Think Tale of Two Cities plus…
Being holed up here in Tucson for two years, I’ve made some observations on how local journalism is evolving. While folks in Kansas City are still mostly trapped with the few survivors of the Kansas City Star, I’ve been similarly trapped with an even weaker Arizona Daily Star.
Hard to imagine, I know, even though here they still choke out a Saturday newspaper.
But trust me though, the reporting here makes Tony’s Kansas City seem solid.
For starters, the “metro population” of Tucson is just over half of KC…meaning in theory there’s a lot less news to cover. Tucson also skews older and more liberal. Unfortunately both towns have fewer, less experienced poorly writers who are far more left leaning.
Lucky us!
I cut the cord recently on Tucson’s Daily Star and went with the Arizona Republic in nearby Phoenix. Which is like 100 miles away, way less than St. Louis. Besides, who in their right mind would consider taking St. Louis Post Dispatch?
And even in the post-boozy Mike Fannin world, KC’s reporting remains riddled with left leaning slants and ad nauseam racism. While Tucson’s Star seems to be hanging by a thread financially.
Hence my move to the Arizona Republic…
For comparison sake, I continued to get the print edition. I rolled the dice and phoned in a subscription to the Dominican Republic where they were happy to take my credit card and promised a paper the next day.
Well, it was no surprise that there I had no driveway action the next day.
Since though, my Republics have been flooding my mailbox – holidays and Sundays aside – often on the day it comes out.
Before you write me off, I get my main news and sports online and via what some call “cable news.” Oh, and on YouTube, so I’m not quite an information dinosaur…yet
And while a number of you check out bloggers who labor for free (and it shows), at this point, I’ve yet to find a true substitute for the news Fannin, Art Brisbane and Joe McGuff used to choke out.
Until now.
As many of you know, Arizona is a cutting edge “Swing State.” And while there’s no getting away from the annoying woke-ness of today’s main stream news, the Arizona Republic does a decent job of providing halfway balanced reporting.
Far better than Kansas City and Tucson.,
Like last week’s front page story about choosing a new Speaker of the House. The Republic’s front page had a really unflattering headshot of Republican Kevin McCarthy looking as if he was about to projectile vomit. And next to it a flattering pic of Democrat minority leader Hakeem Jeffries smiling with his hand on his heart.
An accident? Trust me, newspaper editors are far too anal.
That said, most of the reporting in Phoenix is fairly even-handed. Unlike Tucson’s which is basically watered down MSNBC.
But who wants to be nonstop brain washed, regardless of from what direction or side?
For most of my column writing life, I’ve explained my news preferences thusly:
Until recently, my favorite news station was MSNBC, but I forced myself to watch a bit of Fox News, and when something dramatic happened, I’d hit CNN.
Post Donald Trump (and in some instances in spite of him), my go to news station is Fox, and to to far a lesser degree CNN and ultra rarely MSNBC.
Funny, huh?
All three are obviously biased, but while I used to see Fox News as the most biased, these days they cover a ton of news that doesn’t make it on the other two.
Will we ever return to watching most news stations and feeling we’re getting an even handed news treatment? Hard to say, but clearly the days of editors and publishers lecturing loose cannons like me about being fair and balanced are long gone.
The new owners of CNN are trying to dial back the woke and doing outlandish things like cutting out getting hammered on New Year’s Eve shows. They’ve even put Don Lemon in the New Anchor Protection Program, but they’ve got a long way to go.
So while suddenly, I’m far better off suddenly via the Arizona Republic, I fear the odds of getting even handed local news and opinions in Kansas City are a long way off.
“Here’s the thing,” says KCC scribe Dwight Sutherland. “We forget how primitive television was when we were growing up. And the culture was much less political and there was an almost bipartisan consensus on foreign policy and civil rights. The point is, when that consensus frayed, that’s when the partisanship began to creep out and people began to think they needed to take sides. The bias is so ridiculous today.”
I like what you say and how you have to sort of if I’m getting it right is get your news from several places and then decide what might be the real truth if any. But then I ask is the real truth even out there anymore. Did the real truth even existed 40 years ago?
Once upon a time we thought we were getting the truth or were we brainwashed back then to just think we were since we didn’t have social media and the internet to maybe say otherwise?
Dude, your address is in the pic, may want to edit it out.
Dwight is right that TV was primitive when we were growing up. I think we had five channels(ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, KSHB) until I was 16 years old. After that we had CNN, MTV, HBO, CINEMAX and not much else for about a decade. I think what caused the news to become so biased was really 60 Minutes. For decades the three networks nightly news were loss leaders, meaning they did make money but attracted viewers to stay on their network for their other programs. 60 Minutes made such huge profits(literally billions of dollars) it led to every news outlet desire to drop the loss leader format and go with the dumbed down extreme format. Unfortunately American’s(and most of the western world) fell for it hook, line, and sinker.