The Sick and Twisted View of a Dying Idaho Newspaper

The editorial board at Idaho’s largest bankrupt newspaper is in meltdown (as usual!) Last week, Governor Brad Little delivered his State-of-the-State address before a joint session of the legislature. It was brief, just half an hour. During one flourish, he made a pun about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known by the acronym ICE, and the kind of ice that’s slippery.

Someone Missed the Formation of Conscience

Cue the godless liberal media outrage. The malformed consciences managing the newsroom had a rabid response, spitting all over themselves as they shouted in print. They compared the death of Renee Good to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The latter was shot and killed by a fellow traveler in Utah as Kirk attempted to bridge the country’s political divide. Good died while impeding law enforcement, which is to say breaking the law, and endangering the lives of others.

You must be an absolute sicko and total moral degenerate to equate the two deaths. America’s newsrooms have a fair share. The late Steve Hartgen was in the newspaper business before serving in the state legislature. He once told me that editorial writers need to acknowledge at least the culture in which they live. In Idaho, nobody buys the communist baloney and promotion of criminal activity. The papers blame the Internet for the collapse of a business model. I would argue otherwise. People found better options when the legacy media monopoly ended.

I spent seven years working for David Schoumacher. He had worked for a newspaper in Omaha, then for CBS News during its heyday in the 1960s. He insisted it was liberal bias that ended the reign of liberal arrogance in news coverage. I even shared his thoughts with Deborah Howell when she served as ombudsman at the Washington Post. She later told me she included it in a memo to the staff. And, of course, it was ignored.

Liberals Demand We Conform to Their Narrow Views

If you don’t like our current laws, then vote for people who’ll change them. The trouble for the left, including newsrooms, is that they can’t win at the ballot box. As they prattle on about saving democracy, what they really mean is they want a revolution and rule by a tiny minority, which is also a definition applied to the readership of the Idaho Statesman.