Soccer Dad

Ehrlich bashing website still online

That would be the Baltimore Sun, whose star columnist Laura Vozzella is celebrating that the "Sun trashing website is offline" (I'm probably overrating her by calling her a "star.")

Thesunlies.com - a site devoted to trashing Baltimore's largest daily - seems to have called it quits.

The site had been around at least since last spring, and in its heyday, it ripped three or more Sun articles a day - mostly over perceived anti-Bob Ehrlich, pro-Martin O'Malley bias.

But the zip seemed to go out of the whole thing after the election, and sometime last week, it expired.

That fueled conspiracy theories that the site was the work of a conservative operation that recently folded up its tent. Say, the Ehrlich campaign. Or the Ehrlich administration.

That's nice idle speculation. But being a columnist, Ms. Vozella doesn't need proof for anything she spouts; after all, it's just her opinion.

What's not opinion is that The Sun Lies has (at least) once targeted Ms. Vozzella. Google's cache revealed that in August the Sun Lies caught her re-using the same story in columns two days apart and mocking former Governor Ehrlich's campaign signs on the basis of her own ignorance of the timeline of his campaign.

I understand that hell hath no fury like a columnist mocked, but before she bared her claws she ought to have let us know that her beef with the Sun Lies was personal not professional.

What I haven't understood is why over the past few weeks someone from the Tribune Company (the Sun's parent company) has infrequently been checking out The Sun Lies by Google. You'd think in this day and age anyone working for a media company would know what a bookmark is.

On November 26, 2006, basking in the Democratic victories in Maryland, the Balitmore Sun reported

Over the past four years, every move in Annapolis was viewed through the lens of this year's governor's race and the Democrats' attempts to make sure Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s first term would be his last. But with no obvious successor to the Senate presidency, that sport has been replaced by a new intrigue, and even if it doesn't capture the public's attention like a governor's race, it could become just as heated.

(Emphasis mine. The link to the Sun's article has since expired.)

This is no doubt true and as such the Baltimore Sun had an obligation to the electorate to inform them of the motive animating Democratic opposition to former Governor Ehrlich throughout his term. Instead the Sun in both its news and editorial pages abdicated its fundamental obligation to inform readers and took the Democratic side. It's not a "perceived ... bias." It was very real and obvious to anyone capable of critical thought.

If Ms. Vozzella somehow thought that the Sun Lies was the only website critical of the Sun she hasn't been out surfing much.

Blogdigger tags: Laura Vozzella, The Sun Lies.

Posted by SoccerDad at January 29, 2007 11:02 PM