He Said, She Said
Feb 6th, 2008 at 9:03 am by Susie
Now wouldn’t it be nice if this lazy reporter actually explained the strategy behind this:
“The facts are clear — in the Illinois state senate, choice advocates asked strong pro-choice legislators like Senator Obama to vote ‘present’ on Republican-designed bills like a ban on partial birth abortion to protect a woman’s right to choose,” she wrote. “Senator Obama has always had a 100 percent pro-choice rating, and he is the only candidate running for President who stood up and spoke out when South Dakota passed an incredibly restrictive ban on abortion.”
What does that mean, exactly? Did they mean women’s groups was covering the ass of the pro-choice legislators when their votes weren’t crucial? (Which would make some sense.) If so, wouldn’t it be great if the reporter actually asked that question? I suppose we’ll never know.
Why, oh why, can’t we have a better press corpse?
UPDATE: Dear God, this makes my head hurt.
it’s been explained before. what happened is that obama and planned parenthood were trying to stop the partial birth abortion ban bill, but there were too many downstate reps who didn’t want to go on record voting against it. (in illinois “downstate” means “not-chicago”, i.e. the socially conservative part of the state). so obama and planned parenthood got everyone to vote “present” which effectively killed the bill. which is exactly what happened.
but that hasn’t stopped intellectually dishonest people from attacking obama for the “present” vote, never the fact that the vote was with planned parenthood’s blessing and the fact that the strategy did work to stop the bill.
“It’s been explained before” isn’t an acceptable way to cover a story, because there are always readers like me who haven’t seen the previous explanation. Nope, this is just lazy reporting.
Thanks, Noz. Maybe you should be a reporter!
oh, i agree that it’s a lazy reporter thing. if you bring something like that up, you should assume that your reader hasn’t necessarily been researching all the issues for you.