In its editorial the morning after the first Bush-Kerry debate, Oct. 1, the News claimed in a subhead: "Bush won debate." This despite their own news stories reporting CNN’s snap poll showing a clear winner.
But, this doesn’t surprise me. It came after three increasingly partisan Sunday endorsement editorials the News has run. The one on domestic policy issues didn’t even talk about environmentalism.
When the current editorial page editor, Keven Ann Willey, was hired away from Phoenix a couple of years ago, I had hopes the News would speed up its move beyond near-Neanderthal conservativism to something more open-minded, i.e., a "progressive conservativism." I based this hope in part on Willey’s own comments in taking over the editorial helm at the News.
Alas, the News moved about one-quarter of the way there, then dug in its heels. Now, it’s clearly spewing knee-jerk idiocy.
Or, to put it another way, the News’ editorial board is displaying cranial-rectal syndrome by proxy. That’s when you have your head buried up someone else’s posterior.