WEDNESDAY'S LETTERS: McCain Says Journos 'Fair,' Gun Control, Yiddish Press Influence on Hispanic Press?

By: E&P Staff In today's letters, readers respond to Howard Kurtz' recent quote from Senator John McCain that 99.9% of journalists are "fair," and Kudos for Chuck Klein.

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McCain Says Most Journalists 'Fair'

Either Kurtz is not telling the truth or McCain is an idiot.

Aaron Greenwood



What does one expect McCain to say about the bias of the Press Corps when speaking to the very clique of media sychophants who cling to his every word while following him around with monogrammed knee pads patiently enthusiastically awaiting the privelege of turning themselves into a propaganda condom in his service against his own party in order to boost their own? Did you really expect him to call them biased? Puh-Lease.

If you really believe this unadulterated drivel about an unbiased press corps, consider the source! I really need more customers like the Main Stream Media. ...

Mike Villano



What did you expect a presidential candidate to say? That 99% of journalists are unfair?

Fred Hollingsworth
Greenville, S.C.

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Listen to Klein About Guns

Thank goodness! I certainly hope the journalists (and j-schools) take Chuck Klein's article to heart. From personal experience I know that
terminology vis-a-vis firearms is seriously short-changed by many, if not most, journalists. I've tried to read articles that were rendered nonsensical because of mis-use of terms, and some that were so fractured as to be incomprehensible.

Kudos to Mr. Klein; now if reporters will just take it to heart...

Doug Spittler
Kalama, Wash.

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The Model of the Yiddish Press

Loved [Mark Fitzgerald's] piece on the connection between the Yiddish press then and the Spanish press now. The parallel also holds true for broadcasting: The Forward was one of several Yiddish papers to have founded radio stations. (writer Dan Baum called me about this when he did his New Yorker piece on contemporary LA Latino radio host Renan Coello last October.) The other difference was that with the ubiquity of the melting pot and no value placed on Yiddish retention, editors like Cahan actively encouraged his readers to leave Yiddish behind something, I suspect, that might not be handled as aggressively in the contemporary Latino press.

Hank Sapoznik