Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

Look, I’m entitled to my opinion, too.

Opening today’s paper to the editorial page, what jumps out at the top is the headline, “Oil keeps dangerous dictators in power.”

This is the Victor Davis Hanson column that the Advertiser is featuring today. Reading on, one of the dictators is  Moammar Gadhafi. Ok so far, but the other two, Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, and Chavez, president of Venezuela, are elected leaders. In Iran, the president isn’t the one with the power. According to Wikipedia, “The Supreme Leader is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, controls the military intelligence and security operations; and has sole power to declare war or peace.”

While publisher Lee Webber or Advertiser editors might love extreme right-wing columnist Hanson, they sacrifice some basic principles by simply printing mistruths and bias through Hanson’s writing. Yesterday they selected a political cartoon featuring Iran’s nukes, even though there is no evidence that Iran has any such weapons.

There are dictators with oil, and we are supporting, not opposing them, of course. Hanson didn’t write about those.

Does this seem a bit similar to newspaper cheerleading in the days and months leading up to the attack on Iraq? Don’t we expect more from our papers than this?

Maybe you don’t like Ahmadinejad or Chavez, but watch out for newspapers setting us up to go bomb Iran. They’ve done it before. Hanson is just a handy tool for editors who want you to believe whatever they print.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 10/01/2009 06:54:00 PM