For the second time in six days, the Denver Post has told us the Occupy Wall Street protesters are targeting corporate greed, with no quote marks around those words and no “alleged” in front of them to establish editorial distance.
It seems Post editors regard corporate greed as an objective reality that one can be for or against, but whose existence is indisputable.
I noticed this first in the subhead of an Oct. 3 wire story that ran on Page 2A. Today it happened again in a photo caption on Page 1E. http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_19057741
Yesterday on 9B, the Post ran a column by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post in which the same matter-of-fact assertion was made. Milbank’s piece, entitled “Too much nuance,” ironically lacked nuance in omitting the distancing quotes around his reference to corporate greed. But at least this was on the opinion page, where outrageously slanted statements are permissible if not admirable.
In passing off an anti-capitalist slur as plain fact on its news pages – twice – the Post damages its credibility with fair-minded readers. You wonder: does whoever wrote that headline and that photo cutline think his newspaper’s corporate proprietors are among the greedy? One must assume so. And what then of the proprietors’ own self-concept? Perhaps they too would plead guilty as charged.
