What exactly is going on at the Missoulian?

We've reported before on bizarrely slanted articles, usually written by Perry Backus, in the Missoula, Montana Daily Missoulian.

Before Backus had the environmental beat, Sherry Devlin had it. Devlin's reporting was straightforward and mind-numbingly unimaginative. She never got deeper in an issue than a U.S.D.A. Forest Service press release would let her. But she could generally be counted on to stick a sentence in at the end from a local mainstream enviro.

Perry Backus's writing isn't like that. Backus is much more clever at presenting what has the vague look about it of balanced reporting, but leaves any normal reader pretty clearly convinced that the timber industry has nothing but our best interests in mind and anyone who says otherwise is a childish fool.

Now Matthew Koehler of WildWest is finally getting his licks in. He patiently lists the charges against the Missoulian in this article in Counterpunch.

He also makes the point in the slightly less edited version of the Counterpunch article that a great deal of major forest policy has come out of Missoula, something I knew but never really thought about in conjunction with how incalculably awful the Missoulian's reporting on public lands issues is.

--Zadig