| Recently, I posted an article "Why's the Missoulian Misleading the Public" (http://www.leftinthe...). The article provided detailed examples of the Missoulian's biased and misleading coverage and editorializing on public land issues. In my opinion - and based on ten year's experience of trying to work with the paper - one of the main perpetrators of this biased and misleading coverage has been editorial page editor Steve Woodruff.
Like I have said, my computer is full of documented examples of where Woodruff (and most recently the Missoulian's environmental reporter) just flat out ignored important information while repeatedly blasting our organization in lead editorials or writing unflattering articles about us and our work. Some examples of information that was systematically ignored by the Missoulian are posted in the comments section here: (http://www.newwest.n...).
So, imagine my surprise when we learned last week that Steve Woodruff has been hired to be Deputy Director of a new progressive think-tank called Western Progress (http://www.westernpr...). I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that few people in the Montana progressive community would even remotely consider the Missoulian's editorial positions during Woodruff's tenure to represent progressive thoughts and ideals, not just on public land issues, but on a host of important issues facing our communities, state and region.
This week's Missoula Independent has a good look at issue here: (http://www.missoulan...).
In the article, Woodruff acknowledges that the Missoulian's editorials are "right of center on many issues." On one hand he seems to distance himself from these editorials by saying he was simply the "voice of the Missoulian." Yet, at the same time he refers to the 6,000 editorials he's written since 1988 as "my editorials." So which is it? And what does this say about Woodruff's progressive credentials or the ethics of a "progressive" pumping out "right of center" editorials for the past 18 years?
In addition to the documented examples contained in the links above, I'll leave you with another classic run in with the Misleadian's editorial page editor.
It was April 2001 and I stopped by the Missoulian attempting to arrange an editorial board meeting to discuss the Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA). This was a few weeks prior to secret, closed-door meetings in Quebec City, Canada by trade ministers from 34 nations from North, Central and South America and the Caribbean to expand NAFTA to the entire Western Hemisphere, affecting 755 million people.
I told Steve that we'd like him to sit down and talk with U.S. Steelworkers and representatives of worker and community organizations from Mexico, Chile and Argentina that would be in Missoula for an FTAA Teach-In we were hosting. Woodruff wasn't even willing to sit and listen to their perspectives about the FTAA and "free trade." He told me flat out, in that special condesending way Woodruff is famous for, "Nothing your steel workers or other's tell us is going to change the fact that this paper is a staunch supporter of 'free trade." I snapped back, "Even if that 'free trade' is on the backs of 13 year old girls working twelve hour days in factories in Central and South America?" and just walked out.
Woodruff clearly wasn't open to even listening to other perspectives from real people in this country and the Americas who were seeing, first hand, the inequalities of unbridled 'free trade."
That certainly didn't strike me as progressive. |
