FY 2021 Proposed Federal Budget News

[Dill]

(02-17-2020, 02:06 PM)fredtoast Wrote: https://www.stripes.com/is-stars-and-stripes-a-liberal-rag-1.424029

Is Stars and Stripes a liberal rag?

Stars and Stripes is not a partisan publication. Or is it?

To some readers, there’s no doubt. Here’s “Deb,” a commenter on a story about an Army veteran critical of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump: “Seems Stars and Stripes is now leaning ‘LEFT’ with the rest of the hacks. More of that PC BS.”
Or consider this Aug. 14 Facebook comment from John Lee: “2nd article today, within a short period of time, where you look like shills for Democrats. What is it? Weekend and all the adults off today?”
I recently heard from a lieutenant colonel in Kuwait, who wrote with similar complaints. He picks up Stripes at the on-post dining facility each day and discusses the news with three other officers. Among the four, he says, three are conservative, one is liberal. The conservatives say the paper is too liberal. The liberal, he says, thinks it’s just about right. His personal view: “It is becoming crystal clear as to the direction the paper is pushing.” Left.

I haven't read a SnS since 2012, but from 1983-93 and 2006-12 I read it more regularly than any other US paper, especially the letters to the editors. 

Even back in the 80s readers complained the paper was "leftist."  But the reasons given were telling. Some among the readership did not want a paper that reported facts, especially about Vietnam or Iraq history. They wanted a paper that made them feel good about being in the military. What they wanted reported was what they already "knew" to be true about Obama, or about crimes the Clintons always got away with. Naturally, that conflicted with the journalistic standards prevailing in other US papers.  "Liberal" papers, they would surely add.

These complaints about the liberal and "communist" direction of the Newspaper were negligible in the 80s, when it was still the big counter to PRAVDA, but Fox News greatly exacerbated such complaints by the 2000s. Or so it seemed to me, as people wrote in wanting more of Fox on AFN and repeating Fox talking points about everything from AIDS and Gays to the rightness of the Iraq War. CNN became the "Communist News Network" under "socialist" Obama. Readers complained the MSM were ignoring all the progress in Iraq while AFN failed to make room for hard hitters like Hannity, who backed the troops and Bush (and still believes Iraq had WMDs, last I heard) while exposing liberal elite hypocrisy.

Such complaints have always seemed to me Groupthink by people who cannot keep up with the facts when questioned directly, and work that out by frequenting safe news sites and discerning "bias" in well sourced journalism that challenges their worldview. They hate stories about maladjustment or alcoholism or spouse abuse in military families. (Once saw an Air Force Master Sgt. walk out of a civilian presentation on difficulties dependent children have moving from school to school, after he objected it made the military look bad.)

On the other side, I don't think such people were a majority--certainly not in the early 80s, when enough senior active duty still remembered Vietnam. People understood that policy has to be based upon fact, has to recognize fact. Now I am not so sure.  Trump had overwhelming support from the Military in 2016, but he doesn't anymore, thanks to his foreign policy and erratic CoC performance.  (It would be great if civilians could be subjected to erratic military orders for a year or so. They would think more about the consequences of voting choices.)

To the point--nowadays any paper which holds to journalistic standards is going to be called "partisan."  And in a sense, much MS journalism IS partisan--biased towards truth and sourcing in facts, in a world ever more demanding of "alternative" truths and facts, e.g., Ukraine hacked the US elections and blamed it on our friend Russia.