Hit pieces

When you see, "In private, many officials ..." in a piece on the front page of the LAT you know you're not reading the news but the reporter's opinion represented as news -- what you might call a hit piece. Invariably, such a piece aims to make the Bush administration, a Republican presidential candidate or Republicans generally look bad. Such journalism once was called yellow journalism. Whatever you call it, it isn't journalism but politics disguised as journalism. Among newspapers, the LAT is one of the worst offenders.