Exposing the Raleigh N&O’s liberal bias

Mike Williams does that today. My comments follow below the end line

Mike begins - - -

Professor Glenn Reynolds tells me that U.S. Representative Heath Shuler (D-NC) has a possible conflict of interest between a House committee he sits on and some land he owns in Tennessee. A Knoxville newspaper picked up on the story here. So did the Asheville Citizen-Times. Ed Morrissey derides “Another Democrat with a government land deal!”

I missed this story in The N&O, so I did a search on newsobserver.com. Nada.

Shuler, you may recall, was one of many Dems elected in 2006 in the so-called backlash against corrupt Republicans. The 110^th Congress claims to be the most open, honest and ethical in our history. So you’d think The N&O might be interested in yet another Congressman slopping at the trough, and if Shuler were a Republican incumbent who could be unseated in 2008 you’d undoubtedly be right.

Which brings me to the real point of this email. I did my best to ridicule Executive Editor John Drescher’s pathetic defense of The N&O’s coverage of John Edwards’ fall from grace. But my efforts pale into insignificance compared to this skewering by a retired NC journalist posting at John in Carolina’s blog. An excerpt:

The N&O should have owned the John Edwards story.

Raleigh was Edwards' political launch pad in 1998 when he first ran for the Senate. He lives three miles west of the N&O's Chapel Hill office. His presidential campaign headquarters was about the same distance away in Southern Village. And the N&O, for more than a century the guidon of the North Carolina Democratic Party, was widely regarded as one of Edwards' most loyal acolytes….

The N&O has come up woefully short on both Edwards and Duke Lacrosse, two stories with national scope that happened right in its own bailiwick. Why? Extreme liberal bias, and “guidon of the North Carolina Democratic Party” are my answers, but maybe that’s just me.

Thank you, Mike.

IMO – the N&O has not only a liberal bias, but also an increasingly Leftist bias.

Leftists don’t much care that the N&O mislead them on the Duke hoax and they supported Nifong when it was obvious he was leading a frame-up attempt. Leftist journalists are agenda driven and mean to be.

Liberals, on the other hand, were more inclined to see and dislike the N&O’s misleading them and many of them, but by no means all, were opposed to the frame-up attempt. Liberal journalists mean to present the truth and, in my experience, often don’t see their biases.

As for bias playing a role in the N&O’s Edwards and Duke Hoax coverage consider all the protestations we’ve gotten from editors Drescher and Vaden about the Enquirer not being a reliable source and the need to confirm what’s said versus the N&O’s rushing onto page one Mangum’s charges and false bio.

And don’t forget the “Priors” story. The N&O placed on page one on March 28, 2006 the names, misdemeanor charges and their outcomes for about 16 members of the lacrosse team, including one who had been found not guilty of the charge. The charges included underage drinking, and riding in a car with an open beer can.

But when Edwards, whom Vaden described as the N&O’s “hometown” candidate with a good shot at the presidency publicly denied an affair the N&O didn’t publish it. Drescher said “it didn’t make the cut.”

It seems there wasn’t strong enough substantiation in Edwards’ case.

With the lacrosse players, of course, there was substantiation which satisfied the N&O: Crystal Mangum said it.