Failing to Write Clearly

For John, BLUF:  It is going to be a long period to November 2016.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The Headline from The Washington Post, "Walker’s anti-union law has labor reeling in Wisconsin".♠

Well, not exactly "anti-union".  More like anti-public service union.

My Father, who helped organize a Steel Mill in Johnstown, PA, in the 1930s♥ never once complained to me about a lack of union representation during his time as a Federal Civil Servant.♦

Law Professor Ann Althouse notes in a blog post:

These are both big articles, served up for Monday morning, and both are low blows.

The attack on Walker is low, because it uses the terms "union" and "labor" without specifying what I think must always be specified to be fair: Walker's reforms were about public employee unions.  The Walker article is absurdly emotive and sentimental, larded with quotes from nice people who are bewildered and sad.  You have to read to paragraph 5 to get the first indication that Walker's law only had to do with the special problem of public unions, whose collective bargaining is not with private management, but with the government, the representatives of the people, not any commercial operation.

Writing at 9:32 AM on Monday, she goes on to note:

There are over 4,000 comments on the Walker article already, and the top-rated one is: "No wonder Walker scares Democrats so much. He's taken down one of their most lucrative money making scams as well as one of their favorite sources of street muscle." The second highest rated is: "The left is scared to death of Walker." So maybe WaPo's effort to type-cast Walker as a right-wing meanie won't work, but it won't be because WaPo's not trying. And, yes, I know I'm purporting to read The Mind of the Washington Post, even as I'm writing about Scott Walker, The Man Who Cannot Read the Mind of Others.

So, the Press tries to turn something that a lot of voters might favor into something that a lot of voters might dislike.  This is propaganda, pure and simple.

The value of Blogs will be to offer alternative interpretations to assertions by a Mainstream Media that is not always objective in its reporting.

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  For readers of The New York Times that would be Mr Scott.
♥  Picture of him and others picketing in front of the gate published in the New York Times.
♦  I expect that if he had complained in front of my Middle Brother, Lance, I will hear about it.  Lance, the Federal Civil Servant.