Liberal bias at the Denver Post? Uh…no. Consider this argument settled.
Check out this YouTube video of Denver Post political editor Chuck Plunkett leaving no doubt that he carries a strong bias toward conservatives and Tea Party ideals. In the video, Plunkett tells a conservative audience that he stopped trying to be impartial when he became a member of the editorial board at the Post. This is the same editor who just a few months ago inexplicably pulled a story that was critical of Republican Rep. Mike Coffman, apparently only because it was critical of a GOP incumbent.
It has long been rumored that Plunkett goes out of his way to "adjust" articles that might be negative news for Republican candidates and policies, and this video is pretty darn clear about where he stands politically. We'll be curious to see how if Editor Greg Moore deals with this embarrassingly biased behavior from the man in charge of the Post's political coverage.
Click below to see the full video.
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Don't have time to listen to the whole thing but heard enough. Plunkett should resign or be be fired from his present post. He clearly belongs on the editorial page, not in a position to influence what supposedly objective news readers have access to. On the plus side, fewer and fewer people pay attention to his sorry rag.
At least Editor in Chief Chuck Green let his writers write. He was and is a conservative SOB, but he had enough respect for fact checked stories to not tweak them or run paid advertising as a legit story.
In other startling news today: . . .
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Mr. Plunkett sets-up straw men to knock down without even coming close to justifying his blind support of the free market. I don't know any Democrats who want to terminate the free market or who think wealth is a limited resource that can never expand beyond a certain point and I don't know any Democrats who want to erect barricades in all of our parks to stop runaway automobiles. All of that is nonsense on his part to justify his unjustified belief that free markets have a moral quality that it does not possess.
Free markets are the most successful economic system devised by humans. That system has created more wealth for more people than any other economic system in history. We're all thankful for that.
However, the free market system has one goal only and that is to create wealth. There is nothing moral or immoral about that. The system was never designed to consider other values like the environment, welfare of our poor citizens or healthcare. For example, those of us old enough can remember the huge plumes of waste in Lake Michigan from the steel mills or the Love Canal. Those were caused from toxic wastes emitted by free market enterprises. There wasn't anything immoral about that because the free market system is desinged to make a profit and cleaning-up or eliminating waste decreases that margin. If we want the free market to consider other values it won't unless a third party, by law, imposes those values upon it and that third party is the government.
Mr. Plunkett's idea that the free market left to its own devices will solve all the problems of socity is nonsense. There isn't any basis in fact or history to support such a viewpoint.
Its a philosphy for political adolescents, or the thoroughly self-absorbed, which I suppose are similar.
Plunkett responds: "On My Liberty Movement Advice"
I finally listened to the self-serving, puerile ramblings of Mr. Plunkett. His subsequent column "On my Liberty Movement Advice" was 750 words about nothing.
Poor nations are poor because they don't have the right capitalist beliefs? Seriously? The US doesn't use more than its share of the world's resources? The 1% actually creates jobs?
And, by the way, the IDE water pumps that Plunkett is touting at about 4:40 in? Those are the same pumps Andrew Romanoff worked on distributing to subsistence farmers in between 2010 and 2013. And, by the way, IDE doesn't focus on trying to create libertarian ideology in the farmer's heads. It distributes water pumps so that they can irrigate their fields and grow crops. The rest is up to the entrepeneur farmers. Are liberals and Democrats supposed to be against this, according to Plunkett?
You know what would have been shockingly honest? If Mr. Plunkett had admitted that yes, debt was going up, as it started doing under Bush, but the deficit – the difference in what is spent per year vs. what is collected in revenues – has been going down every year that Obama has been President. If he really were a fiscal hawk, who didn't want to spend money on social programs, and wanted to eliminate waste and fraud in government, he'd be all over that. But Obama happens to be a Democrat, and so he gets no credit.
Plunkett is a hypocrite and a crappy journalist.The second one is more damaging because he now has a forum where he puts out what is supposed to be real news.
For Plunket's "Job Creators"….
I did watch the video all the way through, and watched it again after reading Mr. Plunkett's defense/rationalization. Several points.
First, there is no such thing as a "free market." All economic systems (from barter, democratic socialism, communism, market, etc.) have rules. We have a largely market system with rules. (And those rules are not written by the poor and lower social/economic class.) So anyone who starts the conversation with the words "free" market is talking nonsense.
Second, Plunkett name checks Adam Smith. I suggest that he go back to The Wealth of Nations and read the part where Adam Smith notes that markets cannot function without a government to set and enforce rules to create a fair playing field. Yes, Smith wanted a limited role for government; but from Smith's warning about monopolies, I can't imagine he would think the current rules of our market economy are fair.
Next, as R36 says above, Plunkett is making straw man agruments. Then, his rationalization tries to claim he is not expressing his own views but just suggesting what the Liberty Movement should be doing. Sorry, that's not what the video shows. Plunkett says "you have the most positive message, the affirmative message….what Americans…like me…are finding out about…" His focus on debt as a problem and "unfunded obligations" are scare tactics that Plunkett urges the Liberty Movement to use to "make readers and others understand" what he obviously believes is the truth. He throws a barb at Hillary Clinton without supporting his insult. That's more than "a little top-spin."
None of this is merely "advocating intellectual rigor" as Plunkett claims. It is advocating a particular philosophy. He had a right to do that as an editorial writer. It compromises his current position as political editor, and it brings legitimate criticism when he takes such action as killing the Coffman story. And his defense shows he still doesn't get it.