J.D. Prose – 6/12/12

This page was last updated on June 13, 2012.

Report questions jobs, cost of cracker plant tax credit; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; June 12, 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.

I thank Mr. Prose for providing another example of media bias. Many who read the Prose story will likely say they saw no bias. That’s the beauty/danger of media bias.

In this op-ed piece appearing in the “news” section of the BCT, Mr. Prose refers to The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (PBPC) simply as a “policy research center.” That sounds OK, but how did Mr. Prose refer to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), also a “policy research center,” during the last year?

In August 2011, Mr. Prose told us “the innocuous-sounding American Legislative Exchange Council is really a front for right-wingers and corporations to give suggested bills to mindless politicians more than willing to do their evil bidding.” In May 2012, Mr. Prose told us ALEC is “a front for right-wingers to get like-minded politicians to champion their dangerous cookie-cutter legislation” and, among other things, “ALEC crouches in the shadows, like the cockroaches they are, scheming to inflict whatever damage on the country their warped minds can conjure.”

Now, let’s go back to The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. PBPC is a “project of the Keystone Research Center” (KRC). KRC is a member of the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN). “EARN is coordinated by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).” Whew, got all that? All of these organizations are leftist advocacy groups. Funny how this trail escaped mention, isn’t it?

The reason Mr. Prose didn’t mention the PBPC ideology and its connection to all these other lefty groups is he knew doing so would hurt the “report’s” credibility.

Those who want to defend Mr. Prose would likely note he quoted a Corbett-administration spokeswoman as referring to PBPC as a “liberal think tank.” Nice try, but no cigar. First, Mr. Prose knows most readers won’t get to the 13th paragraph of the 16-paragraph story. Second, Mr. Prose knows most readers will dismiss the spokeswoman’s comment about an opponent. After all, if it were true, wouldn’t the intrepid, purely-objective “reporter” have noted the PBPC ideology?