Saturday, August 23, 2003

Mtpolitics.net thinks that the Billings Gazette showed its liberal bias in its homeless series. I think he's right that the headlines were off a notch or two, but those were tight headlines to write. I'm not sure I get the rest of the argument. It appears to be this: The Gazette painted a picture of a guy who is a victim of external circumstances when the facts (as reported by The Gazette) indicate that he made bad choices to land in the spot he is in. The moral (presumably, although unstated) is that The Gazette favors pumping more money into social welfare programs to help such innocent victims. I thought the story was considerably more nuanced: The guy had some bad breaks, sure, but the reporter made it pretty obvious that he screwed up a lot, too. If anything, the article made a case for how complex the homeless problem is and how inadequately neat slogans deal with it. But maybe that's a liberal argument, too.

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