November 23, 2009

Anatomy of Minneapolis Star-Tribune's partisan hit piece on Glenn Beck radio advertiser

So you're a reporter at a far-left newspaper and you get a call from a buddy that just happens to work for a far-left advocacy group who also just so happens to have a dossier with some damaging information on a new advertiser for one of the far-left's most hated villains - conservative talk radio. What do you do?

Baird Helgeson (baird.helgeson@startribune.com) of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune appears to provide one answer to that question. He authored a partisan hit piece published last week targeting Solutions From Science, a company who recently began advertising on Glenn Beck's radio program. Helgeson's article, "Sowing the seeds of survivalism on talk radio," attacks the $149 vegetable and fruit seed package sold by Solutions From Science as "crazy, off-the-grid suvivalism". He makes it clear that his attention to Solutions From Science is because their "ads have been airing on KTLK's morning Glenn Beck show."

The plot thickens. It seems that Helgeson was not acting purely in the public interest in targeting Solutions for Science, as the information about the company in his Star-Tribune article is nearly identical to a dossier compiled by a Democratic Party opposition research firm targeting Glenn Beck advertisers and currently being circulated by a Soros-funded liberal media advocacy group (go ahead, take a guess). And it also seems that several of these dossiers on Glenn Beck advertisers are making the rounds on various "journo-lists".

I emailed Helgeson Saturday afternoon asking him directly if he had been provided the information on Solutions for Science from outside sources and if he failed to identify those sources in his article. I also asked if that was indeed the case, were his editors aware he was using partisan opposition research material without attribution. Helgeson has thus far failed to reply to my inquiry.

The timing of Helgeson's hit piece is also peculiar in that his article appeared just two days after Bill Heid, the owner of Solutions From Science, appeared in several news reports as the chief opponent on a plan to relocate Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists from GITMO to a mostly-empty prison in Thomson, Illinois less than a mile away from the offices of Solutions From Science, the largest business in Thomson.

Heid told one news station:

This prison deal would be a financial boon to me personally and to Thomson in general, but we can't just look at this from a purely economic perspective. I don't have any concerns about someone escaping from the prison, but what I do worry about is my granddaughter's elementary school getting taken over by friends of those terrorists hoping to get them freed. Do we want to risk making Thomson, Illinois synonymous with Beslan just so we can get some temporary financial benefit?

No doubt the timing of Helgeson's hit piece targeting Heid and his company, and Heid's statements opposing the Obama administration's proposal to establish GITMO North in his own hometown was purely coincidental.

What isn't coincidental, however, is the very different treatment the Star-Tribune recently afforded another individual pushing the exact same "crazy, off-the-grid survivalism" that Helgeson claims Heid and his company advocates. Check out who I'm talking about below the fold:

That's right, just a few weeks ago the idea of growing your own garden was a wonderful idea to the Star-Tribune, which published a glowing AP article, "Michelle Obama, DC schoolchildren help with 2nd major harvest of White House garden" on October 29th. In my email to Helgeson, I pointedly asked:

Would you also characterize the First Lady of the United States as "sowing the seeds of survivalism"? The last sentence of the article - again, printed by your paper in the last month - quotes the First Lady as saying that "it cost about $180 to prepare the soil and plant the seeds and seedlings", and yet Solutions From Science sells their seeds for only $149. Is the First Lady also "antagonizing anxieties for profit"?

Again, Helgeson has thus far failed to respond to my email inquiry.

That there is collusion between reporters at Leftist rags like the Star-Tribune and Democratic political operatives is nothing new. The "mainstream" media has always been the handmaiden to the far Left agenda. But the attacks against advertisers on talk radio - print media's largest competitor for advertisers - seems little more than a brazen attempt to maintain a leftist media monopoly. Any bets that Baird Helgeson is a supporter of the "Fairness Doctrine"?