Boycott the Sentinel: Over 500 Voices Opposing Alito Ignored

Despite the Santa Cruz Sentinel's editors protestations of attempts at fairness, their record is well-known to those in the community.

As of Wednesday, January 25th, the Santa Cruz Sentinel had published zero letters to the editor by those who opposed the Samuel Alito nomination. According to MoveOn,org statistics, members of the community have sent over 500 letters to the editor at the Sentinel in opposition to the nomination of right-wing extremist judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. As of Wednesday, the official nomination process had already begun. The Sentinel saw fit to publish two editorial statements on January 12th and January 17th, essentially favoring the nomination of Alito, yet printed nothing else to counter this position.

Why hasn't the Sentinel printed any letters of dissent, especially since they have certainly received them all by now? When Mike Rotkin was quoted in an article on Tuesday, his letter to the editor was published the very next day. Could it be that those at the helm of the corporate media empire who own the Sentinel are calling for a suppression of articles coming out against the Alito nomination? This can be effective by controlling the headlines of major news searches, such as Google and Yahoo, which tend to set up their news pages based on the frequency of keywords.

If the Sentinel has such little regard for Democrats, Independents, Progressives and anyone else who is coming out against the Alito nomination, then Santa Cruz County, which is overwhelming progressive, needs to cease funding the Sentinel in any way. This should translate to not only to canceling your subscriptions, but also by encouraging local businesses to take their advertising dollars elsewhere. After all, why would anyone want to advertise with a paper that alienates the majority of the population? Perhaps it won't stop their Republican propaganda or shut them down completely, but at the very least, it could cause them to take a loss in this market.

Here is the original article from www.sc4change.org
Nice work, Deirdre.

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532 letters to the editor. ZERO published.
Format for printing
Submitted by djardin on Wed, 01/25/2006 - 4:33pm.

Censorship
We have long known that the Santa Cruz Sentinel is run by folks with a Republican bent, and that they have a tendency to skew the news in favor of Republican positions.

But until now, we haven’t known the full extent of their editorial bias. One of the biases is in censoring letters to the editor. Since the hearings on Alito began, the Santa Cruz Sentinel has not published a single letter to the editor against the nomination.

According to MoveOn.org political action, MoveOn members ALONE sent 532 letters to the editor in Santa Cruz County, and 2,722 members signed the MoveOn.org petition against Alito. In all, actions were taken by 2,910 MoveOn members.

Yet the Sentinel HAS NOT PUBLISHED A SINGLE LETTER against the nomination written by their readers.

If you have written a letter to the Sentinel, please forward it to Deirdre Des Jardins, and/or post it on the website at our forum. You can get an account by registering at the link on the left sidebar.

You can also post your letter on the Sentinel
forum and at Santa Cruz Indymedia

Deirdre Des Jardins
Santa Cruz for Change