by Lowman S. Henry | July 27, 2004

USA Today brings dishonor on the journalism

As you might expect conservative journalists who showed up in Boston to cover the Democrat National Convention are about as popular as Dan Rather at a Young Americans for Freedom rally.

Sean Hannity took a face full of bluster from Howard Dean, who stopped just short of another primal scream. By asking the ever off-message Mrs. Heinz-Kerry a simple question, Colin McNickle, editorial page editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review was told to “shove it.” She never explained exactly where this should occur, but everyone got the point. That prompted an uproar which dominated the first day of the convention.

Perhaps the most egregious example of uncivil liberal treatment of their more conservative colleagues came from USA Today. The national daily’s editorial page planned to feature a column by conservative columnist Ann Coulter on the first day of the Democrat National Convention, with a companion column to be written by producer/film-maker Michael Moore on the first day of the Republican National Convention.

Anyone who has read Ann Coulter’s columns, or her various books bearing such titles as Treason and Slander, knows she holds nothing back – nothing. And so it was with the column prepared especially for USA Today.

In typical Coulter fashion her column began: “Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston” . . . and the language got tougher from there. The main thrust of her piece was to point out that protestors carrying such incendiary signs as “Support the Troops” were placed in cages far away from the convention hall, while others, such as failed President Jimmy Carter, whose administration handled Middle Eastern affairs so well, hailed forth from the speaker’s platform.

True, Coulter’s language was much more colorful than I’ve just reported, and if you like you can read the entire column at www.anncoulter.com. You cannot read it in USA Today because the venerable publication spiked her column and replaced it with a toned-down piece authored by Jonah Goldberg of the National Review.

Goldberg’s column was good. He wove an interesting story about how Bush-hating was the unifying factor at the convention of a “party that demands that ‘hatred’ be literally outlawed (though hate crimes aimed at Republicans aren’t really hate crimes) . . .”

Such censorship by USA Today is interesting considering what has been happening in that publication’s own news room lately. While the Jayson Blair flair-out and subsequent management change at the New York Times got considerable coverage, mc-paper had its own reportorial scandal going. It seems their “foreign affairs correspondent” Jack Kelley fabricated and plagiarized a long list of stories published in USA Today. To the newspaper’s credit, it conducted its own internal investigation and published a lengthy list of Kelley’s misdeeds. USA Today’s editor, Karen Jurgensen, eventually resigned in the scandal’s aftermath.

I bring up these facts because you would think the powers-that-be at USA Today would have learned the benefit of allowing all opinions to be aired in the full light of publication. Further, most newspapers are the primary defenders of our First Amendment freedom of speech rights, so such censorship coming from a defrocked newspaper is especially odd.

But, here is the kicker – Michael Moore is still scheduled to write a column for publication at the upcoming GOP convention. Given Mr. Moore’s outlandish anti-American rhetoric of the past few years, coupled with his treasonous film Fahrenheit/911, it will be interesting to see if USA Today’s editors will spike his words.

Here’s my prediction: they won’t. Although Michael Moore is the only film maker in U.S. history to have a federal commission lay lie to the central theme of his films, you can be sure truth, accuracy, or even strident rhetoric will not deter USA Today from letting Benedict Moore take dead aim on George W. Bush and the Republican Party.

USA Today, already disgraced by the Kelley scandal, has again brought dishonor on the journalism profession by censoring Ann Coulter. They will further reveal their true colors if, likely when, they give a nationwide platform to Michael Moore without giving Ann Coulter her say. All of which should give rise to a new slogan for the USA Today: “Unfair and unbalanced – we decide.”