Paradox of The State

How come all of the best stuff in America's Worst Newspaper is written by people who don't work there?

Journalism 101 (cont'd)

Here's another example of lousy reporting from The State. On issues that are controversial, complex, and confusing, it's the duty of the reporter to get to the facts of the matter and not simply report that there's a disagreement. So if Galileo says that the Earth revolves around the Sun and other people dispute this, the reporter's duty is to get to the fact of the matter, insofar as that's possible.

Simple, right?

Not for The State.

Today, Jeff Stensland reports that there's a controversy over what's to become of The State's $118 million revenue surplus. The comptroller wants to use the funds to draw down the state's longstanding deficit. Legislators challenge his legal authority to do so.

So what does Stensland do? Instead of investigating whether the law delegates the authority to one party or the other—e.g., getting to the fact of the matter—Stensland just reports that there's a squabble.

Another potentially invaluable article turns out to be a complete waste due to shoddy craftsmanship.

I don't believe mine eyes

Here are two excellent pieces about the need to contain taxes, control spending, and keep government accountable. One, two.

The only problem with these pieces is that the bylines say they are written by "guest columnist[s]." Brad Warthen, hire these men!

Laugh Riot

...or perhaps a cry riot. From The State's Sunday editorial:

We know how to do public education in South Carolina.

According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Educaton, South Carolina's High School graduation rate is 49%, worst in the nation.

Then again...

...some stories are just better when you read them in The State.

Also, check out this subtle assessment by the departing public servant:

She took a shot at Sanford in her announcement, saying he was “fighting against public education” by supporting Put Parents in Charge.

She's a real class act, that Inez. Check that: she was a real class act.

Sunday Feature Strikes Out Again

The State likes to consider itself the newspaper of record and, as such, engages in what it might consider "investigative reporting" in its Sunday feature. But the editors of The State might want to work on story selection. This article by Aaron Gould Sheinin is a complete snoozefest and a total disaster in the effort to produce news that is interesting and worthwhile.

Note to Editors at The State: Being the "newspaper of record" does not mean simply reprinting the public record.

I [heart] Taxes

Cindi Scoppe faithfully toes The State party line:

[I]t’s encouraging that this year’s batch of property tax slashers are talking about replacing property tax revenue with some other tax, rather than simply forcing local governments to slash taxes, or even promising to make up the money with natural “growth” in state tax collections.

Emphasis added.

Credit Where Due

The State likes to complain that South Carolina's economic growth is sluggish and it's all the Governor's fault. Someone needs to do a better job reading their own paper.

Just Awful

When criticizing opinion pieces from The State, I usually stick to the dreck they manufacture themselves rather than what they import. (Although they do have a history as a cut-and-paste operation.) But this piece of work from the Boston Globe is both glaringly obnoxious and perfectly in line with The State's Big Government paternalism that it deserves to be exposed.

On Monday Peter Jennings died from lung cancer. Since then has been much celebrated since as a consumate professional, a sort of "reporter's reporter." I'm agnostic on the matter.

But Derrick Z. Jackson of The Boston Globe uses the occasion of Jennings's demise as a good time to riff on the evils of tobacco companies. I suppose Jackson thinks himself both enlightened and brave for daring to "speak truth to power" and seeing the bigger picture in the anchorman's death.

Jackson does all but indict tobacco company executives for murdering Jennings. But Jennings started smoking when he was 13, which is illegal. He continued for twenty years after the government started placing warnings on every box. After finally quitting in the 1980s, Jennings resumed smoking less than four years ago.

But to hear Jackson tell it, you would think that Jennings had no part in his own death.

Sure, cigarettes are unhealthy. But at what point do you say that adults in a free country have a choice, and that they are responsible for the consequences of their actions?

For The State, that point never comes. For The State, another law, lawsuit, or regulation is the answer to every problem.

Golly

This story about misappropriation of taxpayer funds is pretty good. Notice how all the facts are bunched up at the top of the story—with no spin or extra fluff—in descending order of importance.

Now let's hope that The State can keep in mind that all the money that's taxed away from us isn't always used in a legitimate fashion.

Where's the Beef?

The newspapaper that is unable or unwilling to unearth the facts can manufacture a "news" story simply by reporting gossip—much of which it manufactures itself. Sunday's Statist featured this knitting circle transcript cobbled together by Lee Bandy.

Bandy talks to a bunch of people and tries to ascertain if there's any interest in getting a formidable Republican to challenge Governor Sanford. Finding none, Bandy decrees that the absence of evidence is evidence of presence. (Hey, we didn't say it made sense.)

Here's how the story starts:

A group of prominent S.C. business leaders — unhappy with Gov. Mark Sanford’s handling of the state’s economy — is trying to drum up a 2006 primary opponent for the Republican governor.

Throughout the rest of the story, Bandy never tells us how many businessmen are part of the group, who those businessmen are, who they are looking at, or indeed any proof that the group exists.

You might think that somewhere in the next 37 paragraphs, Bandy would come up with that information. You would be wrong.

Schooling May Not be Educational, but they sure are lucrative!

The State has a fetish for lavish school construction. Whether or not children are learning or parents are satisfied with the education—well, that's less of a concern.

Here are today's stories on the drunken sailor levels of spending that our politicians are capable of. Between the two stories, there's $180 million of completed and proposed spending for building four schools and renovating four more. That's over $22 million per school (although the construction of Blythewood High cost more than $50 million alone). A fat pay-day for some well-connected political contracters.

But does The State ever bother to follow the money? To ask the question is to answer it.

They do, however, mention this fun fact:

The owner of a home appraised at $100,000 pays about $196 a year in taxes to retire construction debt, district spokesman Buddy Price said.

Drained

In condemning the Bush administration's new energy bill, The State summons the worst insult it can muster for the cause:

The energy bill is really a tax break bill.

To paraphrase one long-time, sadly-departed commenter to this blog, "Ohhhhh nooooo!"

Well, this is different

Today's State shows an interesting set of priorities when it comes to education. There's not one, not two, but three articles on the building of a new school in prosperous Lexington County—not exactly "The Corridor of Shame."

Color me old-fashioned but when I went to school, education was about Readin', Writin', and 'Rithmetic. Nowadays, it looks like education is about building design, paying contractors handsomely, and fleecing the taxpayer—at least according to The State.

Really, it's not usually this bad

This story from The State is so wildly inaccurate, so galactically distant from the truth, it left me dumbstruck—but only after the I picked myself off the floor where I had been rolling in a fit of uncontrollable laughter for a solid hour and a half.

Education "reporter"—and former Inez campaign hack—James T. Hammond takes one factoid, deprives it completely of context, and draws a conclusion that is 180 degrees at odds with the truth. The factoid is that there will be wave of retirements in the state's public university system.

From this, Hammond spins out the laughable assertion that there will be a shortage of faculty to replace them. He even uses the phrase "seller's market!"

As anyone who knows anything about the academic job market knows, most university departments in the liberal arts, humanities, and social sciences have hundreds of well-qualified applicants for every open position. The indignities suffered by the job searchers often cross the line from merely farcical to genuinely pitiable. While certain areas in hard sciences and technical areas are less overtly competitive, the idea that it will be difficult to hire is sure to cause gales of shrieking laughter to overtake the land.

Up is Down, Black is White, Failure is Progress

If anyone wants to know why today's mainstream media is held in lower esteem than in any time in modern history, they need look no farther than The State editorial page. In a move reminiscent of Nero fiddling as Rome burns, Brad Warthen uses his plum position as Editorial page editor to habitually lie, distort, and misrepresent the facts and then present that as reasoned argument. As if readers don't have a choice or other means of getting to the straight facts! One day, Warthen's thoroughgoing dishonesty is going to rise up and bite him in the patoot.

In the meantime, we have to put with stuff like this. A short while back, state school superintendent and failed U.S. Senate candidate Inez Tenenbaum had to go begging to the U.S. government to get out of the strict achievement requirement for No Child Left Behind. Unable to help our state's students actually succeed, Ms. Tenenbaum lobbied to change the meaning of "success." Charming.

Unfortunately, she was successful. Now the federal government is an accomplice in the ritual neglect of the education of our children.

As if all of this isn't enough to make you cromit (simultaneously cry & vomit), now The State is opining that this is good news. Really.