The Los Angeles Times, like most major media outlets, covered the leak of a video in which Mitt Romney speaks candidly to supporters about his beliefs regarding the economy and the Middle East peace process.
The video has thrown the Romney campaign off-track and undercut Romney’s outreach to the elderly and the struggling middle class. Journalists and editorialists have reacted almost with glee as they construct an unflattering image of the “real Mitt Romney.”
While the Los Angeles Times should not be faulted for covering what has become a national story, the juxtaposition of its Romney video coverage with its refusal to release an equally embarrassing video of Barack Obama feting former PLO Beirut spokesman and University of Chicago historian Rashid Khalidi is telling. In the video taken at a goodbye party as his friend departed for a new post at Columbia University, Obama reportedly talked perhaps too candidly about his views of the Middle East. That the Los Angeles Times refuses to release the video shows complete and utter hypocrisy.
Further underlying the Los Angeles Times‘s partisanship was its explanation when, despite warnings that its actions could kill American soldiers, it published two-year-old photos of American soldiers mistreating the corpses of Taliban fighters. As the editors explained, “At the end of the day, our job is to publish information that our readers need to make informed decisions.” Apparently, that is only true if the editors believe the informed decisions will support the politics in the newsroom of the Los Angeles Times.
