The Chicago Tribune, which owns a number of newspapers — including the Los Angeles Times — has begun its purge of reporters and columnists so that it can bring only the news that fits its “free market” and generally right wing corporate viewpoint.

FAIR reported last month that “Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer was fired on November 11 after nearly 30 years at the paper, the last 13 as one of its most progressive political columnists.

“In a published statement announcing op-ed page changes (11/10/05), the Times insisted that it is dedicated to “provid[ing] readers with a wide range of voices and perspectives,” but in dumping Scheer, the paper has gotten rid of one of the few prominent progressive columnists in the country.”

Scheer was one of the few mainstream reporters who exposed the phony build up claims about Iraq WMDs by the Bush administration. Instead of praising him for being right when almost everyone else in the corporate media was wrong, the Tribune fired him.

The shift to the right in Los Angeles will be nothing surprising to the Tribune’s reluctant Chicago readers. Every month, the Tribune serves up its editorial positions from the beginning of its page one “news” stories. At Substance, we call those reports “Artitorials” — an editorial masquerading as a news story.

One way to tell an artitorial from an attempt to actually gather and report the news is the sources quoted. In a recent page one public school bashing artitorial on charter schools, for example, the Tribune’s Stephanie Branchero overquotes charter school proponents, charicatures charter school opponents, and leaves out many of the most important facts (some well known to the Tribune) about Illinois charters (90 percent of which are in Chicago). Facts missing include the fact that even in charter-loving CPS, charter schools have been closed for corruption and incompetence at a rate that would make even Mayor Daley’s Hired Truck staffers blush.

A good way to tell an artotiral is to know who the main proponents of a particular slant on the news are. In an artitorial, they are all quoted at length, while the other side is ignored. When talking about Illinois charters, for example, the Tribune used to quote CPS’s Greg Richmond, but never his critics. Richmond once served up a bogus “study” claiming Chicago charters “outperformed” neighborhood schools, literally at the request of the Tribune. The Tribune quickly recycled the Richmond “study” into its news and editorial columns.