On page 2 of today's Wheeling Intelligencer, our local “newspaper” prints a little over half of an AP story that documents the feud between President Trump and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. Comparing today's printed article with the Associated Press original, I found that the Intelligencer edited out a sentence explaining the president's motivation and then dropped the section of the story that explained Manchin’s impeachment vote.

Here’s the sentence dropped from the Intelligencer's version (it’s in bold):

In a subsequent tweet, Trump said Manchin was “just a puppet” for the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate.

“That’s all he is!" Trump tweeted.

The president's comments were seen as a move to weaken the senator's standing in West Virginia, where Trump won nearly 70% of the vote in the 2016 election.

On Saturday night, Manchin fired back via Twitter . . .

I did a web search of the AP’s report and then checked the first half-dozen news sources that carried the story -- all included that sentence. On the other hand, I received no results when searching for the Intelligencer’s version. This was not surprising -- the story was not on their web page (as of 10 AM) which meant that the Intelligencer’s printed version of the AP story would not appear in any search engine’s results. My conclusion is that this was a deliberate deletion by the Intelligencer.

Also lost for local readers are these two AP paragraphs later in its report which further explains Manchin's vote:

In announcing his decision on the impeachment vote Wednesday, Manchin said the evidence presented by House managers clearly supported the charges brought against the president.

“I take no pleasure in these votes and am saddened this is the legacy we leave our children and grandchildren," Manchin said. “I have always wanted this president, and every president, to succeed, but I deeply love our country and must do what I think is best for the nation.”

The Intelligencer has deleted a sentence about Trump's likely motivation for attacking Manchin and then later dropped Manchin's explanation for his vote to impeach. Hey, aren’t we due for another one of those Ogden editorials that brags about how fair and balanced they are and how they show no favoritism to any candidate or party?