Posted on 11/24/2004 5:24:22 AM PST by cbkaty
Nov. 23, 2004, 7:49PM
The Chronicle's Nov. 22 editorial, "Shooting the messenger / In slapping the hand of Congressman Bell, a House committee risks discouraging future ethics complaints," revealed once again the Chronicle's bias against U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, which is costing the paper credibility with readers. No one believes the paper's position that the censure of lame duck Congressman Chris Bell will discourage honestly posed ethics complaints. Hopefully, it will discourage dishonest rhetoric, false accusations and mean-spirited, politically motivated charges made and timed to influence a political foe's campaign.
If the Chronicle wants to write honest editorials, it might condemn all the dishonesty and mudslinging engaged in by both parties.
What is interesting and demonstrates the paper's bias is that when DeLay was censured, the editorials were very critical of him, even though the intelligent and informed readers knew that the censure of DeLay by the ethics committee was no more serious than the censure given to Bell.
But when Bell receives his censure from the committee, the editorial wasn't critical of Bell, but of the committee — the same one which earlier censured DeLay. As far as I can see, Bell and DeLay were both wrong; and the Chronicle is also wrong for trying to put a false spin on either case.
We don't expect our politicians to be unbiased or to always be motivated by the truth. But we have every right to expect our media to report honestly and to be unbiased in its editorials.
The Chronicle is failing in this regard.
B.W. PRATT Seabrook
I canceled my subscription last month in sheer disgust. As I told the rep who asked why "I'm tired of my 'betters' telling me what to think."
Today...there are only 2 articles in the Editorial & Oulook section...one by his highness, Ronnie Earle....the no-class, small-town, district attorney & persecutor of Delay.... I wonder when earle will get around to blaming Delay for unnecessary C-Sections, obesity, the Flu & Mad Cow disease? Now I am not kidding...just give the earle a week or two, and the comical time to go to print.....
I moved to Humble in 1999, and with a wife that must have the local paper, I began calling it the "Comical" the first time I read it. It's not as biased as some I've seen, but it's fairly well there.
We moved to South Texas in 2003, and although the Corpus Christi paper is about the same level of bias as the Comical, they appear to give conservatives almost equal time, like Cal Thomas next to Molly Ivins. What's incredible are the opinions of some of their readers: They're really out there, almost as bad as Al Franken. That is true of Houston's readers as well as those everywhere, I suppose.
The comical management seems to be satisfied with a circulation of approx 800,000 in an area populated by 4,000,000 people.....
Again...there seems to be a "Dan Rather" syndrome of denial at the comical.....
Where there is competition, at a minimum, we as consumers have the ability to switch to the competitor....even if the competitor is the lessor of two evils....at least we have leverage....but as of today, not in Houston.
I was in Fry's the other day and the HC was giving away papers for free. I told them unless they paid me the cost of a monthly subscription I did not want their paper. The guy told me that the paper was free, and told him my time to review his paper for errors was not.
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