Newsbusters rips WaPo a new one for frenzied McDonnell coverage
Candace Moore reports on the WaPo’s seeming campaign to oust Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell by blasting him and his administration with a staggering amount of negative stories/hit pieces in the span of one day:
The national media are outraged this week by an announcement from Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to observe April as Confederate History Month.
Several news outlets have jumped on the story, but the most energetic complaints came from the Washington Post, which published more than half a dozen pieces in the same day.
At this point it’s safe to say the Post suffers from McDonnell Derangement Syndrome.
During last year’s campaign, the Post enthusiastically endorsed his Democrat challenger, went into overdrive to push a faux-scandal that backfired rather epically, and then, upon McDonnell winning, immediately set to work undermining him with demands for higher taxes.
Some six months later, the animosity lives on as McDonnell tries to shore up Virginia’s economy by emphasizing its historical significance. Observe this entry Wednesday at the paper’s official Post Partisan blog by one Jonathan Capehart, with the not-so-subtle headline “Gov. McDonnell (R-Va.): Slave to the Confederacy”:
As they say, read the whole thing to find out just how much the Washington Post clearly despises Gov. McDonnell.
Of course, he was going to take a major amount of heat – some of it deserved – for what he did. That sort of goes for the territory, especially for Republicans in Southern states. That being said, the bias on display at one of the nation’s leading newspapers against McDonnell is disturbing to say the least, and calls into question whether or not the paper is interested in a fair and balanced discussion of the issue. Doesn’t sound like it.
But then again, considering this is the paper that hounded former Senator George Allen relentlessly over his “macaca” comments (and even went so far as to attack Allen’s Jewish ancestry) while at the same time giving glowing coverage to his opponent Democrat Jim Webb, we really shouldn’t be surprised about how the WaPo has targeted McDonnell. Some have even argued that the WaPo’s one-sided coverage of the Allen/Webb race was what ultimately tipped the balance of the US Senate back to the Democrats.
The WaPo reminds me more and more of the Wall Street Journal every day. While their editorial page is fair and balanced, other sections of the paper/website clearly are not.
And speaking of Senator Webb, isn’t it very interesting that the same race-hustlers/baiters/reverse racists/MSM’rs jumping all over McDonnell today are the same ones who essentially gave Webb a pass during his Senate run in spite of the fact that Webb’s “rebel roots” run deep – something that was a well-kept/known open secret during his 2006 Senatorial run? I mean, Webb wasn’t just a casual Confederacy buff. Writing about it and defending the South has practially been a life’s work for him. Yet the WaPo didn’t see fit to explore this to any significant degree?
Curious, that.
On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with having an affinity for the Civil War and the Confederacy, provided it’s not because you’re secretly wishing we could return to slavery. But there is something wrong when a major newspaper not only displays double standards on the issue but actively campaigns against any politico with which it dislikes, both of which the Washington Post obviously has done. Does this concern you? If so, let them know what you think.