Morning News Editors Invite Mockery

DON’T STOP THE PRESSES: The Dallas Morning News is dropping Doonesbury from its Sunday editions, an Editors Note informed readers today. “In the interest of fairness and balance, we are no longer running Doonesbury in the Sunday comics section.”

Fairness and balance? Where have we heard that knee-slapper before? Oh, right, from the folks at the totally honest and unbiased news channel created by that truth-teller, Rupert Murdoch.

But the honchos at the News want to speak for themselves, quoted dutifully in a column penned by Stephen Buckley, the News’ Public Editor.

“I don’t feel like we need to be a microphone for a comic that has gone on a crusade against the president,” Managing Editor Amy Hollyfield told Buckley.. “I know we’ll get significant, maybe even fierce, feedback” from Doonesbury readers, she said.

The main issue, Buckley continued, was that Hollyfield and Executive Editor Katrice Hardy did not think the comic had been fair to Trump. In publishing Trudeau’s assaults, The News “is making a statement,” she said. “It’s like an endorsement.”

God help the News if the paper were caught endorsing Garry Trudeau’s satirical criticism of a mob boss President who has lied more times than anyone can count and just today accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.

Dumping Doonesbury for not being fair to the mogul of Mar-a-Lago, say the Dallas Morning News editors.

Grant Moise, publisher and president of The News, signed off on the decision made by Hollyfield and Hardy, as quoted by Buckley. “I want The Dallas Morning News to be seen as a news source rooted in fairness and balance,” he said. “When a comic strip (or any other source) we publish detracts from that goal, we must make decisions supporting our objectives and values.”

Uh, no comment.

I rarely bother writing to the News about anything, but as an unwilling witness to the cowardice and supplication currently being exhibited by men and women who claim to be journalists, I was compelled to write a note to Mr. Buckley that I’d like to share:

Dear Mr. Buckley:
I don’t envy you having to carry water for your bosses at the Morning News, where Doonesbury’s wit and intelligence never fit in really. Now that new strips of the Pulitzer Prize-winning comic will no longer appear in the News, I guess you have to say those things and obediently quote the overseers, but I hope you are rolling your eyes along with any readers who’ve been north of Plano. Making the case that Garry Trudeau (or anyone) has not been “fair" to Trump is laughable considering Trump himself clearly has no idea what the word means.

A historian might write one day that as our 250-year-old democracy succumbed to autocracy, The Dallas Morning News argued that newspapers must be fair to tyrants.

And you, the newspaper’s Public Editor, signed off on it.