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ONE OF THE WAYS newspapers play the objectivity game while still having things the publisher's way is to bury opposition to a reported action on the jump page, often with a sentence that begins something like, "Some critics argued that. . ."
The Washington Post outdid itself on this score in its report on the House passage of the homeland security [sic] bill. It wasn't until the 20th paragraph that we learn, "The reorganization plan has its critics." The Post then goes on to quote one - that's one - namely the old Washington favorite, the Brookings Institution, which thinks "that the new agency 'merges too many different activities into a single department,' and warned that managers will be so preoccupied with consolidation details that they might give 'insufficient attention to their real job: taking concrete action to counter the terrorist threat at home.'" Thus another redundant illustration of a Washington principle: no issue is too important not to be reduced to a question of bureaucratic process.
But even more interesting is the fact that the plan not only "had its critics," but 121 of them on the day in question - all of them in plain sight of the Post. The were the House members who voted against the bill. None were considered worth mentioning.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51343-2002Nov13.html
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