La Smokalista

We’re used to getting called out for being biased around here, but yesterday’s paid political advertising in La Socialista supporting a fifty cent per pack increase in South Carolina’s cigarette tax puts even our most “unfair, imbalanced” work to shame.

No really.

Entitled “Cigarette tax gains momentum,” the ad – which was dressed up like a real news article – is a perfect example of the one-sided, agenda-driven “reporting” that has these friggin’ Marxist-Leninsts on the verge of disappearing like wood-paneled station wagons and multi-use sporting venues.

Seriously, stop what you’re doing for a second and read their story.

Did it hit you?

Yup … this journalistic abortion didn’t include a single quote, paraphrased quote or even a passing reference to anything that might have been construed as criticizing the cigarette tax hike – which is being sponsored this year by House Speaker Bobby Harrell.

That’s what we call a “paid ad,” not a “news story.”

And we kept thinking the whole time we were going to find a single, solitary line that told the “other side of the story,” something buried deep at the bottom of the article – where La Socialista usually puts common sense quotes – but nope, nothing.

Reporter John O’Connor apparently never bothered to call anybody who might have expressed an opinion counter to the one his paper has endorsed ad nauseam.

A counter opinion like this one, perhaps.

Obviously, such a one-sided, left-leaning approach at a “legitimate news outlet” would have made sense if this was just another “news column” by flaming liberal editorializer John Monk, but La Socialista actually presented this unpolished turd as objective journalism.

Look, we write one-sided articles all the time … but the difference is we don’t try to fool you into thinking we’re unbiased.

We’re very biased. We admit it.

La Socialista, on the other hand, wants you to think they’re protecting some journalistic tradition of objectivity and fairness and that they have all these standards and principles that help them protect that tradition.

What a load of crap.

This article is just the latest example of La Socialista being every bit as one-sided as we are … only minus the honesty.

Comments