This Day In Bush Stenography, Courtesy Of CNN
December 20, 2007 -- 5:43 PM EST // //
Okay. This is not complicated. Today President Bush held a press conference. He blasted the Dem-controlled Congress for adding billions in earmarks to the big spending bill that just passed. He scolded Dem Congressional leaders for this, hitting them for not doing enough to rein in this kind of spending. With me?
Here's what happened next. The Democrats responded to this. They pointed out that a recent study found that Democrats had actually slashed such spending by 25% from 2006, when the Repubs controlled Congress. They also pointed out that the study also concluded that the two earmark kings in the Senate are Republicans.
Naturally, if you were doing a story on the former (Bush's scolding of the Dems over earmarks), then you'd include the latter (the Dem response and the key context). Right?
Well, you would if you were the Associated Press or Bloomberg News. Both these news orgs included key elements of the Dem push-back in their stories.
But if you were CNN, you wouldn't do this. The network reported on Bush's attack on Dem leaders today, but its online piece, as well as a major on-air segment, failed to mention a word about the Dem response:
The Associated Press piece was actually quite good. It used the words "GOP Pork Projects" in its headline. It also pointed out -- gasp! -- that the fact that Repubs are criticizing earmarks while doing it themselves is "hypocritical." Every story on this stuff should look like this.
Yet CNN couldn't even bring itself to take the elementary step of including this key info and context about what the Repubs are really up to. Anyone relying on CNN here to learn about this issue would only know about Bush's attack on Dems and would come away with absolutely no clue as to what's really happening.
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