J.D. Prose – 6/2/12

This page was last updated on June 4, 2012.

It’s not winter, but APR skates free from jail; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; June 2, 2012.

According to his Twitter page, Mr. Prose is a self-described “Surly progressive.” As you read this opinion column and his Twitter “tweets,” keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the BCT. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a part-time reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? (You may recall NPR claimed it fired Juan Williams for doing exactly what Mr. Prose does.) If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.

You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.

Below is a detailed critique of portions of this column.

“WHITE-IN

“This might surprise some people who know us, but we’ve never wanted to cover Luzerne County politics, until now. Why? Well, it seems GOPers there have elected Steve Smith, a white supremacist with ties to neo-Nazi groups, to the Luzerne GOP Committee.

“And, it’s not like Smith’s running away from his past. He announced his write-in victory on the online forum White News Now, reported Thinkprogress.org. We’re guessing White News Now is sort of like the Jet magazine for white supremacists only the ‘Beauty of the Week’ is always a photo of Adolf Hitler.

“Luzerne GOPers have thrown down the gauntlet, Beaver County Republicans. It’s going to be damn near impossible to out-crazy them now!”

[RWC] This piece smelled right off the bat and, after a grueling two-minute search, here’s what I found Mr. Prose conveniently failed to mention, as did his alleged source, ThinkProgress. According to the Luzerne County Bureau of Elections, Mr. Smith won as a write-in candidate and only three votes (all write-ins) were cast in the ward (Pittston City Ward 04). The Scranton Times Tribune (STT) reported, “According to the county bureau of elections, Steve Smith, 42, was elected to the Republican committee with one write-in vote from the April 24 primary election. … The committee elects two members from each of the 189 voting precincts in the county. Mr. Smith and George C. Carmean, who received two write-in votes, were elected from Pittston’s 4th Ward. No one was named on the ballot as a candidate from that ward.” The STT wording is a little misleading in one point. The article said, “The committee elects two members …” GOP committees do not elect their members; rank-and-file registered Republican voters do in the primary election.

In its own words, “Think Progress is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The Center for American Progress Action Fund is a nonpartisan organization. Through this blog, CAPAF seeks to provide a forum that advances progressive ideas and policies. ThinkProgress was voted ‘Best Liberal Blog in the 2006 Weblog Awards.” Yes, folks, you read that right. Immediately after claiming to be “a nonpartisan organization,” TP says it “advances progressive ideas and policies [and] was voted ‘Best Liberal Blog’ in the 2006 Weblog Awards.”

Did Mr. Prose deliberately mislead his readers, or was it simple ingrained bias he did not fact-check an entry he wanted to be true on a leftist advocacy blog? Neither answer speaks well of Mr. Prose, or his employer.

Finally, as recently as 2006, Democrats re-elected as U.S. senator a former KKK Kleagle (organizer), Robert Byrd (D-WV). I’m sure Mr. Prose wrote a scathing piece about Democrats electing Mr. Byrd, but I didn’t find it. <g>