J.D. Prose – 7/13/12

This page was last updated on July 15, 2012.

Berardelli steps up to lead when comments go too far; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; July 13, 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.

Mr. Prose wrote, “Then Berardelli got a look at the racist, hateful comments on The Times story about Obama’s visit, you know, the online comments that embarrass anyone who’s not a bigoted idiot and that far too often force this paper to shut down comments all together. … Unfortunately, Luke, ‘foul-mouthed, racist and ignorant’ are adjectives that can all too frequently be used to describe those who use the forum as their personal message board, putting their idiocy, anonymously, of course, on full display. Good job calling them out.”

I’ve asked this question before, does Mr. Prose read his own column? In his column of 6/29/12, Mr. Prose repeatedly used a profanity and routinely refers to “teabaggers” as if he doesn’t know the origin of the term. Regarding “putting their idiocy, anonymously, of course, on full display,” Mr. Prose routinely cites anonymous sources.

Class, who can spell “hypocrite?” You are correct, Johnny; hypocrite is spelled “J.D. Prose.”