Monday, March 10, 2008

What's the Chronicle Really Up To?

Fellow Blogger and Friend-That-I've-Never-Met, Ron in Houston is currently running a post on his blog that discusses the idea that the idea of a conspiracy that the Chronicle is setting the Republicans up to fail in the November elections, by endorsing Pat Lykos.

Where did he get such a crazy idea? Okay, maybe I came up with it in one of my earlier posts.

Ron postulates that the Chronicle may not be quite smart enough to pull off such an "elaborate conspiracy", and he's probably right about that.

My personal opinion is that the Chronicle is committed to bashing everything that is even remotely tied to the prior D.A. administration, and will more than gladly throw a baby out with some bathwater. They wouldn't endorse Jim Leitner (even though they did so in 2000), because they knew that he couldn't win, so they chose Lykos for their endorsement.

That's fine, if that's their principle, but at some point, they let their own agenda override their journalistic duties.

They are ignoring the Lykos stories because to air them would admit that they were wrong. They may have wanted Leitner for D.A., but they knew they couldn't get him. In lieu of that, they endorse Lykos, and they are committed to that course of action.

But that doesn't change their duties. The stories on Lykos are out there, and as biased as I am, those stories are relevant as to the type of candidate that Lykos is.

The Chronicle dug deep to find dirt on Kelly Siegler. What did they find? Let's count it: 1) The Lakewood Church scandal; 2) the "Jew" as a verb statement; and 3) the fact that Kelly worked for Chuck Rosenthal.

That's it.

No civil rights violations. No dirty e-mails. No wrongful convictions.

But, they ran all those other stories with an emphasis akin to Kelly selling secrets to the Soviets.

Yet, they turn a blind eye to Lykos' civil rights violations. Her hair-trigger temper. Her flagrant violation of the Constitution. Her disrespect of other people's religion. And more importantly, her lack of honesty.

I know I've given Alan Bernstein a hard time on this blog, and I'm still waiting for him to prove to me that it was undeserved. However, after watching The Wire, this season, I saw that sometimes good reporters get overruled by Editors with an Agenda.

Is that what happened to Alan?

I don't know. But I know that journalists become journalists to report the news. I don't know how any self-respecting journalist in their right mind can justify digging up old dirt on Kelly (which, by the way, she apologized for. Something Lykos has yet to do on any of her transgressions), and ignoring these stories simply because of who they endorsed.

That's not journalism.

That's campaigning.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

First of all -Thanks to "ahcl" for your diligent efforts in bringing forward the truth about Pat Lykos. After reading some of the blogs, let me bring this to light. There was one comment about the employees Pat Lykos actually supervised during her tenure as the "Judge of the 180th". Let me clarify this issue: Judges only have two employees that they actually supervise: a Coordinator and a Court Reporter. Statistics show that Pat Lykos had approximately nine(9) Coordinators: One left the State for personal reasons; one resigned; one left after she ran for AG; the rest were fired by Lykos. So, you ADAs or "Lykos loyals" who are hiding behind your desks, have the courage to support the best candidate and someone who can beat Bradford - a winner "Kelly Siegler". If the people of Harris County think that Pat Lykos can make the District Attorney's Office the best in the Nation "as pledged", they are being fooled and will have about as much luck jumping from a moving train. Additionally, Pat Lykos called one of our most respected senior retired Judges a "f_ _ _ k face" to her face. Is this the kind of "leader" we need here in Harris County? Just remember, you can't treat an "OLD DOG" new tricks. Vote in the run off. Go Kelly Go...ta ta Pat.

jigmeister said...

Anon, I remember she went through several court reporters to.

Murray Newman said...

Anon 6:41,
I'd very much like to talk more to you about this. She didn't say that to Judge Bacon, did she? If she said it about her, Lykos is even a worse person than I thought. And I thought she was pretty bad.
If you can give us some more information, it would be greatly appreciated. If you want to talk off of the message board, just send in a message with "NOT FOR PUBLICATION" at the top of it.
Thanks for your post.

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