November 04, 2007 08:34 PM UTC

Holy Tabloid Journalism, Batman!

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• by: Colorado Pols

Today The Denver Post absolutely lit into Gov. Bill Ritter over Friday’s executive order authorizing a bargaining partnership with state employees.

We’re not going to get into the mechanics of Friday’s executive order here, because the larger issue is the sad state of Colorado journalism when the largest newspaper in the state turns itself into a tabloid rag along the lines of The New York Post. Today the Post carries a FRONT PAGE EDITORIAL lambasting Ritter over his executive order – an editorial filled with ridiculous over-the-top, name-calling hyperbole such as this:

When Coloradans elected Bill Ritter as governor, they thought they were getting a modern-day version of Roy Romer, a pro-business Democrat. Instead, they got Jimmy Hoffa…

…The governor on Friday unveiled his plan to drive up the cost of doing business in Colorado by forcing collective bargaining on thousands of state employees.

We’re concerned this may be the beginning of the end of Ritter as governor…

…Had Ritter thought employees were somehow getting a raw deal, he could have waved his magic wand and changed all that. He is the governor, after all. Instead, he’s decided to prop up unions.

Now, he runs the risk of becoming Colorado’s first one-term governor since Walter Johnson in 1950.

Coloradans bought the Colorado Promise, but may end up with a trail of broken promises.

A governor with such early promise has squandered his future in order to keep his backroom promises to a few union bosses. And Colorado is the loser.

Talk about your vendettas. Ritter lost his chance at re-election because of this? That’s a bit much, don’t you think?

And comparing Ritter to Jimmy Hoffa…come on, really? Forget the New York Post, this is National Enquirer territory.

Obviously somebody high up at the Post isn’t happy with Ritter, and that’s their prerogative. But editorials are not meant for the front page of a major metropolitan newspaper, and to promote an editorial in such fashion is, frankly, an embarrassment to the paper and all who work there (particularly when they include this silly disclaimer at the end of the editorial: “The Denver Post’s editorial board operates independently of the paper’s news coverage.” Uh, yeah, right.)

Front page editorials are so universally decried as wrong that critics on both sides of the aisle have criticized their use (witness this commentary from the Independence Institute’s Dave Kopel). It’s fine if the Post wants to attack Ritter in its editorial pages, but it’s unconscionable to do so on the front page of the paper and then to include the absurd disclaimer that the editorial board and the rest of the newspaper are separate. It’s no mystery that newspapers are dying in this country when fundamental journalistic integrity is blithely ignored.