There’s a sense in which media blogs are dangerous things. One of the reasons for the success of the blogosphere (political and otherwise) is it’s personal, often matter-of-fact communication paradigm. Blog entries are conversational, informal, and inevitably (whether intended or not) relay a sense of the person (or at least their “internet side”). Blogs are, after all, online personal journals in which some of us like to wax political, and some just want to discuss their Star Wars memorabilia.

This creates a challenge for traditional media outlets who want a piece of that blogosphere action and send their journalists into the fray. Journalists are supposed to have a professional detatchment from their subjects, but professional detatchment is the very antithesis of political blogspeak. Certainly there are other times when journalists are systemically encouraged to either editorialize, or make full blown ideological crusaders of themselves. One could even say that’s the zeitgeist.

But put a beat reporter in that position and things are different. The Vermont political press corps are all blogging these days, potentially providing uncomfortable (but illuminating) views into their own biases and thereby inviting everything from speculation as to whether or not these biases inevitably creep into their reporting, to full-blown criticism.

Well, invitation accepted. I give you Burlington Free Press reporter Terri Hallenbeck and her apparent distaste for Freshman Representative Peter Welch (continued on the flip).

I rather like Hallenbeck’s writing and have told her so via email. By all accounts she is a pleasant person. But I don’t think that gets her off the hook for being called out when her biases show. At vtbuzz (the Freeps political newsblog), I did a quick, cursory review of the last several times she’s mentioned Peter Welch in her blog because I (and others) had begun to detect a pattern.

From her most recent Welch-referring post.

The New York Times story on the bill includes a photo of the Greening the U.S. Capitol news conference depicting part of Rep. Peter Welch?s head behind Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The post is a mildly smirking dismissal of the presence of Welch during a presentation on what has been his signature issue of choice. No big deal, right? Just a gentle poke.

This is the the Welch mention before that…

The speaker mentioned Welch a couple times during the news conference, Welch spokesman Andrew Savage said. Pelosi’s own news release on the same event, however, doesn’t mention Welch. Not even when she refers to plans for the House to purchase carbon offsets, as Welch did for his office earlier this year.

He gets a little recognition, but not quite that much.

Ooo. More than a little poke. Outright mockery. Very much in keeping with the personality-driven writing of a blog, but is this appropriate for a journalist on the political beat?

And before that…

This time Welch says he wants to hear from constituents about the issues that matter to them. There’s a card you can tear off, fill out and send in ranking your issues. It’s about constituent services, which are after all the number one purpose of a member of Congress.

Don’t kid yourself, though, it’s also about getting re-elected.

We’re clearly beyond “just the facts,” and with three consecutive mentions, we’re into the territory of a pattern. Look, the postcard made me roll my eyes as well, but is it really Hallenbeck’s job to interpret the news for us?

And if you think it is, it’s worth noting that there is a stack of interpretations piling up that put the freshman Representative in a poor light. In what light, then, should we be reading Hallenbeck’s coverage of Welch in the Free Press?

Continuing in order, we finally come to a reference that does not contain any personal or political characterization:

Barre was teeming with politicians last weekend. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders made their way across the stage at the Barre Opera House. So did Rep. Peter Welch and Barre Mayor Thomas Lauzon.

But the next one, again, subtley smacks of eye rolling, with it’s “little splash” comment...

Peter Welch, made a little splash earlier this year by establishing the first carbon-neutral congressional office.

It’s impossible not to notice the narrative Hallenbeck is setting in regards to Welch. Still, you may say, maybe it’s just her style. Maybe we should compare her blog references to other political figures.

Well, I did.

The last several references to Jim Douglas range from the “cute” like this:

As we learned from their previous video, these kids have got a knack for this stuff, but I would pay money to hear Gov. Jim Douglas deliver a counteracting rap video.

…to the incidental, like this…:

The governor has indicated that just removing the Vermont Yankee tax won’t be enough to buy his love on the energy bill.

…and this rather glowing one…:

When Gov. Jim Douglas took his Vermont delegation to China on a trade mission this week, the Shanghai bureau chief of Forbes magazine took special interest. Russell Flannery grew up in Rutland and is a 1981 graduate of the University of Vermont. He’s been a journalist in Asia since 1991.

Flannery took the occasion to interview Douglas. His story appeared today on Forbes.com. You can read the article “Catamount strokes The Dragon” HERE.

He notes Douglas’ success in landing a meeting with Shanghai’s mayor.

All very different, and in more of a matter-of-fact style, in which Hallenbeck generally invites commentary on the news rather than the newsmaker, as she does through her characterizations of Welch. In fact the only one that breaks that reverse pattern with Douglas is this one regarding the back and forth on the scuttled meeting between Legislative leaders and the Governor over H.520:

Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin puts out a news release announcing his willingness to compromise rather than just telling the governor. He cites as a reason for this that that’s how he learned of the governor’s plan. Seventh-grader: “He hit me first.”

Gov. Jim Douglas cancels a meeting with Shumlin because he doesn’t like Shumlin’s behavior.

(And yes, it’s hard not to notice that while she takes them both to task, it is Shumlin she specifically characterizes as a child, even though it was Douglas cancelled the meeting).

A further glance at references to Sanders and Leahy revealed no such pattern of negative characterization or narrative-building.

Regular commenters have noticed the pattern as well, going so far as to tease Hallenbeck about whether or not she is building a narrative to run against Welch herself.

Now, I don’t presume to know why she has an issue with Welch. Some may conclude that she identifies more with Republicans (she certainly seems to bend over backwards to counter the Douglas Administration’s thinly veiled suggestion that the H.520 meeting was cancelled because she was giving Shumlin too much attention. Rather than nervously explain herself in public, she could have taken offense as a journalist at the Governor’s crude scapegoating). Or perhaps she identifies with Dems and is overcompensating to avoid the dreaded “liberal bias” charge. Maybe she just doesn’t like Peter Welch.

Frankly I don’t care. What matters is that she clearly has developed an unflattering narrative of all things Welch, and she has no qualms about putting it out on her blog for web surfers to plainly see.

The question, then, is whether it also comes out in her reporting in a manner that’s perhaps a little less plain to see.

Preaching to the choir yesterday in Martinsburg, W Va, Bush recited the same sermon he and his handlers reserve for these carefully controlled and completely choreographed appearances before the faithful.

“We give thanks for all the brave citizen-soldiers of our Continental Army who dropped pitchforks and took up muskets to fight for our freedom and liberty and independence,” Bush said. He added: “You’re the successors of those brave men. . . . Like those early patriots, you’re fighting a new and unprecedented war.”

I wonder if anyone else noticed that our Revolution against the tyrannical rule of that earlier George, the occupation of our cities and provinces by British troops, his interference in what we regarded as our affairs, and the general mistreatment of our citizenry was, in fact, the polar opposite of  our invasion and occupation of Iraq and the mistreatment, maiming and murder of their citizenry.

We have been at war in Iraq for over four years, in Afghanistan for nearly six, at the same time we have conducted and continue to conduct covert operations in other countries throughout the Middle East including Iran and Pakistan, as well as in several African countries.

The result of what we have wrought has been the death, destruction or displacement of hundreds of thousands of innocents, along with the sacrifice of our military forces and our economic future. There has been no net gain for the people of this country or any other.

Along the way great benefits have devolved upon many of our well connected corporations, both public and private, continuing the transfer of public wealth to private hands, (select private hands, that is) which is the core of neo conservative economics and was the central purpose of going to war in Iraq.

We might have more easily invaded Mexico, a country which was equally complicit in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the number of Mexican terrorists aboard the ill fated suicide planes having been exactly equal to the number of Iraqi terrorists.

A war against terror in Mexico, so much closer than Iraq, would have greatly eased the logistical problems we have in the Middle East, avoided stirring up the international radical Muslim community and may have gone a long way to solving our much ballyhooed “immigration problems.”

Here at home, a young man was killed about two weeks ago, Marine Cpl. Derek C. Dixon was killed while serving at a checkpoint in al Anbar province on Tuesday, June 26. Cpl Dixon was from Riverside, Ohio which is about a traffic light from where I sit typing as I watch the rabbits at early morning play outside my office window.

He will be buried today north of Dayton with full military honors, he was twenty years old and looked younger. Cpl Dixon attended high school at the same school I attended over four decades ago. He probably joked and laughed in the same classrooms, walked the same halls and ate in the same cafeteria as I did those long years ago.

Forty one years ago I walked those halls, laughing and joking with Ronnie Fields, one of my childhood friends and a lovable clown of a kid. Incorrigible and disruptive to good order and discipline was the the verdict of the adults who patrolled the halls in those days.

Ronnie was killed in Vietnam early in 1968 long before our young Corporal was born, his name is etched in a marble slab in the sidewalk of the Vietnam Memorial Park, located near the banks of the Great Miami River, within sight of our sadly aspiring little “downtown.” Ronnie’s name is there in a great circle of sidewalk joining the names of other local boys who paid the ultimate price of our folly in Vietnam.

I go there sometimes and walk by the river. I stand under the trees near Ronnie’s name etched there in the marble and listen to the breeze as it crosses the river and blows through the trees, pushing the blazing city air off to the east and I see his face at 15 and 16, the mischief in his eyes above a grin that made you forget every thing else in the vicinity except whatever he might be up to now.

I stand in that silence and think of him and all the others lost and gone, some I knew, most I did not, except in spirit.

I spent several years on a Veteran’s honor guard and have served at more than three hundred funerals and memorial services. In every one I heard the same phrases, the same words, honor and duty and sacrifice, died for his country, service to America, and then, then they play Taps, fire three volleys and go to their homes or to the VFW for sandwiches and beer.

Nothing left at graveside, just another name etched in marble, or concrete, etched in bronze, another memory of a fresh faced young kid laughing with his friends in some high school hallway, just a memory and the wind.

They buried Ronnie almost half a lifetime ago and since that day, so many more, so many more.

They will bury Cpl Dixon today, a squad of Marines in attendance, a Chaplain probably, an Officer in Charge and a rifle squad. The bugle will sound taps, and the riflemen will fire three volleys.

The dreadful finality of the crack of the rifles will startle the senses, bring tears to the eyes, and sobs to the throats of most of those in attendance.
The grief will seem unbearable but it will be borne, once again.

And when final notes of the bugle fade, they will leave
and leave behind another soon faded flag, another memory in the wind.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust