Sloppy Journalism or Misleading?

It has become crystal clear that George McCanless President and Publisher of The Macon Telegraph and his staff are going to cover for the Washington administration at the expense of the people which they claim to serve. The people of middle Georgia pay good money for what McCanless and crew promote as “Middle Georgia’s Newspaper and they deserve better.

The so-called staff according to the masthead are; Executive Editor, Sherrie Marshall – Editorial  Page Editor, Charles E. Richardson – Visiting Member, Kenny Burgamy.

Reasonable people may conclude that journalistic integrity and moral character has ceased to exist at The Telegraph.

If we go back to the first part of this month and all the problems this administration was having and check The Telegraph we will find they have failed to cover any of the problems. They will print nothing which throws light on the failures and incompetence of Obama’s administration. They ignore it as if it will go away.

More recently for the most part they have failed to cover the scandal of the Secret Service.

If we look back we will find that this administration has completely disregarded federal laws as applied to a Budget and The Telegraph has completely ignored this fact.

To demonstrate the bigotry of The Telegraph we can go back and look at how they denigrated the last administration at every turn about the budget. However one thing is clear the last administration complied with federal laws.

It looks as if The Telegraph is extending this type of journalism in to the area of their local coverage. This morning, April 28, 2012, they ran a story about the Bibb County School system pertaining to “the state’s Open records and Open Meetings laws….”  The story was titled “Complaints prompt visit from AG’s office”

In the body of the story we are told that “The visit was prompted by complaints from The Telegraph about the way the school system has dealt with accountability issues in recent months.”

Then we are told that “Randy Howard the school system’s in-house attorney… said… “That (sic) initiative is not in response to The Telegraph’s complaint or the upcoming session … Rather, the decision came after a recent discussion Gainesville based attorney Phil Hartley had with school system representatives around the state about recent changes to Georgia’s sunshine laws…”

This type of thing is used often in The Telegraph’s coverage of the Washington administration. In this case we do not know where the story title’s contradiction of Mr. Howard’s statement was on purpose or just practice at the deception The Telegraph has apparently become so fond of!

“According to the Style Guide of the Detroit News (1924):

The head is an advertisement, and like all good advertisements, it should be honest, holding out no promise that the story does not fulfill. It should be based on the facts as set forth in the story and nothing else. The head should be a bulletin or summary of the important facts, not a mere label. It is usually best to base the head on the lead of the story…. The function of the head is to tell the facts, not to give the writer’s comments on the facts.” *

You can see The Telegraph’s handy work right here and form your own opinion. Was it practice or just plain old self-importance?

* Page 75 - Bob Kohn's book "Journalistic Fraud" - "How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why it Can No Longer Be Trusted".