Our Daily CA

The Commercial Appeal scaled back its regional coverage of Arkansas and Mississippi under new Chief Editor Chris Peck's leadership. For a paper that likes to tout itself as a newspaper for the "Mid-South," that seems odd. I guess they have to cover themselves. Or we here in Memphis are the Mid-South. Anyway, it's creating some problems.

For example, in today's paper, we have this story about an anti-school consolidation rally to be held in Little Rock, Arkansas, today. For starters, it's an Associated Press story, since the CA has cut back on Arkansas reporters. But look at the point-of-view in this story.

Teachers from small schools all over the State are bringing busloads of students, expected to number around 500, to Little Rock for the rally. It's pretty amazing if you think about it. But the AP reporter only briefly mentions this before turning to a lone Arkansasan who is "denouncing" the rally. She turns the story into a short interview with him and his call for an investigation. The rally organiser, Lavina Grandon, gets two short paragraphs to "defend" herself before the writer returns to criticising the rally.

This kind of reporting reminds me so very much of the slanted reporting done in the Income Tax Wars here in Tennessee. There are similarities: the Governor is taking an unpopular stand regarding a core issue. He has the support of the papers and the goverment and the unions that have a stake in the issue. But a large group of people who will be hardest hit by the Governor's proposed solution protest. Their protest is seen in reporting through the eyes of their critics and the Governor's supporters.

I guess we'll see stories tomorrow about "rock-throwing, horn-honking mobs storming" the Capitol in Little Rock.

You can learn more about Lavina Grandon and Save Our Schools by starting with this Google search result page. I have picked out a few random articles here, here, here, and here. I have no dogs in this hunt, but the sound and the smell are real, real familiar. That's why I'm mentioning it here.