Post Plays Up McCain-Closing-The-Gap Theory
Today, in the Post's Trail blog, we get McCain Camp bigwig Rick Davis declaring that his candidate is set to achieve one of the greatest comebacks in election history. Coates calls BS. And we second that assessment. The story is all conjecture, theory, and truth stretching. Not a bit of evidence is cited. I know it's just a dashed off item but it's lazy.
Since when do news orgs just let the spin go unchecked? All the time?
Here's the first two graphs:
"GOP presidential nominee John McCain's advisers today said their candidate had closed the gap with Barack Obama over the past few days and would be competitive with the Democrat as voters headed to the polls Tuesday.
'We are witnessing, I believe, probably one of the greatest comebacks that you've seen since John McCain won the primary,' his campaign manager, Rick Davis, said in a conference call with reporters, adding that when it came to the electoral votes needed for victory, 'We believe, with the combination of our base states and the states we've been able to put into play this week, we can achieve 270.'"
There's no factcheck that follows.
11:31 pm
I saw something today that really ticked me off today on Rick Sanchez's show on CNN. First he praised himself for an interview yesterday in which he pointed out that a lackey from the McCain camp didn't know what he was talking about when he said that Obama hung out with anti-semites. When the McCain spokesperson couldn't name more than one anti-semite, Sanchez pressed him, making him look like the idiot he was. So what did Sanchez do today, he filled in the blanks for the McCain campaign, saying that he had an anonymous source who informed him that the second anit-semite was Rev. Jeremiah Wright. What? I can't "journalism" today.