Sunday, July 13, 2008

Grand Junction Sentinel Joins Act of Airbrushing "Boulder" from Mark Udall

Rocky Mountain News reporter Lynn Bartels appears to have started a trend in airbrushing the "Boulder" label in quoted descriptions of Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Mark Udall.

Mark Udall's opponent Bob Schaffer submitted an op-ed to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel that was published this morning. A copy of Bob Schaffer's draft was shared with this blog, bringing to light a couple interesting changes made by the Sentinel. (Emphases are added to highlight the differences.)

1. Here is Bob Schaffer's draft:
Sadly, some of the worst culprits are from Colorado. I’m running against one of them – Boulder’s Democratic Congressman Mark Udall.
Here's the edited version:
Sadly, some of the worst culprits are from Colorado. I’m running against one of them — Boulder County Democrat Mark Udall.
Nothing inaccurate in the original description, but that didn't seem to matter.

2. From Bob Schaffer's draft:
The liberal views espoused by Boulder’s Congressman couldn’t be more different than mine.
And then what the Sentinel published:
The liberal views espoused by Udall couldn’t be more different than mine.
Would the editors justify this change as an essential way to cut extra words and save space? Perhaps, but coupled with the first instance, it looks more like part of a policy that changes one candidate's words while ignoring pertinent facts about his opponent.

It looks like the Western Slope's biggest newspaper has adopted Lynn Bartels' "case-by-case" approach to deciding when and how the term Boulder can be used to describe the man who has represented Boulder in Congress for nine years, who for years was officially recognized by the Congressional clerk as "Mark Udall, D-Boulder", who has publicly referred to Boulder as his "touchstone", and who stated last year that he would not be affected by the "Boulder liberal" tag.

In what ways did the Sentinel edit Mark Udall's column?

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