Star uses headline club to slam Democrats

by David Safier

Man. Bad day for Dems, according to the Star. On page 11 — the second front page, since the Star splits its front section in two — are 4 stories making things looking pretty dismal for Dems.

1. Evan Bayh pulled out on the Indiana Senate race, even though he had a 20 point lead. Bad news.

2. Latinos are getting impatient with Obama over the lack of immigration reform. Bad news.

3. Obama has to acknowledge a growing anger in the U.S. Bad news.

4. The Republicans, after being bludgeoned with Democratic filibusters, are now using them against Democrats. Bad . . . Say what?

That last item is just wrong. No one ever used the filibuster the way the Republicans have since the GOP lost its Senate majority. Even the graph accompanying the article shows a huge spike in filibusters in 2009, from a previous average in the 50s to 112. A doubling of filibusters from the GOP minority.

But the Star headline says, Now it's turn of GOP to use filibuster club.

It's a major distortion of the thrust of the McClatchy article. The Star's Creative Headline Writing hatcheteers have struck again.

Here is the most used headline for the article: Senate Republicans: Filibuster everything to win in November? Why? Because that's the one McClatchy sent out with the article.

See the difference? In McClatchy's head, the Rs are using the filibuster as a political tool. In the Star's headline, this is just payback for the misuse of filibusters by the Ds.

But why stop there? Let's look at the head for the story about Latinos getting impatient with Obama.

The Star's head: Hispanics want Obama to move more quickly on immigration reform.

McClatchy's original head: GOP hopes to capitalize on Latino disappointment with Obama.

The Star makes it simply Obama's problem. McClatchy shows Republicans playing politics with the issue.

How about the AP story about Obama feeling the country's anger?

The Star's head: Obama acknowledges US anger, struggling to accept, deflect it.

The headline everyone else used: Obama's challenge: Anger is replacing hope.

The Star has Obama struggling, then trying to deflect the anger away from him and toward the Republicans. Everyone else shows Obama facing a challenge, and mentions "hope."

Not enough papers used the article about Bayh for me to make a comparison.

So far as I can tell, the Star is nearly alone in its insistence on writing its own headlines whenever Obama or the Democrats are in the story. I've documented a number of egregious instances of misleading headlines in earlier posts. And in every instance, the Dems come out the worse for it.

There is no other explanation than the Star, when reporting about Democrats on the national scene, and Obama in particular, slants its headlines to put Dems in the worst possible light. The paper is guilty of using slanted, misleading headlines to push a partisan agenda. Over and over again.