As readers of SHS know, I am pretty disgusted with the KC Star and its political reporter Kit Wagar, based on my belief that the paper in general, and Wagar in specific, are biased in their reporting of the great stem cell debate in Missouri.
Further fuel to this particular fire can be seen in the reporting of Mr. Wagar in his ubiquitous use of the pro-cloning/ESCR advocacy term “early stem cells.” The term was invented by Missouri’s Amendment 2 proponents as a euphemism to keep from having to use the scientifically accurate and descriptive term “embryonic stem cell.”
The media should be immune to such word engineering. Alas, the Kansas City Star and Wagar have long utilized the term in their supposedly objective stories about the debate—a clear indication of bias in reporting. How biased was just made clear to me by a correspondent. It seems that the KC Star and Mr. Wagar are about the only media using the scientifically inaccurate term “early stem cells.” My correspondent wrote:
Wesley, see if this works the same for you and then go after the KC Star.I tried it and got the same result. The answer to my correspondent’s query can only be that Mr. Wagar has an agenda and he lets it seep into his reporting.
Go to www.google.com and click on News at the top and put “early stem cell” into search area. Almost all the articles in the first two pages (and probably in many more pages) are from the KC Star.I want you to do it there to make sure the search engine isn’t pulling up the Star more because I live around it. (They can do that nowadays).
But I think it will pull up the same everywhere since these are not sponsored links. Anyway, if you click on any of the Star articles most are written by Mr. Kit Wagar.
If “early stem cell” is not an unbiased term they why is it mostly used by one reporter for one paper whose publisher sits on the local chamber of commerce with some of the top folks at Stowers?
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