op-ed.

In response to Ken's request for sounding-off, what is notable is that despite engaging a liberal feminist blogger, the CSM failed to get any blogiversal insights on its pages.

It is some sort of achievement of the use-teh-Google variety to mention (only once by name) two discredited Daniel Glover pieces -- the 'some have said Amanda Marcotte was trying to scrub her blog archives' point having the particular reek of hit-piece to it -- without providing any insight on, say, the nature of the attacks. Or, for that matter, why behavior of mid-level staffers should be newsworthy, seeing as some Dinesh D'Souza wannabes on Republican campaign staffs must have an Econ 101 term paper or two out there to the effect that Soylent Green is an efficient use of the overabundant resource of people. Probably doesn't sell right-wing talk shows' airtime like vituperative young feminists...
 
Yeah, I wasn't disagreeing with you on the substance; just the attribution.

Referring to opinion pieces as editorials, or vice versa, is one of my buttons, I'm afraid.
 
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