Knight Ridder's Scandalous Coverage of the Iraqi Elections
October 18, 2005 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - On a day [Sunday October 16, 2005] when the success of the Bush Administration's establishment of not one, but two democracies in the Mid East, should have been the story, a San Francisco Bay Area newspaper - the Contra Costa Times - [a Knight Ridder product, edited by Chris Lopez and based in Walnut Creek, CA] chose to devote the majority of its Iraq coverage to largely invented and negative news.
True, the story "Turnout Signals Progress" [the only semi-positive Iraq story in this entire edition] was above the fold and on page one, however the body of the story was relegated to page 9.
Sharing the front page was the piece "Imbalanced Army Contributes To Civil War Threat In Iraq." It was assigned roughly the same column space [text] as the lead story. The remainder of this negative story was placed on page 8, but ahead of the obligatory "Progress" piece, indicating its relative ranking of importance in the minds of the newspaper's management.
Page 8 was devoted to negative speculation about Iraq and including the article "Violence, Sectarian Divide Tear At The Lives Of Iraq's Soldiers."
All of this occurs on the day that Iraqis ignored foreign led Islamist terror - defying negative U.S. media coverage - to go to the polls. This slanting of the news seems to demonstrate that local management is holding to the overall Knight Ridder ideological line, that the war on terror is a mistake. Towards that end, Editor Lopez made the decision to feature news seemingly out of step with the actual events on the ground on such a momentous day.
Even the "Progress" story had to share space and was relegated to the bottom third of page 9. Occupying the entire top half of that page was an opinion piece disguised as reporting and picked up from AP, "Sunni Arabs Finally Have A Say On Constitution At Polls."
It is significant to note that it was the Sunnis who supported Saddam and who now constitute the core of the Islamist terrorists, both inside and outside of Iraq. While the article suggests that somehow the Sunni's have been denied participation in the democratic process the fact is that they were not barred from voting in January, they simply listened to their radical Imams and refused to vote.
How is that the fault of Washington or the Iraqi majority?
In large part this piece and the overall Times' coverage is simply devoted to conjuring up reasons why - even as democracy takes hold - the left believes it simply can't work.
Correction, the leftist press does not necessarily believe that democracy CAN'T work in Iraq, the fact is that they HOPE that it doesn't work, because that would affirm the wisdom of the Bush administration's anti-terror policies.
Page 10 - the lead story, a half page is "Iraqi Women's Rights Retreat As Men Fight." How are women's rights decreased when they now have the right to vote, the right to assemble and right to be educated, something heretofore unheard of in Iraq and in traditional Muslim society?
Under Saddam, the regime that would have been still in power today had people like Mr. Lopez [and John Kerry, the presidential candidate the Times endorsed last November] carried the day, women had one right.
They had the right to be raped, something the left prefers over "Bush enabled" democracy.
The Sunday CC Times' continued agitation against the war on terror and the war in the Iraqi is the essence of bias. That bias starts at the top, with the editors.
We at CC Times Watch direct the CC Times' readers to observe that the editors are either unwilling, unable or both to address the newspaper's bias.
The paper refuses to publish letters to the Editor from conservatives who suggest bias while at the same time the Times' letters to the Editor page is replete with the output of small cabal of Cindy Sheehan clones, who are allowed to make the most outlandish charges as long as they are directed against the President and the war against the Islamists.
What the Contra Costa Times engages in is not journalism, it's reportorial advocacy of a policy of defeat, at a time when the Western world is in the midst of enduring its most serious crisis since the darkest days of the Cold War.
If one is to judge from the CC Times news content, Mr. Lopez refuses to accept the fact that the Islamists have declared war against the West.
That attitude is what led to 911.
The Times' coverage of the war on terror and specifically the war in Iraq is transparently partisan, negative and most important - factually incorrect and imbalanced to the point of absurdity.
It's an accepted fact in media circles that Knight Ridder's coverage of the war has been among the most slanted of any major print news organization. The front section of the Contra Costa Times proves that nearly every single day.
Mr. Editor, instead of playing games we suggest that you hold a public meeting to address these issues.
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