4.07.2009

San Francisco Chronicle – A Personal Example Why Newspapers are Dying


Yesterday I received a call from the Bay Area, turns out it’s a writer from the San Francisco Chronicle wishing to interview me on my views of the economy. He got my name from Parade Magazine, I will be in this weekend’s issue – the “What People Earn” issue. Anyway he asked me some pretty basic question – length of time of business experience, where we operate, and what my views on the economy are. So I basically told him that we are slow at the moment but will be resilent. Today on the SFGate site the story popped up, not knowing what to expect I came across this at the beginning,
The (Parade) list looks at how the economy values jobs, from the celebrity – radio host Rush Limbaugh collected $38 million last year – to the everyday, such as the $100,000 that Tim Daniel earned as a tile and masonry contractor in San Diego County.

“This year, we’re definitely feeling the pinch,” said Daniel, who runs a third-generation family business in Carlsbad
.


Ok, so I should know better. This guy thinks that of anyone in America, I should be compared to Rush Limbaugh and his ‘obscene’ income. There are dozens of celebrities, that make us much as he does or more (who cares?), why not list Oprah? George Clooney? Preposterous, the media cannot do anything without injecting liberal bias, a simple story on the economy automatically has to be ‘normal people’ vs Rush Limbaugh. No wonder the papers are whithering on the vine….

5 comments:

Nick said…

To be fair, nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to accuse Parade Magazine of being unbiased and impartial, or not having their own obvious agenda. That being said, though, it doesn’t appear that agenda-pushing is the case here… just a simple case of dumb, and bad writing. Picking the highest paid person in the entertainment industry as a representative for “celebrity”, and a business owner / independent contractor as someone who is “everyday” (implicitly average worker) is just dumb. It’s hard to blame bias here, although I can see the case for it… this seems like just garden variety stupid to me, though.

The article could be made better, and much more accurate, if they just changed the title/premise to indicate they were surveying the range of compensation for people who work hard for a living, instead of people who just get by and/or live off the government dime. Of course, it’s possible that the real article does have that emphasis, in which case it wouldn’t seem so bad… but I wouldn’t wager on it.

Nathan said…

I agree, newspapers are the single-most liberal form of media out there today and people are beginning to realize this and may stop trusting them as their main news source. Of course we can’t over-look the impact of the internet, including online newspapers, news sources like MSNBC, and of course blogging. These sources may be taking away from newspaper readership but most internet news sources like MSNBC are also biased. Blogging is the best way to provide a defense to the liberal media because blogging allows a medium to express biased views with the premise that the info is biased, but it’s supposed to be, that’s the point, but it shouldn’t be in newspapers.

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Tim Daniel said…

Nick – I can see your point on this, the overarching point in the article straying from the title of the article. I claim bias in that the SFC shows me (normal guy/100k per year), and Rush Limbaugh – the GOP ‘media-annointed leader.’ Read the replies to this article and you will see that the author knew quite well that he would get eyeballs to his article in the Bay Area just be mentioning Limbaugh….

Nathan – Indeed, I believe that newspapers are the most liberal medium out there, more liberal than the average Democrat as well. Keep blogging!

drooz said…

They would never attack Oprah for her salary, she’s one of the people that helped get our dear leader into office.

This is an example of hating the free market system. They imply that Limbaugh’s income is a negative thing. It’s obviously not explicitly stated, but anyone can easily pick up on the dripping disdain. The idea that it’s bad to be successful makes no sense to me. I guess it’s the same reason why our president just spent the last week or so apologizing for the success of our country.

Left Coast Rebel said…

Drooz – Exactly right, they do hate the free-market sytem, they despise it! This political hatred is injected then into even the most off-topic things…..

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