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August 08, 2004

Journalism, San Diego style

I don't know what makes me angrier about this Union-Tribune article, the topic or the amazingly transparent bias.

(Note: I just watched Outfoxed today, so I'm in that kind of mood.)

The thing starts with a headline of "Health providers make stand against birth control" and degenerates from there into coverage so slanted it makes me expect titles like "Brave Boy Scouts fight off Homosexual incursion" in future articles. Apparently the big bad birth control proponents are harassing brave pharmacists who are standing up to them by refusing to kill innocent unborn children with dangerous chemicals. Or, without the paranoia glasses on, some pharmacists are being reprimanded because they refused to a) fill birth control prescriptions or b) refer customers to pharmacists who would do so.

The half-truths, non-sequiturs and quotes out of context are thick on the ground. Gems like, "Some medical experts wrestle over whether, and which, measures of contraception are ethical," and, "I don't want to be willfully killing any human," make it sound like actual thought has been put into these acts, rather than the religious knee-jerk reactions they are. The absolute worst part is that the U-T thought this idiocy was worthy of today's front page, at the very top. Sigh. The only comfort I find is the idea that this is just biased reporting from an arch-conservative one-paper town, and not representative of the rest of the country. At least I can hope.

Posted by Chris at August 8, 2004 09:18 PM

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