LOS ANGELES (APUPI) June 20, 2004

Standing in front of the Los Angeles Times building on Spring Street and surrounded by aides, President Bush put forth a new and long-overdue proposal today, to the cheers of thousands of long-suffering readers of that paper, to start to repair the tragic situation with the American journalism system. He called it "No Reporter Left Behind."

"For too many years have we seen the sad evidence accumulating that our nation’s media outlets and journalism schools simply aren’t achieving what they must for our nation to maintain its first-place ranking in freedom of speech and a properly informed public," he declared. "Compared to journalists of a few decades ago, today’s reporters show an increasing inability to comprehend simple English or basic statistics, to exercise logic, or to even recognize that they’re Americans."

"Now, many accuse the media of bias against my administration, but I don’t believe that. I’m here to change the tone in Washington and the nation, and I refuse to engage in such accusations. I’m sure that journalists are well meaning. As a compassionate conservative, it’s clear to me that they simply haven’t been given the education and training that they so desperately need,
ain’t that the truth!
and we need to help them and their hardworking editors"...

Others, though, were skeptical. "It’s not a problem that can be solved by just throwing money at it," said one editor. Another woman in attendance, a professor at the USC School of Journalism, expressed concern that budding reporters would be "taught to the test," and unable to properly focus on critical areas such as Lacanian metacontexts of transgressive gender oppression.

No reporters from the LA Times seemed to be present, having all been assigned to dig up fresh dirt on Governor Schwarzenegger. In response to a question from the LA Daily News as to whether he thought that this seeming attack on California’s largest newspaper might cause them to further increase their support for Senator Kerry and damage his electoral prospects in the fall, the president replied, "I don’t know. You might want to ask Governor Davis about that."