Fair and Balanced

Recently we here at TAA were forced to suspend our daily subscription to The New York Times when the monthly expense became as much as a car payment. In its stead we began reading the free newspaper thrown on our lawn, The Examiner. It was OK. They have some good reporters -- Stephen Janis pops to mind. They've broken some good stories, such as uncovering the parking ticket scandal in Baltimore.
That's why it really dismayed us here at TAA when we looked at Thursday's edition. Readers can tell from the opinion page it's right leaning. That's fine. It's marked plainly "Opinion." The newspaper's prerogative is to take whatever editorial stance it chooses. That's why people buy newspapers (see Hearst, Scaife, Murdoch) What bothered us today was the next two pages after the opinion pages, on the next spread. These "news" articles were written by The Heritage Foundation, The Hudson Institute, The Tax Policy Center and the Progressive Policy Institute. Above the Heritage Foundation article there was a "Think tanking" headline that was so small it was unclear if it was for that specific article or for the entire page.
It was meant for the entire page, as there was no news, just opinions from these various think tanks. But these looked like articles, not opinion pieces. But the "think tanking" was too small to really get our attention at first. It definitely wasn't as large as the graphic with The Heritage Foundation piece, "Leadership for America," (which closely resembled the ad it ran on a previous page.)
Trying to camoflauge opinion as news taints everything in the newspaper in our opinion. What were they thinking?
From experience, we know that many readers think all reporters are biased and slanted. (We here at TAA were testified about in a church by an interview subject as being a good Christian while a few days later told by a priest we were "on the path to hell." True story) But really, many reporters do strive to be unbiased. Of course there are the fabulists and hacks. And for those who think newspapers are still owned by liberal cigar-chomping entrepreneurs, see Knight Ridder, Tribune Media, Gannett and aforementioned Rupert Murdoch. These very large corporations don't care about much except $$$. Certainly not anything local.