At some point, reality doesn’t need anymore evidence, and anybody who doesn’t like it has to figure out what to do about it.  One such reality (proven long ago, to my satisfaction) is that the Providence Journal is a newspaper written for the progressive Democrat audience.  Yes, there’s a journalistic drive to present some form of opposing arguments, but that’s the paper’s target audience.

The objects of the reporters’ suspicion are not those who have the power to take away your money, restrict your freedoms, and even lock you up at gunpoint.  Rather, the villains are those who argue on behalf of your freedoms.

To expect its reporters to cover issues of ideological concern as if conservatives might be right would be to expect PolitiFactRI to choose a Pants on Fire statement to check from among far-left U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s inflammatory screeds against people who are ostensibly his constituents.

PolitiFactRI is much more tuned to digging into statements such as one made by RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity CEO Mike Stenhouse on the Dan Yorke Show.  Having followed the progression of RhodeMap RI for some years, with a substantial degree of related research, Stenhouse offered Yorke his “interpretation” and “belief” about the ideological position of the federal Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  Alerted that the PolitiFact kangaroo court was in session on his comment, he sent a long list of evidence that had helped to lead him to that interpretation and belief.

PolitiFact reporter Katie Mulvaney skimmed the evidence and contacted a few people who could be trusted to disagree with Stenhouse’s interpretation (professionals in the central planning industry), and PolitiFact presumed to rule his interpretation and belief false.  That’s laughable by any non-partisan, non-ideological standard for public discourse.  But the Providence Journal dominates the local news market, so there you go.

Or take Kate Bramson’s news story about the meeting at which the state Planning Council approved RhodeMap.  She quotes Stenhouse as warning that RhodeMap eases the way for eminent domain takings of private property.  Bramson’s follow-up sentence isn’t so much an addition of context as it is a debating point from somebody on the pro-government side: “The term ’eminent domain,’ in which governments may seize private property for broad economic purposes, appears nowhere in the plan.”

Well, sure.  Neither does the term “freedom” or “property rights.”  Bramson appears entirely ignorant of the foundation for Stenhouse’s understanding of RhodeMap, including the fact that his statement on eminent domain is absolutely true.

So how should we proceed?  The problem, ultimately, is not that the Providence Journal is biased.  It’s that there’s no alternative.  Accepting reality, those who have been marked by the news department as the enemy should stop responding to the paper (and especially PolitiFact) as if it’s a neutral arbiter.