Working the refs. It works!
May 13, 2009 9:00 am ET by Eric Boehlert
At least it worked in Philly, where the Inquirer turned to disgraced Torture Memo Man John Yoo to write a monthly column. Why would the newspaper want someone like Yoo to pontificate in its pages? According to today's report in the NYTimes, it's because the Inquirer was trying to counter claims that the paper has a liberal bias.
Score one for Newsbusters!
From the Times:
“There was a conscious effort on our part to counter some of the criticism of The Inquirer as being a knee-jerk liberal publication,” [Inquirer editorial page editor Harold] Jackson said. “We made a conscious effort to add some conservative voices to our mix.”
Guess that's why the Inquirer also tapped former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum to pen a column (at five times the normal pay rate), because the paper was trying to counter criticism from the right-wing. Nothing wrong with diversity on the Op-ed pages, although as Media Matters has noted, if U.S. newspaper lack an opinion voice there, it's a liberal one.
But also keep in mind that the Inquirer serves an hugely Democratic city in a state that, according to voting patterns, is galloping away from the GOP. But under pressure from the right, the Inquirer scrambles to hire a discredited voice like Yoo's, and a politician like Santorum, who PA. voters overwhelmingly rejected at the polls.
Meanwhile, our fave part of the Times article was this passage:
“What I liked about John Yoo is he’s a Philadelphian,” [publisher Brian] Tierney said. “He went to Episcopal Academy, where I went to school."
Yoo is perfect for the job because he went to the same exclusive, private high school as the publisher!
Amateur hour.
UPDATE: Philly's Will Bunch makes some important points.
Blame liberals.
This is yet again another example of weak-kneed libs caving in to the right wing noise machine.
Pathetic.
1. Slash staff
2. Crap on readers
3. ???
4. Profit!
Of course most newspapers are liberal biased because they report on facts, data, and reality.
And newspapers wonder why they're losing readers. Heaven forbid an editorial page might not be overrun with right wing viewpoints, as they're not represented anywhere else in the corporate media. I always hate to see a decent newspaper go down, but I hope a lot of readers cancel their subscriptions over this. The fact that Yoo hasn't been disbarred is bad enough, but to have to read him in my local paper would be the final insult.
He thinks that a President has the right to do anything at anytime.
He does not believe in checks and balances.
He believes in totalitarian government.
His legal theories have been discredited by people on the right as well as people on the left.
But, since he went to the same school as one of his bosses, that means he must be qualified.
This is an old boy quota system.