Virginian Pilot Distorts the News

As a resident of "Tidewater" - the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Portsmouth- Suffolk area of Virginia which item would you think is the most important to residents?

1. Seven people were shot - 4 fatally in Norfolk.
2. Virginia Beach businesses trash talk each other with signs
3. Student scores on standardized tests are up but lag pre-shutdown levels.
4. Shortage of organ donors - Blacks worst hit.
5. Relitigating the Mueller probe.

If you guessed that item #2 got the Front page headline and full-color picture treatment, you win.  Shootings and murders are now so common that the story isn't even about the violence.  It's about residents complaining that not enough is being done. Shootings are literally a daily occurrence in  Tidewater Virginia, many in broad daylight in business and residential areas.  

And then there's the headline on the abysmal state of public education.  Here's the headline on that story: SOL scores up in region  Here's the subhead: But results still lag behind levels from before pandemic.

Nowhere in the Virginian Pilot will you find an admission that closing the schools to in-person teaching has robbed an entire generation of students of an adequate education.  That's because the Virginian Pilot was at the forefront of those who demanded schools should be closed.  If you were for in-person teaching you were a monster who wanted to kill students, teachers ... and grandma.  

Did Donald Trump really collude with Putin to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton?  That's the default position of the Virginian Pilot.  Despite the Mueller probe's lack of evidence that Trump hired prostitutes to pee in the bed that Obama slept in, the Virginian Pilot is happy to give conspiracy theorists the ammunition to feed their fantasies.  To the editors, this is obviously a more important story than the daily massacre of residents relegated to the back pages.   

And here is the most important thing that readers of the Virginian Pilot should be interested in:

Signs say: Game on!

More than 75 Virginia Beach businesses battle it out in friendly war of words on marquees

Nick Grossner, assistant manager of Cinema Cafe in Pembroke, replaces the theater’s sign Thursday as part of the “sign war” waged by some in the area. Haygood Skating Center helped launch the “sign war” action in Virginia Beach. Stephen M. Katz/staff photos