Kansas City Star Misrepresents Michael Moore Deliberately

Here are a couple of paragraphs from an email Michael Moore has sent to his mailing list. If you'd like to read the whole statement, and I do recommend it, go to his website.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

I think that's pretty self explanatory. But here's the part the Kansas City Star quoted in its business section Friday:

The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy.

The Star took it upon itself to editorialize against Michael Moore in what is supposed to be a news section of the paper. It was not on the editorial page. That sentence--out of context--makes it look as if Moore is celebrating the demise of General Motors, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

In my letter to the Star, which they have not run and probably won't, I pointed out that is the kind of "reporting" done by Fox "News." It's typical right wing Neocon Republican disinformation. In the past our local newspaper was staffed by professional journalists and something like that would never have been allowed. Today, it is just another corporate newspaper, doomed to failure as its out of town owners suck the lifeblood from it and readers abandon ship because it keeps getting worse in an attempt to save money and make bigger profits.