Earlier this week my local paper, The East Valley Tribune, published a story about the President's visit to Dobson High School in Mesa, AZ. It was an interview with several students who were actually quite critical and skeptical of the President. The story was picked up by Drudge, then Rush, and then it seemed to vanish and be replaced by something else. There were a lot of charges of "airbrushing" and sinister plots to bury news that reflected poorly on his O-ness. I'm just cynical enough that I was ready to believe it myself. Eventually, the article reappeared in its original form. EVT editor Chris Coppola published an explanation of the incident today.
I've been a subscriber to the EVT since I moved to Arizona 5 years ago. Until recently it was a typical daily paper with home delivery but early this year went to a 4 day a week,limited distribution paper and 7 day on-line publication (newspaper industry economics are not kind these days). The editorial tone of the paper is of a fairly libertarian bent and over the years I've found the locally written news stories to be pretty straightforward and free of any particular bias (AP-sourced stuff is another matter) and the editorializing confines itself to the editorial pages. One of my neighbors used to work for them and thinks pretty highly of the people there. Given my experience with the paper, I'm prepared to accept Coppola's explanation at face value. Perhaps we were all a little to quick to think the worst, and who can really blame us given the naked partisanship of some of the major news outlets and their legions of Obamafellators?
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