Adventures in MSM headline writing

It isn’t easy reading the print edition of the Washington Post first thing every morning, but I do it for you, dear readers.

This morning, the following headline greeted me: “Florida verdict stirs up nation – Trayvon Martin shooting case -‘We are not in a post-racial America.'”

No, we are not. Because an America with minimal racial discrimination is not the same thing as a post-racial America. Indeed, an America with no racial discrimination at all would not be “post-racial.”

Moments later, I saw the following headline at the top of the “Style” section (the paper’s far-left “id”): “The billionaire Koch brothers air their feuds with the media in public — even as their conglomerate weighs whether to buy newspapers.”

The words “even as” suggest some sort of contradiction better having major grievances against the MSM and wanting to buy newspapers. But clearly, the relationship between the grievance and the desire is causal.

The headline also suggests that it’s overly aggressive for the Koch brothers to “air their feuds with the media in public.” The article, by Paul Fahri, tries to reinforce this view. It notes that “the brothers and their lieutenants don’t just send strongly worded letters to the editor in protest” and that, unlike most companies, they do not “work out their differences with reporters behind the scenes.”

But most companies aren’t the target of a sustained attack by the MSM and, more importantly, the Democratic party.

The MSM is free to assault whichever targets they and their friends on the left select. And in this culture, the MSM might reasonably expect such targets to roll over, as some have.

But it is whiny, and revealing, for the MSM to balk when its prime target elects instead to defend itself in public and to consider breaking the left’s near-monopoly on media discourse.

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