Surprise, Washington Post a Liberal Newspaper?

Today's Washington Post, once again, has revealed their biases in their news reporting.

In a piece by Lori Montgomery, the headline reads "Income gap hangs over tax debate.  Bush-era cuts widened divide" Ms Montgomery and the editors of the Post, once again reveal why they are unfair and unbalanced in their reporting.

If this were an opinion article, I would have understood.  However, this piece is represented as "news" in the Economy and Business section.

In the piece, Ms. Montgomery goes to extraordinary lengths to lay out the Democrat's argument about the unfair distribution of wealth that has occurred over the last 50 years and then link it to income tax rates, complete with pretty graphs to make the point.

What gets short shrift in this process is fairness in presenting a different point of view and the consequences of  having those with higher incomes shoulder an unprecedented share of the tax revenue load.  Further, absolutely nothing is said about government spending.

Below is my response posted in the comments section of the article.

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Dear Editors and Ms. Montgomery,

This is exactly the kind of "news" story that demonstrates the bias of this newspaper. 
Both the headline and the charts present the "story" in a way that leads readers to two conclusions; 1) Income disparity is rising 2) Increasing tax rates is the solution.

Now I know, because I actually read the article, that in the 20th paragraph, you point out that maybe, there might be, perhaps some downside to the suggestion that this suggested policy might not be a good thing.  But, you get right back at it by the end of the piece by giving Levin the final word in the piece.

If you had truly wanted this to be a balanced and fair piece of reporting, you could have done 3 things; 1) you would have brought up the counter arguments in the piece earlier, 2) You would have given more ink to the counter arguments (really 6 out of 26 paragraphs is the best you can do?) and finally 3) A nice graph showing the source of federal income tax revenue by income would have been a nice offset to the 1st graph showing income tax rates vs income.

One last note, in this discussion, one thing that continuously gets overlooked is the spending side of the equation.  But that is a subject perhaps for another day, though (here again, your biases are showing) I may have to wait for a long time on that one.

This is exactly the kind of piece that earns the Washington Post the liberal label it deserves because it highlights a topic that plays to a liberal point of view, presents the argument in a one sided way and then does not talk about those issues (like spending and freedom) that lie at the heart of conservative values.

You can do better.

Let Freedom Ring