{"id":212,"date":"2009-08-05T11:03:20","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T15:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2009\/08\/05\/no-proof-but-post-story-makes-front-page\/"},"modified":"2009-08-05T11:03:20","modified_gmt":"2009-08-05T15:03:20","slug":"no-proof-but-post-story-makes-front-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2009\/08\/05\/no-proof-but-post-story-makes-front-page\/","title":{"rendered":"No Proof, But Post Story Makes Front Page"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s all you need to know about Sandhya Somashekhar\u2019s front page story<\/a> about the Virginia governor\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

\n

There is no empirical evidence <\/strong>[emphasis added] at this point in Virginia’s race for governor showing that huge numbers of voters think like Cleland and will respond by sending a message to Washington.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But that didn\u2019t stop the Post reporter from fashioning an entire argument about the dynamics of the governor\u2019s race based on the opinions of two individuals, one of whom was clearly ambivalent.  More likely, the reporter decided the slant she wanted and found two people who confirmed it, even though there is \u201cno empirical evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is another example of the lazy journalism increasingly practiced by The Washington Post, especially when it comes to the Virginia governor\u2019s race.  We had another example Monday<\/a>, when Roz Helderman wasted newsprint on a story that Democrats are still running against Bush.  The story was written for the political insiders but offered no help to general Post readers in deciding who to vote for.  Instead of writing stories about the issues, they write about the political dynamics, much of which they make up.<\/p>\n

Regarding today\u2019s story, there is mention that 52 percent of Americans support Obama, but it\u2019s described as \u201cthe lowest number of his tenure.\u201d  Indeed, it is also twice the number of his predecessor.  Ah, but that\u2019s not the story she wanted to write.<\/p>\n

According to a late July poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, 78% of Americans think it is at least somewhat likely that \u201cObama will bring real change in the direction of the country.\u201d  A month after his election that figure was at 81%.  The margin of error is 3.1%.  Which is to say, it\u2019s about the same.  Meanwhile, you have 61% of Americans saying they have an unfavorable position<\/a> of Republicans in Congress.<\/p>\n

So why would someone vote Republican in the Virginia\u2019s governor\u2019s race.  I don\u2019t know, but one can argue it has nothing to do with the Obama administration.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s all you need to know about Sandhya Somashekhar\u2019s front page story about the Virginia governor\u2019s race. There is no empirical evidence [emphasis added] at this point in Virginia’s race for governor showing that huge numbers of voters think like Cleland and will respond by sending a message to Washington. But that didn\u2019t stop the… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,95,78],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}