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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2006-11-03

Media Lies and MisRepresentations

Today's is all about the Kerry flap.

Front page of the Denver Post headline leads to this story:

Words spur pointing of 5th District fingers

Sen. John Kerry's remarks about Iraq took center stage Wednesday in Colorado's 5th Congressional District race.

Republican Doug Lamborn, a state legislator for 12 years, characterized Kerry's comments as "outrageous" and "insulting" and challenged Democrat Jay Fawcett to disavow himself of Kerry's support.

"If my opponent values our troops, he'll immediately renounce his endorsement from John Kerry, who has been so insulting to them," Lamborn said. "Our district has far too many veterans and active duty personnel for Fawcett to campaign with someone as extreme as John Kerry."

In and of itself, this is just fine. In fact, given the number of military installations in that district, one would expect commentary from this particular race.

The problem here is threefold, as I see it:

1. After a perfunctory acknowledgement that Fawcett said Kerry should apologize, the remaining bulk of the article was devoted to a flap over a campaign ad and a maybe/maybe not FEC investigation. Not exactly staying on topic.

2. There is, nowhere, any attempt to get the opinion of a member of the military. Even Fawcett, a retired Air Force officer, only speaks through a spokesperson. Again, in a district fairly brimming with military personnel, they make no attempt to get an opinion.

3. This is the only article about the effect on a local race, and they choose to highlight one of the relatively non-competitive races. How about seeking a comment from the O'Donnell/Perlmutter race? There's a military installation in this district, and Rick O'Donnell came out early and strong calling on Ed Perlmutter to denounce Kerry's comment--where's Ed on this one? His website is completely silent, though Sen. John Kerry is still listed first among all public figures endorsing him.

The real question isn't "where's Ed;" the real question is "where's the Denver Post?"
Posted by: Michael / 11/03/2006 12:12:00 AM

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