Sacramento Bee Editorial Endorsement -Sleazy or Inept?

Sleazy or inept?

The Bee editorial today endorses Hillary Clinton OK . But, it uses out of context, edited  sound bites as if they were evidence which leads to bad history. That is too bad.

Yes, Sanders said positive things about the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in their first period when they  overthrew the U.S. backed Somoza dictatorship. They then established a mixed economy (not socialist) and  U.S. citizens joined them to teach  poor children to read and to write. 

So did I.

Later the Sandinistas were defeated after a brutal war with the U.S. financed Contra rebels with arms and training acquired illegally from Iran.  They lost an election and left power.

To use the out of context phrases selected to imply a conspiracy is the  kind of phony reporting found in the Republican media machine,  or the National Enquirer, not in responsible news papers.

The Bee editorial uses a similar out of context about Sanders support for Cuba.

Here is what he actually said,

“What that was about was saying that the United States was wrong to try to invade Cuba, that the United States was wrong trying to support people to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, that the United States was wrong trying to overthrow in 1954 the democratically elected government of Guatemala," Sanders said. There is video of him speaking highly of both Castro and Daniel Ortega's Sandinista movement in Nicaragua, where Sanders traveled in 1985.

BuzzFeed News posted the video, which originally aired on Channel 17/Town Meeting Television, in June 2015. Sanders remarked that people "forgot that [Castro] educated their kids, gave their kids healthcare, totally transformed the society.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/bernie-sanders-1985-praise-of-fidel-castro-sandinistas-220550#ixzz47p9zIPXI

When you write about things, get a writer who is informed on the issues and provide contexts not sound bites.

A positive note:  This episode reveals that the Sacramento Bee editorial board uses the same slipshod misrepresentations of facts when reporting on Sanders as they have often been criticized for using in writing about teachers and teaching.  At least they are consistent. 

I tried some 14 times to post a 150 word edited version of this post as a letter to the Bee.  Their computer program refuses to recognize my email address. This has often happened in the past.  In this case it is the computer program- not the editors.