The Leader endorses Parshall
Nearly 1,300 words about hatemonger Janet Parshall in Saturday’s News Leader, and the only thing the staff writer could come up with as being even the slightest bit critical is that “not everyone agrees” with her to-the-right-of-Himmler stances on abortion, gay rights and faith, family and freedom.
“When Janet Parshall speaks, people listen,” gushed staff writer Heather Keys in the 1,228-word piece covering Parshall’s recent keynote speech at a Valley Family Forum fundraiser, not once, mind you, but twice.
Keys, whose future is in public relations and not in journalism, positively glowed in Parshall’s presence. “‘I asked God to send me to a foreign mission field and he did,” she quoted the radio host as having said “with a half-smile,” something she must have learned in Setting the Scene class in school “He sent me to Washington. I’m a war correspondent from Babylon,” Keys quoted Parshall.
Cue the Knee Slap Guffaw Machine here.
More utter BS from this report.
- “Parshall spoke against gay marriage and homosexuality, referring to it as a perversion of the family structure. She argued hate crime legislation is wrong because she thinks it violates a clergyman’s right to speak the true word of God. “There is a linkage between hate crimes and hate speech. I know a pastor who is guilty of hate crimes because he told God’s whole truth,” Parshall said. “The object of disdain in hate crimes is the pulpit.”
How can a newspaper report this without the obvious followup? Name the pastor, ma’am, give us something in terms of details. And actually, make it a lot in terms of details. Otherwise, we’re calling BS.
- “Parshall also blasted the Obama Administration for its policies that are moving the country away from its Christian roots.”
Again, we’re going to need specifics. And in this case, we might want to solicit a comment from somebody offering a countering perspective. Or as a paper, we’re saying, Yeah, we agree.
- “Informative, insightful and inspiring were the words most used to describe Parshall’s speech.”
Maybe by the minions at the Valley Family Forum. Others might use different words. “Small-minded, hateful, plain dumb” might be among those other descriptions.
I’m not interested in flogging Heather Keys here any more than I already have. My guess is she’s a college student interning for the summer, and an editor sent her out to the event and didn’t give her much direction outside of “come back with something,” and she came back with something as she was asked to do.
If I’m her, I’m asking the paper to please, please remove the story from the website so it’s not hanging around out there in cyberspace when I go out to apply for a real job. That or please, please, please take my name off the story. Pretty please?
The tongue-lashing here goes to the editor who decided that this copy was strong enough to merit 1,228 words in a paper that has a hard time giving you 400 on stories that matter like ones involving local-government spending or local economic activity or the like. That person should not only be sacked but should be blacklisted from working in a position of authority in a newsroom ever again.
- Column by Chris Graham
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Get out a paper bag and breathe slowly into it to calm down.
There was a talk; she reported on the talk. Reporters report and commentators comment. Editors fill space in the news hole.
Since I think brevity is the soul of wit, over a thousand words is probably too long. But it’s done.
btw, while in college I covered a talk by Timothy Leary and tried to write it toward a more conservative tone. It was a mess. And I haven’t spoken of it in 25 years until now.
Hi Chris,
I read your article with great interest and I have a few questions. Did you attend the event that was written about – the Valley Family Forum? If you did, what did you think of the event?
If you didn’t, which is what I’m guessing, how come you’re so upset by someone who reported the facts from the event. It seems to me that you’re upset that Keys reported what they saw and heard. I think that is good journalism.
If indeed there were a few people who attended Janet Parshall’s speech who disagreed, that was reported, but it obviously wasn’t the main focus or feeling of the event. Which one would expect given the reason Janet was invited to speak to that forum in the first place.
Calling Janet names in your piece is evident that you don’t like her, but that’s not good journalism. And dare I say, if you knew Janet that she would treat you with the utmost respect, because that’s who she is. She’s a great leader, a great spokesperson for family values and a woman of utmost integrity.
Social conservatives lead the way in bemoaning the lack of balance in reporting in the mainstream media. Just to be clear, balance isn’t giving a shill like Janet Parshall 1,222 words to spell out her apocalyptic vision of the future of the United States.
The Leader can do what it wants to do with its news hole. It has editors and a publisher who decide its editorial policies and procedures. It also plays itself as being a mainstream, nonpartisan news organization, and it’s clear from reading it the past several weeks that it is not.
The decision to run several guest editorials from local Republican lawmakers defending their position on the stimulus unemployment vote in Richmond in April that ran in length from 600 words to 800 words while giving their Democratic Party challengers in the upcoming elections the ability to respond only in letters to the editor at 300 words or less was the first indication of the lack of fairness and balance in the Leader.
The McCloskey editorial cartoon equating same-sex marriage to dogs and cats getting married was another. This is the latest and most blatant. One does not give a speaker making the kinds of comments that Ms. Parshall does the free rein that she was given her in this story, and at the length of 1,200-plus words in a paper that doesn’t give a third of that to substantive news, without offering a counterbalance of opinion without making some sort of statement about one’s editorial philosophy.
One other point to consider – the event took place Thursday night. The item appeared online on Saturday. The reporter had a full day to track down people who might be able to present a fuller and more complete picture of Ms. Parshall. What we got instead was PR for Janet Parshall.
Stacy seems to think that this kind of reporting is OK, and I’ll give her that. This kind of journalism is OK for a news organization that is trying to become the Fox News Channel of the Central Shenandoah Valley.
Chris –
First, you never answered my question. That aside, I’m surprised you didn’t see the article that Newsleader.com did run on Thursday http://www.newsleader.com/article/20090528/NEWS01/90528021
At the very end of that article, Kay, not Key as you initially wrote and I copied wrongly, anyway, said that they were going to run a longer article on Saturday. Which is obviously the article you took issue with.
That said, what evidence do you have to prove to your readers that Janet Parshall is a shill – what, because you say so? Seriously, why do you have to name call, that is not good journalism Chris.
And since you obviously didn’t even do any research to show Newsleader actually covered the event twice, if I was a normal reader of yours, I’d be suspect. Bad bad journalism. 
The paper wrote a story on this event on Thursday and then did this fluff piece as the Day Two. And that is supposed to somehow justify the fact that the Saturday story is a piece of crap journalistically? I’m not sure I understand the reasoning here.
The only purpose for doing a Day Two story would be to examine the arguments made by the commentator here. We didn’t get even the slightest sense from the report that the speaker’s views are considered controversial by many. And considering how pleasant the Day One piece was to Parshall, that is the least the writer should have done for us as readers.
The fact that the paper swung and missed on this on its second attempt at reporting on this story is not a good reflection on its efforts here.
If the News Leader did its job well, where would the Free Press be?
To be fair and balanced doesn’t mean every story, but that both sides have opportunities to be heard and present their case.
If the reporter is an intern, I’d say work on your short-form writing and blogging. That’s where the future is going to be.
Good point – 1,222-word stories fit well in The New Dominion Magazine, but even those need to be a bit better sourced than this one.
I would quibble a bit on the observation that fairness and balance doesn’t mean every story. Imagine Janeane Garofalo coming to the Valley and speaking, and a local paper writing her up as glowing as this write up for Parshall. There’d be plenty of conservatives having a field day with whatever news organization were to have done the piece, and I’d say deservedly so. Even I can’t give people a free pass being unabashedly progressive. (Which is why I have critics among progressives who think I should give our guys a free pass.)
One other note – both Stacy and I got the last name wrong. It’s Kays. Not Key, not Kay. Sorry!
Chris – even though you really didn’t answer my question, I’ll give you this, at least you didn’t call Janet a name in your last few responses.
What is the Augusta Free Press and who is Chris? Thanks. Bill
William, here is a helpful link to our handy AugustaFreePress.com About page – http://augustafreepress.com/afp-about-us/.
I’ve learned since first writing on this that the Leader reporter who penned this piece is not an intern, but a full-time staffer. That’s what I get for assuming.
You were just hoping it was a fresh-faced 20-year-old who didn’t know better.
I was hoping for her sake that she was a fresh-faced 20-year-old who didn’t know better. Because a fresh-faced 20-year-old who didn’t know better could learn better. Maybe.