Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Fort Worth Star-Telegram promises to do better

The heavily biased S-T put out a long apology, after being talked about on a national radio show.

One could only hope they carry this new found sense of duty and promises into the upcoming elections.

Don't hold your breath though, they already left out candidates for many local races.  And we've all seen the drivel they write about the candidates they don't like.

The bright side is, there is something worth reading in the FWST today.

From the S-T's mild editorial mea culpa...

Blogger Maggie Mahar writes for healthinsurance.org, and in a two-part post over this past weekend she criticized the Star-Telegram for doing what she considered a poor job of fact-checking the story before publication.

Specifically, Mahar said her research showed that claims the people made concerning their efforts to get affordable insurance were exaggerated and that a Google search revealed that three of the four people quoted in the story as “losers” under Obamacare were all Tea Party members and more likely to be predisposed to find fault with the Affordable Care Act.

One of the women quoted in the story, Whitney Johnson, told us Monday that, although she is not a member of the Tea Party, her mother is the founder of the Parker County Tea Party chapter. Johnson also wrote a letter to the Concerned Women For America that appeared on the Tea Party website, in which she makes her feelings about the Affordable Care Act pretty clear.

Johnson later found affordable insurance at the healthcare website with the help of a Fort Worth broker. Tea Party members, of course, need insurance just like members of other political parties.

Knowing the background of the person quoted can give readers important clues about someone’s motives, but you didn’t learn that from reading our story, because we neglected to investigate the background of the people we quoted. That’s something you learn to do in Journalism 101. I remember my old professor saying “If your mother says she loves you … check it out.”

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