Sherm, man. I've tried. I really, really have tried. I've done more than anyone in this state to evaluate your reporters' work as separate from your advocacy, to allow you your opinions, to acknowledge that your counterparts at the Las Vegas Sun are at least equally tainted in their strident, overt political views on the Reid-Angle race and how it impacts their coverage.But last night, you truly and spectacularly hit a new low. I am in awe of you, and in the worst possible way.
In Review-Journal publisher Sherm Frederick's latest blog post, he celebrates (!) the fact that Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle faked out the media. He thinks it's cool, clever and amusing that a woman who would represent the state in the most powerful deliberative body on Earth is so afraid of answering questions from reporters that she deploys a decoy to throw them off her trail.
If Sherm Frederick were any old Republican political hack -- and, frankly, he may very well be -- maybe I'd get this. But he is the publisher of the state's largest newspaper. His most important "political position" ought to be in the service of ensuring his reporters can do their jobs, that his publication be as unfettered as possible in the pursuit of getting information and providing it to the public. He ought to be viscerally offended by the behavior of someone like Angle at this stage of this important historic moment.
Instead, we have a major newspaper publisher who thinks it's a riot when a candidate who has been shown to have lied incessantly and repeatedly is so uncertain of her ability to talk to the media that she resorts to juvenile trickery. We have a major newspaper publisher who parrots the Rush Limbaugh-Sarah Palin line about a "compliant press" when he knows they're just trying to get a woman on the verge of immense power to subject herself to the same scrutiny and rigors that politicians have always expected and the public demands and needs. What would he, as a publisher and lifelong newspaperman, have the state's journalists do, sit home until next week and then dutifully report the outcome? Angle didn't even have the guts to speak to HIS reporters since her primary victory; is he saying his own reporters are "compliant" and unworthy of her attention?
Frederick is welcome to support Angle. That's his choice. But his top job is running a news operation and ensuring its legitimacy and viability. Is it really unreasonable for journalists to want to speak to the focal point of the most significant news story of the year as that story is about to climax? That's compliance?
No, Sherm. That's their jobs. And you just sold out yours for a cheap political attack.
