Really? Objective NEWS From The Trib?

I saw this commercial a few days ago:


The text (the best of what I could make of it):

"...reporting the truth.  We ask the tough questions and never give up until we've covered the complete story and then report it to you.  Accurately.  Sure we lean to the right on our editorial [...] but when it comes to hard news, right down the middle.  The Trib.  Conservative views, objective views.  Get it right.  Now.

Ok, fine.  So they're promising "objective" news reporting "the complete story" while admitting to "lean[ing] right" on the op-ed page.

So what should we make of this recent news coverage:

The head of a conservative think tank said Wednesday that withholding funding for President Obama's health care overhaul could halt some government services, but it's worth the political risk.

“The reason we're not wincing on that is because the alternative is really, really serious,” former South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, president of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said during a meeting with Tribune-Review editors and reporters.

If Tom Fontaine (the reporter of this story) was giving us "the complete story" then why didn't he mention that his boss (ie the owner of the paper he works for, Richard Mellon Scaife)  is vice chairman of the Board of Trustees for the very foundation he's covering?

Or that foundations his boss controls have given tens of millions of dollars to the Heritage Foundation?

Or that the idea for the individual mandate actually came from the Heritage Foundation?

That's right.  That part might need some further explaining so here's Avik Roy (Romney advisor and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute) writing at Forbes.com:

James Taranto, who writes the Wall Street Journal’s excellent “Best of the Web” column, put forth a lengthy and informative discussion yesterday on the conservative origins of the individual mandate, whose inclusion in Obamacare is today its most controversial feature on the Right.

And those "conservative origins" are described by Taranto at the above link at the Wall Street Journal:

Heritage did put forward the idea of an individual mandate, though it predated HillaryCare by several years. We know this because we were there: In 1988-90, we were employed at Heritage as a public relations associate (a junior writer and editor), and we wrote at least one press release for a publication touting Heritage’s plan for comprehensive legislation to provide universal “quality, affordable health care.”

So why wasn't any of this mentioned in a news report outlining the Heritage Foundation's resistance to Obamacare?  Especially a news report that included:

DeMint thinks it will drive up health care costs and insurance premiums.

He said the national tour is the largest effort of its kind by Heritage. Its political arm, Heritage Action for America, is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads targeting several Republican congressmen who have not gotten on board with plans to defund the health care law — including Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who called defunding the plan the “dumbest idea I've ever heard.”

The effort is being tied to a government funding bill that expires Sept. 30. Congress needs to pass legislation, including money for the law, or risk letting parts of the federal government shut down.

“I don't care if the government shuts down. It's no good anyway. Obamacare has to go,” said Michele Zolnier, who drove from Hermitage in Mercer County, to attend the town hall meeting.

Complete story?

Sorry, Tom.  Not today.