Cheap Shots

"Michael Moore's record certainly didn't last long. The Associated Press reports that the new documentary 'Spider-Man 2' took in $40.5 million in its first day"
- WSJ Online

I just love that, I had to throw that in.

One of the things the Seattle Times does that really erks me and helped get me started on this whole bias crusade in the first place is their use of what I call cheap shots. Let me give you an example: when Donald Rumsfeld visited the troops in Iraq there was a line "soldiers took pictures of Rumsfeld with digital cameras, similar to the type used by soldiers to take degrading pictures of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison". Oh, THOSE kind of digital cameras. Thank you Seattle Times, I wouldn't have known which kind of cameras they had used had you not given me this key detail.

The thing about cheap shots, like this one, are that they are very difficult to label with absolute certainty as media bias. It's a subjective matter. They aren't "lying" when they remind us about Abu Ghraib. They aren't even distorting the truth. But the Times CONSTANTLY employs this technique and I contend this does, indeed, qualify as bias.

These cheap shots are brought into sharp relief when you see a story like today's front page piece on Sadam's "arraignment". While we had to endure endless graphic descriptions of the deeds performed at Abu Ghraib, Sadam's bloodless sounding crimes include "ordering mass killings and other atrocities while he ruled...". What other atrocities? Jaywalking?

To me, this is kind of like the opposite of a cheap shot. Again, there is no lying here, or distorting of the truth and I'll bet most liberals would argue there is no bias here at all. But it seems to me in a story about charges being brought against him by the Iraqi people, wouldn't a more descriptive and graphic recounting of his offenses be appropriate?