David Rushing update

Yesterday, after Mark Yzaguirre tipped me off to David Rushing's more accurate byline, I sent the following email to the Chron:

In Sunday's edition, you printed an opinion piece called "How John Sharp Killed the Texas Democratic Party" (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/1674118). The author is David Rushing, whose byline says "Rushing, a Houstonian, is a first-year law student at Southern Methodist University". Are you aware that this same piece appears in the Houston Review, a publication that calls itself "an independent, conservative, student-run journal of news and opinion serving the Houston area"? Are you aware that David Rushing's byline in the Review version of this piece lists him as " a first year law student at Southern Methodist University and state Vice Chairman for Internal Affairs of the Young Conservatives of Texas"?

What I want to know is did you leave out this last bit of his bio, or did he? In either case, I believe a disservice was done to the readers. Knowing Rushing's bias greatly changes one's perception of this piece. I believe that a correction should be printed to this effect.

Thank you very much.

Today there was a message on my answering machine from David Langworthy, a member of the Chron's editorial board and the editor of the Outlook page. He told me that Rushing sent the piece to them with the shorter bio, and that the ed board was not very happy about it. He said they will print some sort of correction, possibly in the form of the letters they received (they got at least one more besides mine), and that there will probably be a piece that "balances" Rushing's at some point as well. He thanked me for my "close reading" of the article. I thanked him for calling me and told him I appreciated his followup.

Interestingly, Langworthy mentioned that he wondered at first if Rushing was a really disguntled liberal or a conservative stirring things up. They decided to print his piece because they thought it would stimulate discussion. Looks like they got what they wanted.

Given the earlier example of less-than-forthright behavior by members of the Houston Review, I have to wonder why some of them feel the need to act this way. Maybe Bill Clinton broke their moral compasses, too.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on November 25, 2002 to Election 2002 | TrackBack