1 January—To start the new year as usual, it would appear that the notoriously nonfeasant editors at the Hearst RepublicanAmerican are doing their best to emulate sleepy Donald Trump and his conservative-racist lackeys. Monitor readers may recall that late last month we reported an op-ed column by Andrew Fowler that was bylined and illustrated in the HRA with a picture of Christine Flowers, the error being “clarified,” rather than corrected, a couple of days later.

Well, on the “Opinion” page of Monday’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican there’s a column titled “JD Vance gets America’s creed and heritage right.” The gist of the essay is unimportant. As usual. The byline and picture are of a Roz McCarthy, who evidently writes about education in another Hearst rag in a column called Chalk Talk. But we learn at the bottom of the JD Vance column that it was actually the work of a Daniel McCarthy, who is “the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.” (Ever hear of it?) No “clarification” in today’s HRA. Will there be one tomorrow? (Did Carole King write that?)

So on the “Local News” page of yesterday’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican is a story about yet another Waterbury murder. It must be noted, lest you gloss over it, that it was a gun-free murder. The headline and photo are below. It’s the caption to the photo that’s noteworthy. Normally—pretty nearly invariably, in fact—the positions of people in news photographs are stated in captions: Peter Poofter on the left, for instance, and Luigi Finklestone on the right.

But not in this photo. Why did the (ir)responsible editor or writer who slapdashed the caption omit the position in the photo of Kendren Barnes, the accused murderer? Are readers supposed to assume that the prime suspect, as it were, is the casually dressed guy in the middle of the picture who seems the least concerned? Or that the accused perp is the one not wearing a tie and jacket or uniform? Or simply that the felon is the person who’s not White?

The editorial in yesterday’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican is titled “Notable Quotables: Chronicles of Bias XXXVIII.” No idea where the XXXVIII came from. But the lead paragraph explains that the quotations were chosen by the Media Research Center, founded by L. Brent Bozell III and “dedicated to spotlighting bias in the news media.”

Right. No surprise, then, that the several notable quotables in the editorial—including “Worst Quote of the Year,” “Craziest Analysis Award,” and “Trashing Trump Award”—are all lifted from liberal media. It’s the Hearst RepublicanAmerican, after all, and Brent Bozell and his fellow bias-hounds have never but never in their nearly four-decade existence spotlighted any bias at all in conservative media.

Surely that must be because there is no bias in conservative media . . .