Go git ’em, Ferris!

Poor Richard Amrhine. Poor, poor, socialist, commie, left-wing Amrhine. . . now that Larry Evans is on his way out, I suppose we can turn our guns on the next logical target:

Who is Richard Amrhine trying to fool when he claimed that “after doing this sort of work for some 27 years, I have yet to figure out where people get the idea that the serious media have some sort of preconceived agenda in their day-to-day reporting” [“Media bias in the eye of beholder,” Feb. 16]?

Mr. Amrhine says he wasn’t taking notes, but he did mention that when Leno was interviewing the governor, Ventura said something to this effect: “The press no longer reports the news but makes up its own version of events and reports that.” Then, according to Mr. Amrhine, “there was a round of applause.”

This seemed to hit a very sensitive nerve of Mr. Amrhine because he further writes, “The crowd’s reaction was probably based on some herd mentality, adding an exclamation point to Ventura’s comment. I really don’t think the audience as a whole is as stupid as Ventura.”

Come on, Mr. Amrhine, don’t cut the governor short. You should know better than anyone else that there are some serious media that do report their version of events.

Ferris Belman brings up a great point, and one that is not accurately reflected in the title ( Amrhine’s newspaper an example of media bias ) that the paper gave the letter. For a number of years before the new ownership of the FLS, the editors of the paper were notorious for twisting stories with a decidably liberal slant. The journalistic integrity of the Free Lance-Star has improved considerably over the past five years, but folks like Amrhine still manage to hang on with their self-justifing rhetoric. For Amrhine to seem so incredulous that journalistic bias exists in the press seems a bit naive at best, considering that there is looming evidence all around – on the left and the right.

Ferris Belman is a Republican member of the Stafford County School Board.