Patterico's Pontifications

7/11/2008

Dustup: Last Day

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:07 am



Today is the final day of my online debate with Marc Cooper at latimes.com about the future of the paper. Today I take issue with Cooper’s claim that there is no liberal bias at this newspaper.

Keep an eye on this space. [UPDATE: Read today’s entry here.]

Previous installments: Part One here. Part Two here. Part Three here. Part Four here.

15 Responses to “Dustup: Last Day”

  1. Uh, Patterico, will Cooper be honest on the point of Liberal Bias? He’s so biased to the left he thinks he’s in the center of the political spectrum. (Most lefties are afflicted with that malady.)

    PCD (5c49b0)

  2. They have liberals at the LA Times? Say it ain’t so! As Cooper pointed out in Paer Three:

    “As NYU’s Clay Shirkey brilliantly points out in his recently published “Here Comes Everybody,” professional classes and castes always see the world through their own particular group lens and rather automatically disdain, diminish and write off those they consider “amateurs.””

    That group lens typically includes political or worldview and professional classes and castes tend to hire people like themselves, perpetuating their tunnel vision.

    daleyrocks (d9ec17)

  3. The LAT still does not have a clear understanding of the readers they have lost. After subscribing for more than 20+ years, I was finally pushed to cancel by the “groping” stories just before the election. I complained and was dismissed. The subscriber rep had little interest in hearing another repetition of a complaint that she had heard multiple times over those days.
    Their claim to be unbiased was so obviously untrue after publishing a slimy hit like that, but oddly enough nobody at the Times could see any bias in their reporting.

    Charlie Roy (6a8f56)

  4. Charlie Roy wrote: Their claim to be unbiased was so obviously untrue after publishing a slimy hit like that, but oddly enough nobody at the Times could see any bias in their reporting.

    I once saw an interview with a guy who worked his way through college at a fish cannery in Alaska. He said that once you go inside, you forget how much it stinks until you leave and get some fresh air.

    L.N. Smithee (b048eb)

  5. Pat, is this appearing in the dead tree edition, or just online?

    Pablo (99243e)

  6. L.N.,

    How apt and timely for this discussion.

    Remember how Dukakis used to say that the Fish always stinks from the head. Same with the Times.

    PCD (5c49b0)

  7. Here’s my Day 5 comment in one piece:

    Cooper is delusional. Just how do you practitioners of Journalistic Malpractice get rid of the owner because he isn’t pouring his fortune down this black hole of Liberalism? This reminds me of Dan Rather’s complaint about the news division of CBS being held to a profit standard.

    The wingnut libs that run the Times don’t get it. Rush Limbaugh was rewarded with a 9 figure signing bonus for being Entertaining, holding his audience, and being PROFITABLE! The Times is none of these.

    The Libs just don’t get it that propaganda praising the bits and pieces of the latest Democrat 5 year plan and rants against disagreeing opinion or facts just don’t sell. I guess they don’t “grok” that is what doomed “Air America”, which didn’t air the true America or entertained.

    PCD (5c49b0)

  8. Well, of course Cooper is honest on the subject of liberal bias. He’s just wrong.

    Patterico would be wrong if he argued that that’s the only problem with the viewpoint at the LATimes, but he doesn’t, so he isn’t.

    Joel Rosenberg (677e59)

  9. On second thought, I think the LATimes should ignore Patterico.

    And then hire him. Seriously.

    Conservatives will never be satisfied with anything vaguely resembling the liberal bias of today’s LATimes, and the only way to fix that would be to empty the building of almost every reporter and editor, and start all over again.

    So don’t. Instead, LATimes: embrace your inner liberal. Start a ten-part series: Bill O’Reilly: Threat or Menace? Have a regular point-counterpoint feature, through the election — on the front page, above the fold — Can Obama Save America or Is It Too Late? and hire Obamagirl to moderate it. Do a series of hard-hitting investigations into the McCain family. Maybe his adopted daughter copies some answers off her neighbor’s paper in a test in school; I dunno. Perhaps Cindy McCain received a report linking beer and Mad Cow disease but suppressed it. McCain himself retired as “only” a Captain in the Navy — why didn’t he make admiral like both his father and grandfather did? Find out. Me, I think that there’s something wrong with his teeth — let’s see what an intrepid reporter can pry out of his dentist’s garbage.

    But . . . insist that, while your reporters are out trying to make the Puffington Host look centrist, they (and this will be hard) get their facts straight, and then, when they don’t (and even the best reporters will make errors of fact), correct them quickly.

    And that’s where Patterico comes in. Ignore all of his ranting and raving about esoteric things like “national security.” Who cares, when you’re getting the truth out? Chump change.

    Put up a quarter million per year, and for every individual error of fact he points out, pay him, say, $100 per error the he emails in before the correction hits the website (he’s finding errors for free, now; he’ll take the money), and double it every six hours from when an email pointing out an error comes in until the correction is up on the website. Not a penny for reports of gross bias, nah.

    Chimpy is the worst world leader since Merwan the Ass?

    Opinion; suck on it, Frey.

    It was outrageous to release the street address and social security number of the CIA interviewer who snookered Sheikh Yerbooty into giving up an Al Qaeda Training Camp!

    Freedom of the press, Patterico. If we didn’t reverse the digits of his house number, and if that picture of the cute little girl he’s walking to church is really his daughter, you’re SOL.

    Just factual errors.

    At the end of the year, split whatever’s left — if anything — with the reporters, and let them buy themselves, in a good year a sixpack.

    Joel Rosenberg (677e59)

  10. How can you debate with someone who’s so intellectually dishonest that he says there is no liberal bias? you can’t have a rational debate with a liar.

    Capitalist Infidel (c4ec46)

  11. I just read the 5th and final installment.

    RIP LA Times.

    DRJ (cfa65f)

  12. What’s really wrong with the LAT was made clear by Patterico in his listing of error-filled, poorly-written and flat out fradulent stories that its published in recent years. This has nothing to do with ideology. It’s simply a question of standards for professional journalism.

    As for “liberal bias” I find the notion hilarious in light of the LAT’s constant catering to “Conservatives.” Jonah Goldberg is a highly valued op-ed contributor. Were Patterico in that slot instead he paper would not only have a non-trivial “Conservative” but someone who can (at the very very least) right coherently on subjects of actual interest.

    Readers have deserted the LAT for the same reason they’ve deserted the rest of the press. Today’s mass media , particularly television, has swallowed everything up, and dumbed down the news to the point where Christie Brinkley’s divorce gets more serious coverage than the fighting in Afganistan.

    Again this isn’t a Right vs. Less thing. It’s all about Money. And Money is all about Stupid.

    David Ehrenstein (85002c)

  13. Goldberg is hardly trivial. Expressing oneself in a lighthearted way does not preclude one from offering insightful commentary. Certainly anyone who has read Goldberg’s book can vouch for that. He knows his stuff, and writing with tongue in cheek does not make one an idiot.

    Mr. Cooper is true comedy. The idea that the obvious bias of the LAT has absolutely no effect on sales is dubious at best. Our gracious host brought up a great point in the last installment, which was that people who buy the paper for the sports section, the crosswords, or the comics are a big chunk of subscribers. I’d like to extrapolate on that and argue that these areas tilted toward an older group then other sections. What I’m saying is that what happens to the LA Times when Nana who has been doing her crossword in the paper for thirty years discovers that the Internet has hundreds of crossword puzzles available for free. My family stopped taking our local daily during a tight financial period last year. My parents got used to reading the news online and they have never resubscribed. If you look at the demographics for the people who watch the news on TV it also looks mighty gray.

    I also cannot stand Cooper’s writing. The saccharine praise of the LAT, and the constant condescension which cascades from his comments on the readership of the blogs, as compared to the glowing approval he gives to the remaining subscribers of the LAT who will, like the band of the Titanic, remain until the bitter end. He just doesn’t understand why us slackjawed troglodytes have such an issue with a paper which is so admirable correct about all the issues, and recognizes its sacred duty to ensure, among other things, that the right kind of governor is elected to lead the state of California. How on earth could our horde of uncouth Neanderthals be opposed to that?

    Britt (0f32fe)

  14. “The idea that the obvious bias of the LAT has absolutely no effect on sales is dubious at best.”

    Really? Well in that case I’ll say readers are leaving in droves because they’re tired of right-wing propaganda disguised as “news” and “opinion.”

    David Ehrenstein (85002c)

  15. Ehrenstein,

    YOU are the perfect example of MSM people driving people away from the dying dinosaurs.

    Just start writing your opinion, er…, front page objective articles on why striking down CA’s gay marriage rulings was a right wing conspiracy.

    PCD (7db4a6)


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