READER'S POST #3 - "Headlining"... How the Mainstream Media Sways Opinions

By: 32slim32

I was reading on MSNBC.com this morning and came across this headline:

“Farmers Seeking High Profits Add Acreage, Harvest 'Rottenest' Land”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45833101/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/#.Tv9h3lZj6So

I chuckled as I clicked on the story wondering what the “catch” was. What was the “rottenest land”? Was it nuclear wasteland? As the story came up, I noticed it was actually a New York Times story. The NYT ran a headline of:

"As Crop Prices Soar, IowaFarms Add Acreage,"

What a difference in headlines for the same exact story.

“The rottenest piece of land there is,” said Mick Elbert, a local car dealer who served on the golf association board. “All it is good for is a golf course. That’s why we built it there.”

I was kind of expecting to hear from maybe an agronomist, or a pedologist, or even maybe a horticulturist. Leave it to the New York Times to go to an expert on the subject like a used car dealer. Talk about thinking outside of the box. Plus he can break it down in to simpler to understand terms like “rottenest piece of land there is”.  Yeah, yeah, I saw he served on the golf association board, but it still doesn’t qualify him as an expert.

The third paragraph of the story states:

“But this year, over a chorus of objections, the greens and fairways were plowed under. The course had been losing money, and crop prices had been breaking records, so the new owner did the type of quick calculation that is quietly reshaping the region and determined that it was more valuable as farmland. The first harvest took place this fall.”

Why would there be a chorus of objections? If the owner decides that today it’s a golf course, next year a corn field and in 5 years it is a cow pasture, whose business is it? What say do they have in the matter?

The best part of the paragraph is the last sentence. “The first harvest took place this fall”. What? I thought you said in the first paragraph, “the rocky soil was so poor, the saying went, that you couldn’t raise hell there with a fifth of whiskey”. Maybe the “expert” (car dealer) may have exaggerated his claim a little bit about the “rottenest piece of land”.

Anyway, the author goes on to complain about a long list of things like, farmers taking down old barns to squeeze in a few more rows of crops (Oh my gawd…..the horror), plowing up areas that used to graze cattle (again, the horror and how dare they get rid of unprofitable cattle and plant profit making corn), plowing up land that used to be in conservation (so reducing a couple of Billion dollars in subsidies to NOT grow crops is a bad thing?) and that “they are returning crops to places that had been reserved for ostensibly more lucrative purposes like strip malls, housing developments or, in several cases, struggling small-town golf courses.” Notice it is places that had been RESERVED for. It’s not as if we tore down strip malls to plant corn. I would think the main reason the housing developments and strip malls are not going up may have something to do with, like, say, the economy.

The story also mentions a significant increase in the amount of dormant land going back into production and that there is a debate whether it should be a source of concern.  Yes it seems any time there is progress or profit there will always be liberals there to oppose and hinder it every way they can.  What’s next, Occupy Corn Fields?

Here is another line from the story that amuses me, “While working one overgrown parcel for a neighbor, Mr. Coddington discovered a rusting horse-drawn plow buried beneath a foot of earth, a find that suggested the land had not been farmed in a century.” Why would it suggest to them the land had not been farmed in a century? That is a very stupid assumption. For instance, my father was born in 1947, grew up on a farm and plowed with mules. Just because the tractor may have been around for 100 years (I’m guessing that is what their assumption is based on), doesn’t mean that no one used horses and plows or mules and plows since their (tractors) invention.

It doesn’t appear to me that the article actually had a point. It seems more like just a way to get liberals worked up into a tizzy. You know, just combine the word profit with one persons speculation that we are destroying the earth and you get them foaming at the mouth.

This article really just goes to show how you can NEVER make a liberal happy. For instance the main reason for the high demand and record profits for corn is ethanol, a liberal idea to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. They cry and moan about farm subsidies then when farmers quit taking the subsidy to NOT farm their land and start farming that upsets them too. However, it appears the main thing that just rubs them raw is that a farmer could actually turn a profit.


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