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• Thursday, May 10, 2007 10:15 PM

  yep -- filters

  My one run-in with an overt filter was in 2000, when the LA Times contacted me and many others for what would have been an interesting, in-depth report on an ambitious new approach to endangered species protection in southern California. It wasn't to be a hit piece, but would have a lot of facts on how the endangered species act works that most people don't know about. The piece was finished and ready to run when Bush won the presidential election. The LA Times promptly pulled the piece and it never ran.

  I asked the reporter why, after she and a lot of people like me had gone out of our way to prepare this piece of investigative journalism, it was being killed due to an election in Washington that would really have little immediate impact on land use decisions in California. She just smiled and said, "Politics." She was not surprised and didn't seem to think there was anything strange about this decision. Her bosses had to consider all the long-term consequences of running pieces like this, no matter how seemingly arcane. They would self-censor this piece so as not to come across as being out of step with the new American Conservatism that was emerging in 2000.

  I write about this incident on blogs every few years, and I apologize to anyone who may have read it before, but I think it vividly describes just how delicate these filters are. Major media outlets -- even "liberal" ones like the LA Times -- filter out stories like this ALL THE TIME. It's just what they do and none of us is supposed to notice it. And if we do notice it we're not supposed to complain about it. Thank god for people like Glenn who don't buy it, who call them on it, and who have a big enough bullhorn to get the word out without the "help" of the MSM.

  —catbirdman Read catbirdman's other letters
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