What is with the Minneapolis Star Tribune? They dropped the ball on another national story about Rep. Michele Bachmann. Jeremy Herb wrote an online article Thursday afternoon, but the editors deemed it not newsworthy enough to print in the dead tree edition.
In a video released yesterday, Bachmann stated that if the Republicans win back the House, they will do nothing but issue subpoenas to investigate the Obama Administration and attempt to repeal everything Obama accomplished. I’m paraphrasing because the way she said it sounds really crazy. Considering that Bachmann is running for reelection, you’d think it would be their duty to inform the public about this.
Not if you read the dead tree edition.
No reporter at the Strib would speak to me on the record, and stand-in editor Pat Doyle (Editor Nancy Barnes is on vacation) refused to comment.
I believe that there is a pattern at the Strib of ignoring and downplaying Bachmann’s connections to the national evangelical movement, her lying, her insane statements and her bigotry.
With Bachmann, Strib reporters have chosen to ignore her more insane statements and blatant lies. They never ask probing follow up questions. Her lies are merely accepted at face value. And not just recently. They’ve been doing this since Bachmann first appeared on the political scene in 2001.
Furthermore, Strib reporters never ever analyze the truth of what she says or verify that what she claims is factual. When I have pressed Strib reporters, the best I have ever gotten out of them is that their article wasn’t an appropriate venue to analyze what she said. You will never see anything like the St. Petersburg Time’s PolitiFact, WCCO’s Reality Check or the better-late-than-never PoliGraph from MPR at the Strib. Is real investigative journalism beneath them?
The pertinent question with the Strib journalists and their editors is when will the truth about Michele Bachmann ever be pertinent, and how crazy does she have to sound to be newsworthy enough to prominently feature in their paper?
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