| Yesterday, the New York Times had a story on the 20th congressional district race. The story was entitled, "Ire at Wall St. Bonuses Is Now Factor in House Race."
If you read the piece, which is a two-page story, you would get the feeling that the Times wasn't so high on Democratic candidate Scott Murphy. Even though the title of the article suggests something more broad (like voters being concerned about the bonuses AIG received) it is actually more specific than that. The target was Murphy and how his support of the stimulus package means that he supported the bonuses being handed out to AIG executives.
Recently, Irene Jay Liu of the Albany Times-Union termed this line of attack a "stretch." That's exactly what it is. The stimulus package covers a lot of ground and at $789 billion, there are a lot of things in there. Murphy might not support all of it, but he supports the goal: In order to stimulate the economy, we need to invest in our country.
However, one of the most prominent newspapers in the country didn't consider this a stretch. In fact, they essentially helped Tedisco further this talking point. There are a couple of things about this story that should bother the average reader and media critic alike:
- There isn't a single direct quote from Scott Murphy or his campaign and there are only a few select quotes from the debate on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Tedisco has at least two long quotes in the piece from the debate on Tuesday.
- The author of the piece, David Halbfinger, wrote the piece asserting that the AIG bonus issue is the major story in the race's final days leading up to Tuesday's special election. While AIG bonuses might be something on everyone's mind (they have certainly upset us all), to try and say that Murphy's support of the stimulus package means he supports the AIG bonuses is absurd. As others have said in recent days, it is a stretch.
- There is only one passing mention (that you could easily miss if you read the article fast enough) to Tedisco's refusal to take a position on the stimulus package. That is not a stretch, yet the article seems to downplay its significance.
- And here's the important one: There is not one mention of Tedisco's financial disclosure, which includes AIG under the "assets and unearned income" section. That asset is worth between $1 and $15,000, but apparently it wasn't worth inserting into a story about, well, AIG and its impact on the 20th district race.
While we are supporting Scott Murphy in this race, we make our bias known. This is a progressive blog that supports Democratic candidates. We aren't a newspaper with "ethics," although we are a blog with ethics.
There are different standards for the New York Times. They aren't supposed to write pro-Murphy pieces and they aren't supposed to write pro-Tedisco pieces. But that's exactly what they did here. They wrote a piece that is very anti-Murphy and puts Tedisco on higher ground, minimizing his lack of fortitude to take a position on the stimulus package and turning a Republican talking point into a news story. Not once do they directly quote anyone. All the quotes are from Tuesday's debate, except for one quote from one Murphy volunteer which the author of the piece tried to use as justification for the article.
Again, it's a stretch. A big stretch.
If you want to learn about Scott Murphy and what he will do for the 20th congressional district, go to his Scott Murphy or read the many posts written here and even read some of the great articles written by the Times-Union, who I think has covered the race fairly and accurately.
We need a fair fight. We don't need the media picking our candidates and picking the winners for us. |
