Watch the clip below from Friday’s excellent OPB show, Think Out Loud. It features Willamette Week editor Mark Zusman and Oregonian editorial and commentary editor Erik Lukens discussing the Columbia River Crossing.
For context, the Willamette Week has been dogging this project for a log time and has done more than any other media outlet to raise questions about it. Meanwhile, The Oregonian Editorial Board has written 38 glowingly positive articles about the CRC, many of them simply parroting talking points put out by ODOT and CRC staff.
Watch The O’s Lukens respond to a question about the shaky tolling projections (which he admits are problematic) and then listen how he goes right into the CRC talking points. It sure is an amazing willingness to endorse a project with extremely shaky financial from a paper with a very conservative editorial board:
After this clip, Zusman went on to share that his paper is working on a story about how Governor Kitzhaber — one of the project’s biggest cheerleaders — privately despises the project. I’m really looking forward to reading more about that.
Is the full video available? Found the MP3 at the link, but don’t see the video.