Want to know what makes my head spin? Highly biased media. The article “Republican Hypocrisy” was grossly biased and extremely misleading. The title in and of itself shows bias by implying that only Republicans are hypocrites (both political parties are most definitely hypocritical). The bias continues far past the title as the article takes Republicans’ quotes out of context, without even making an attempt to explain the circumstances surrounding them. Rep. Don Young quoted that he had “won a victory for the Alaska Native contracting program and other Alaska small business owners last night in H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” Publishing it like that makes it appear that he supported the act yet hypocritically voted against it simply to follow party lines. But if you look at the rest of his press release and his involvement with the bill (which many people probably don’t take the time to do), you would see that the “victory” he was referring to was his negotiation with both parties to remove a provision that would make it more difficult for minority businesses to win contracts. He has every right to brag about how he improved the bill, even if he didn’t support the bill in its entirety. Same goes for Rep. John Mica’s quote saying, “I applaud President Obama’s recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America’s future.” Just because he supported that one part of the bill doesn’t mean that he should vote for the $750+ billion worth of provisions that he didn’t endorse. These politicians are simply looking on the bright side of a bill which they neither liked nor endorsed. This isn’t hypocrisy, it’s Republicans taking a step, small as it may be, toward bipartisanship by praising the provisions they support. However, rather than looking at this as a positive, this article skewed the truth, as so much of the media does, to make Republicans look bad.

Ben Murphy

Freshman

Aerospace Engineering