The liberal Wall Street Journal

In a post two weeks ago, on the Wall Street Journal I wrote that, with the exception of the opinion page which has a completely separate staff, the paper was slanted to the left in its news coverage. I e-mailed Tom Veal, whose excellent Stromata blog had a series of fiskings of Al Hunt throughout 2002, for support. He replied:

Al Hunt recently left the Journal to work for Bloomberg, but the fact that he served for many years as Washington bureau chief is proof enough that the paper's editorial page doesn't control its news coverage. Another example of the news staff's ideological bent is Ellen Schultz's coverage of pension issues, which isn't just liberal but consistently loony left.

Or just look at today's paper. I found several examples of liberal slant within the first moments of scanning the paper. The front page story on Bush's Ownership Society by Jackie Calmes casts doubt on everything about Bush. In addition to the overall liberal take, she impugns every assertion that the White House offers with qualifiers and quote marks. She won't even grant that the president's policy proposal reflect his beliefs, only that his advisors say so.

Right below that article was the second of the two front page stories with domestic political implications. Michael Phillips has a story on the adminstration efforts to require groups which get AIDS grants to pledge opposition to prostitution. The entire thrust of the article is designed to show that this is not only a bad idea, but part and parcel of a number of harmful efforts by the religious right.

Next I turned to the front of the Money and Investing section of the paper. The Abreast of the Market column is entitled "Stocks May Dash Social Security Privatizers' Expectations." Obviously, it's not pro-Bush.

And finally, on the same page in the Ahead Of the Tape column, we find this standard liberal canard in a story on why consumer spending might slip in the future -- "the tax breaks that helped sustain spending have run their course." What bull! Every payday the tax cuts help sustain growth in the economy. Reagan's tax cuts are still helping today. And they will continue to help until taxes are raised. What's really irritating about this column is that the actual news he reports is good. You get the sense he wants it to be bad.

Just another typical news day at the WSJ.