The non-fiction bestseller of this past summer was Ann Coulter’s Slander, an eye-opening study of what she considers the media’s liberal bias.

She contends that news sources such as The New York Times and The Washington Post habitually pass off biased, left-wing fabrications as objective journalism.

For instance, The New York Times has not endorsed a Republican presidential candidate in the past thirty years and 89 percent of Washington reporters voted for Clinton in his first election.

But Loyola students don’t need to look further than The Maroon to see what I’m talking about.

Two weeks ago I wrote an article in defense of the death penalty.

Naturally, I expected a rebuttal from some involved party.

I was anticipating a letter to the editor or a guest column spot.

But before I saw anything of that sort, I found the opposing side’s opinion in a news story on the Moratorium Campaign.

The first few paragraphs are great. They outline what the organization is, what it is working for, and a few quotes from the group’s leaders.

However, when the story continues on the second page, things go wrong. The article quickly diverges from a report on the Moratorium Campaign into an attack on the death penalty.

The writer, David Bianco, throws journalistic integrity out the window and barrages the reader with a series of questionable statistics.

Briefly, the United States does not execute the mentally challenged because the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in Atkins v. Georgia. The Columbia Law School Study by James Liebman was repudiated by several states, including Florida, who systematically went through and labeled the study flawed.

Let me state for the record that I am not opposed to the Moratorium Campaign.

Yes, I think the participants are wrong, but I respect their dedication and activism.

They have built an impressive organization here at Loyola.

Nor is this an attack on David Bianco, who, as a former member of the Moratorium Campaign in Illinois, is naturally going to advance his belief.

This column is directed at The Maroon, which allowed the article to be published as anything other than an editorial.

After all, that’s the only place that story should have been.

For my column, my statistics were scrutinized, although they came directly from the Department of Justice.

I only can wonder if Bianco’s use of facts from the Death Penalty Information Center were looked into at all.

I quoted a neutral third party, but Bianco uses a group with an inclination towards abolishment.

Whereas I only used a few numbers, Bianco goes on for paragraphs with these questionable statistics.

And remember, mine was the one on the opinion page.

If The Maroon is trying to emulate a big time newspaper by being biased, they are doing a simply stellar job.

Consider two weeks ago: the headline was “Protesting the War in Iraq.” Somehow this was deemed more newsworthy than a tropical storm and a hurricane hitting Louisiana.

The role of journalism is to make people question. But often we must question journalism itself.

This is true especially when stories pass themselves off as objective.

Don’t take anything at face value, but look at all media critically.

Especially The Maroon.