It’s not unusual for me to have the TV turned on when I’m working around the house and when the news comes on, it’s like liberal bias dressed up as white noise.  But there was one story last Friday that really caught my ear because the editorializing was even worse than the white noise I usually hear on the news. The story was from Brian Ross of ABC News reporting on a jet engine for a new fighter jet called the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

JSF-Flying2

Normally a subject like this would be far from my usual portfolio of junk science but I have been hearing a ton of ads about this on Washington, D.C., radio lately. And since I have family members that work in defense, my curiosity was piqued and I started poking around.

Let me set this up very quickly.  The Ross piece focused on what amounts to a fight between a couple of different corporations that each want to produce the engines for this new fighter jet.  The Pentagon seems happy with one particular engine – made by Pratt & Whitney – while there’s pretty strong sentiment in Congress to have two vendors for this engine, the second being a joint effort between General Electric and Rolls Royce.

I visited the ABC News website to check out the Ross piece in full and was immediately struck by the headline for the video package:

Pentagon Chokes on Pork

Aside from the gross imagery evoked by the headline, the sheer audacity of this naked editorializing really caught my attention.  Since when does ABC News get to decide what is and isn’t pork, not to mention the whole choking thing?  Within seconds of beginning to watch the story, the editorializing increased: (more…)