Something unprecedented is happening in the world of Minnesota journalism. Someone else has agreed with me that the Minneapolis Star Tribune's coverage of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is crap. I've been documenting this and moaning about this for years. MinnPost's David Brauer and the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) criticized Strib reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger's coverage of Bachmann's weekend trip to Iowa weekend before last. Bachmann visited Iowa to get her 2012 Presidential bid going.
The CJR was alerted to Bachmann's visit and Stassen-Berger's shoddy coverage by Brauer. CJR had this to say:
Mid-story, the Tribune reports, in passing, that "Democrats deride [Bachmann] as... factually challenged." (I’m just passing along some other politicians’ claims about the veracity of this politician’s claims. Yes, I’m a reporter from Bachmann’s home state so I should be in a particularly good position to tell readers whether "factually challenged" is a fair description of the Congresswoman or just an unfounded Democratic dis. But, moving on....) A few sentences later it is confirmed: there will be no fact-challenging (of the "factually challenged") here (emphasis mine):
- On Friday, [Bachmann] largely avoided the specific political statements that have won her attention. Instead, she stayed in storyteller mode....
But she did throw out some strong opinions, saying that the federal government owns half of the country’s mortgages, that the Medicare trust fund will go "flat broke" in six years and that Barack Obama has accumulated more debt in one year than all past presidents combined.
But these aren’t so much "strong opinions" as they are factual (-sounding) assertions that a reporter should, in addition to writing down, verify or correct or flesh out for readers.
The Strib should feel shame over this. I would hope that getting chastised by the CJR might get them to start behaving like actual journalists when they cover Bachmann. But I won't hold my breath.