WGN's Dean Richards Blasts Tribune's Anti-Palin Bias

WGN's Dean Richards

If there were any lingering doubt as to the depths to which the Chicago Tribune has sunk in its bias against ideas and personalities conservative, it was put to rest this morning by the Tribune Corporation's own Dean Richards.

On his Sunday morning WGN radio arts show, Richards excoriated the Tribune editorial scribes for bastardizing his Sunday Tribune Arts column with an overtly misleading and what he termed "mean spirited" anti-Palin headline.

Richards conducted an interview with four time Oscar nominee, Julianne Moore. In the print interview, he questioned her on her role in the new comedy, "Crazy Stupid Love."

Julianne Moore

Four paragraphs later in the article, he questioned Moore regarding her portrayal of former vice-Presidential candidate, Sara Palin in the TV movie, "Game Change."

With this body of copy a Tribune headline writer came up with the headline for Dean's column, "Moore talks 'Crazy, Stupid, Love' and playing Sarah Palin."

On his radio broadcast, Richard's was uncharacteristically furious. "The headline completely misrepresented my article -- it was mean spirited and not the right thing to do," Richards said.

"You can see why people would say the Tribune is biased when they do things like that and some people will look only at the headline and think that Dean Richards is a biased cheap shot artist, " he said.

Richards said that he fired off an e-mail to Tribune editorial personnel asking for an explanation and asking for the name of the headline writer.

Sara Palin

He had not yet received an answer at the time of his Sunday morning broadcast.

"I am no fan of Sara Palin and people who know me know that, Dean Richards said. "But this was just not the right thing to do."

I'm eagerly waiting for the next liberal Tribune apologist to predictably summon up the ghost of Colonel McCormick and tell us that the Tribune editorially endorses lots of Republicans so it really is Chicago's right-wing paper.

Fact is the Chicago Tribune has become a dissembling left-wing rag. And now, even some of its few remaining intellectually honest employees are admitting as much.