Hit job

OK, after about a month off, I'm back, happily employed in the news biz and working with a great bunch of people, a mix of old newspaper hands, web pros and others.

Time to get back to editing talk.

First up this morning is this headline:

Obama Is in the Jaws of Political Death: Can He Survive?

Let me see. His poll numbers are down but not as low as Ronald Reagan's at this point. The House may indeed turn over to Republican control. Maybe even the Senate. Political death?

Then there's the story. Seriously, what reporter regularly refers to "elites" as if he were in a political science class?  Then this:

The misery afflicting the country has no political affiliation. Listen to the voices from this striking TV ad for Rob Portman, the Republican former Congressman and Bush budget director who is running for Senate from Ohio. One woman at a Dayton career fair says starkly, "There are no jobs." A man announces plaintively and with obvious frustration, "I've been looking for a job now for 13 months." Events like this job fair are becoming the grim iconic gatherings of our time, the breadlines for the Obama years.  

This "has no political affiliation" but then consists of quotes from a Republican commercial??

There may well be a good story to be done that assesses the competence of the Obama administration. This isn't it.
No editor should have let this story see the light of day.

Swing and a Miss

Aside from reaching a conclusion not backed up by the story, I find this AP-Yahoo headline biased. And for some reason, you can cut and paste the text of the story but not the headline.


Democrat's Vision Will Collide With Reality


WASHINGTON – Barack Obama is accepting the Democratic nomination Thursday night with a lofty vision for the nation's future that is far easier to articulate than to accomplish.

The next occupant of the White House will inherit a half-trillion-dollar budget deficit that will severely crimp any plans for spending on new programs, as well as the messy endgame of the war in Iraq and growing energy and health-care challenges. A look at Obama's promises and the realities he would confront:

THE ECONOMY AND DEFICITS

The promise: Obama has pledged to attack the weak economy with another stimulus plan to follow the $168 billion package of tax rebates for individuals and tax breaks for businesses that Congress passed last February. Obama's stimulus would include tax rebates, aid to state and local governments and increased spending for infrastructure projects. He would also increase spending in other areas such as alternative energy programs.

The problem: Obama's spending plans and middle-class tax relief will collide with the hard reality of exploding budget deficits. The Congressional Budget Office projects this year's deficit will hit $400 billion, driven higher by the weak economy and the stimulus program Congress has already passed. And the Bush administration is forecasting that next year's imbalance will hit an all-time high of $482 billion. Deficits will remain high because of the costs of extending the Bush tax cuts and growing demands on big government benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare as the baby boom generation retires.

and so on...

The Coverage

The Project for Excellence in Journalism looks at the huge disparity in political coverage. Glad we're out of the horse race business this year.

Clinton is the Big Winner Last Week in the Race for Coverage
Senator Hillary Clinton’s poll-defying Democratic primary victory in New Hampshire helped make her the leading campaign newsmaker last week, but the resurrection in the Granite State of John McCain’s once-dead campaign did not translate into similar largesse of media attention, according to a new study of media campaign coverage.
Meanwhile, the meaning of third place was also fungible last week. Mike Huckabee, a distant third in the GOP race, got sizably more media attention than did John Edwards among the Democrats.
And New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is not running, got nearly as much coverage for showing up at a conference in Oklahoma as Rudolph Giuliani did for finishing fourth among Republicans.