Why I Don't Like The Orlando Sentinel

The last couple of days, one of the guys I work with has been bringing in the daily editions of the Orlando Slantinel, er, Sentinel. I haven't actually read the Sentinel in quite a while, outside of the classifieds, (mainly because I get almost all my news information from the Net, including the Sentinel website), but I figured since it was there, I would actually read through it to see if there was any worthwhile reason for starting a subscription.

The front page was pretty much like it always has been: full of AP reprints, exposes of problems anyone paying attention already knew about, and the same lame op-ed fare that they've always had. But then I went to the Local & State section and decided that there is no way I will even consider subscribing anytime soon.

The Sentinel has a columnist named Mike Thomas. I always remembered Mike as writing happy little columns that were never really outstanding, but never really offensive either. It always seemed that he would be writing a story about something some grandma did, or some school play, or maybe a community event - the kind of stuff that a local news reporter would report on. So when I saw his name in the byline for a column, I stopped to read it - to maybe learn some little odd tidbit about the community that I didn't already know.

Now Thomas' columns are still printing on the front page of the Local & State section as if they were the same generic community building columns as before. They are presented as news. But read some of the comments and language used just in his last four columns:

"In talking about whether he would run for his U.S. Senate seat, Bob Graham said he didn't have a "God complex." I guess that's what separates him from Jeb Bush. Jeb did not talk to medical experts or Terri Schiavo's husband before ordering a feeding tube stuck back in her brain-dead body. But he did talk to Randall Terry, founder of the extremist anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. "Our goal is a Christian nation," Terry once said. "We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." Seems Jeb took that to heart..."

"As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Graham became one of the most focused and respected voices on the war on terror"

"Orange County Chairman Rich Crotty has stuck a respirator in Mobility 20/20, keeping the corpse warm in hopes of a miracle resurrection for his road-building plan."

"It is lucky for Dr. Shashi Gore, the chief medical examiner of Orange and Osceola counties, that dead people can't sue for medical malpractice.

He is the Barney Fife of pathologists -- likable and well-meaning, but incompetent. If he exhumed Marie Antoinette, he probably would conclude she died from drowning.

Gore says he will step down in June. That would be fine if we could guarantee that nobody dies between now and then."

Is that the language of reporting? Or is it the language of editorializing; of opinion?

I don't really care that Mike Thomas has these positions. I generally disagree with him, but he's entitled to believe whatever his little heart so desires.

I do have a problem, however, with his opinion being cast as "news." His opinion, no matter how arrogant he might be, is not fact. His opinion, no matter how righteous he and the editorial staff believe it to be, is not material for the front page of a news section. For the op-ed page, absolutely. Heck, he might even liven up that page up and make it more worth reading. But for the front of Local and State - no way.

I find this to be rather condescending of the Sentinel's editorial board. Do they think that I'm not smart enough to know that they're trying to shamelessly pass of editorializing as news? Do they really think that little of the intelligence of their readership?

I can understand politicized language slipping into articles from Reuters, or the AP, or the UPI, as the editorial staff does not have direct control of the writers and the content. But Mike Thomas is a Sentinel writer. There is no excuse for him to be using words like "anti-abortion extremist" (my emphasis) or for referring to any official as a "Barney Fife" on a news page. If he wants to expose a problem, that's fine. But it can be done with facts. The personal attacks need to be confined to the op-ed page, where they belong and are expected.

The Sentinel editorial staff's use of Mike Thomas' columns on a news page is intellectually dishonest. As a result, I am not going to be subscribing to the Sentinel until such time as they feel fit to respect me.