Paying Tribute to Newspaper to Buy Back Honor!

Following a San Diego Union-Tribune hollow front page article on October 8 and an editorial on October 11 inferring that the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Duncan Hunter, may have profited somehow illicitly in purchase price and property taxes on his then run-down house, as the U-T reports today back on the front-page but of its Local section,

In a move rarely seen in politics, U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter bought a full-page ad in yesterday's editions of The San Diego Union-Tribune to rebut what he said were false impressions created by the newspaper regarding his East County home.

Hunter had to pay the U-T $26,000 to get his documented side out. Today’s U-T article makes light of the matter, with a concluding,

Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at Sacramento State University, said Hunter's move was highly unusual but likely to be effective.
“You never pick your fights with people who buy their ink by the barrel. One way to deal with that is to get some of your own ink and pay for it,” she said. “He will get people to read it just because of its novelty.”

But, the U-T provides no link to the ad, nor does its website post ads in order to show you Hunter’s rebuttal. The property literally was a wreck, and Hunter provides photos, not the “estate” the U-T called it.

In what passes for “investigative” journalism, the U-T’s hit piece, its failure to provide equivalent -- not to mention any before now -- space for the facts, and the need to buy, pay tribute to the U-T, to get the facts out, is an all too typical low.

Next time the U-T is editorializing about integrity in politics or bemoaning dirty campaigning, the U-T may want to mention its own culpability.