Russ McBee

Today's News Sentinel carries two front-page articles on yesterday's testimony in the ongoing trial of Jack McElroy's lawsuit against Knox County Commission. The article above the fold relates the testimony by former County Commissioners John Schmid and Phil Guthe, and it does so in a fairly straightforward way.

The article below the fold, on the other hand, has some problems. Here's the opening:

Call it the two faces of Craig Leuthold.

He is either laboring in his famous father’s shadow or riding his coattails.

He either nobly stepped aside to allow a more qualified candidate to win appointment as Knox County trustee or shrewdly backed the man who would become his boss and award him with a $17,000 raise.

Very few things in this world are anywhere near that black-and-white. People are not binary "either/or" machines; the article's failure to recognize anything but the two artificially stark alternatives presented in its lede amounts to yet more editorializing.

Rich Hailey's live-blogging of Leuthold's testimony includes this aside, which I think is a lot more reasonable:

3:37 Mr. Moncier begins his cross: Mr. Leuthold got a promotion from Fred Sisk after the commission meeting leading to his increase in income. Mr. Moncier asks if Commissioner Leuthold was elected because of his father's name. Leuthold responds that he campaigned very hard for his position.Moncier is making a big deal about the raise given to him by Fred Sisk. As innuendo it's effective but it would be more convincing if we had his full pay history available. There may be a very good reason why he got that raise.

Exactly. Instead of straight news reporting, this front-page story resorts to fabricated dichotomies between "noble" or "shrewd" and even stoops to insinuating that Leuthold is "two-faced." It is condescending of the paper to expect its readers not to notice editorial slant in its front page news stories; it is insulting to the readers to report innuendo as news.

Where were the editors on this article?