In yesterday’s News Sentinel, you’ll find an editorial entitled Saving money while rebuilding. It’s an unsigned editorial attributed to “The Lima News, Ohio Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News”. The first paragraph is:
One of the smartest things President Bush did to reduce recovery costs in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita was to suspend Davis-Bacon Act rules in the hardest hit states. But Congress is frantically trying to overrule the president, which would add billions of dollars to the already staggering recovery costs.
Funny thing is that, this same language appears in a number of other unsigned editorials across the country. According to the blog Southern Studies, the editorials show up in California, Colorado, and North Carolina in papers owned by a company called “Freedom Communications, Inc.” Looks like the Lima News is also owned by Freedom Communications Inc.
So, I guess the News Sentinel’s biggest mistake here is not culling its newswire feeds very well. Unsigned editorials coming from far flung corporations with unknown loyalties ought not be passed off as the thinking of local editorial staffs.
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