Pssst. Washington, Minnesotans can read too

Posted at 10:00 AM on February 23, 2006 by Bob Collins

The Washington Times has an editorial today on the controversy sparked by the Midwest Heroes TV ad.

I think it's fine for folks to have editorials. Conflicting opinions are good. Debate is healthy.

...as "un-American, untruthful and a lie." He furthermore demands that Minnesota television stations pull the ads "and send a message that we will not tolerate this kind of 'swiftboating' anymore." At least one station so far has complied with the request, which is reason enough for outrage.

The writer wants outrage for something that didn't occur and then says the lack of it proves a point. Well, no. At least not the point the writer intended.

The DFL news conference, written about last week on these pages, came after KSTP had already rejected the ad. The editorial suggests KSTP acted as a result of a DFL request. Further, the documents that some of the bloggers have provided from KSTP seem to suggest the ad was not rejected on ideological grounds.

But there's been precious little of that. Aside from a handful of bloggers covering the issue and an appearance of one of the veterans on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," the media has ignored the issue completely, essentially proving one of the ad campaign's main points.

It's true that the bloggers had an issue here and they ran with it ( I think they did a better job of airing the two sides -- albeit separately -- than MSM did), but there is not a lot further from the truth than "the media has ignored the issue completely." Just check the links in those blogs.

And, just for the record, MPR didn't do a story about the DFL news conference opposing the ad, because - as pointed out earlier -- MWH had already replaced it and KSTP's reason for not running the ad wasn't because of its left-leaning ways (hello? We're talking about Stan Hubbard here.), it was because -- and we can debate the merits of this argument -- they didn't want their programming undercut by an ad that basically started off with "by the way, your news stinks." It all comes down to... truthiness.

Additionally, the ads have been running to a relatively collective shrug of the shoulders from just about everyone out here in flyover country, Washington. Write that down.

All that said, I think the question of why there's a war going on is worth debating. That issue, in case you haven't noticed, has not gone away. If, on the other hand, the issue the writer wants covered is the media treatment of the war, then why start the presentation of the issue by two points that aren't true?

The current media meme, at least as it concerns the homefront, is that most returning veterans have turned against the war and those still in field are demoralized and jaded.

I'm not familiar with a single story on MPR that includes one returning demoralized and jaded, let alone "most."

The rest of the editorial is the debate of the merits of the war, and everyone is entitled to a position on that, imho.

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