I have a new column up at CJR on the need for better media coverage of the Obama campaign's claims about Mitt Romney outsourcing jobs. Here's how it begins:
Last Tuesday, the Obama campaign released a new ad here and in eight other swing states that distorts the facts in a Washington Post story to implicate Mitt Romney in outsourcing by firms that received funds from Bain Capital.
The ad, which is titled “Believes,” reinforces a critique of Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital that the Obama campaign has frequently repeated in the weeks since the Post story was first published, including during a speech by the President in Durham, NH two weeks ago. In particular, Obama is running a series of ads drawing on the Post story, including a new ad released on Saturday that will run here in New Hampshire and in other battleground states.
Given the prominence of these claims in the campaign debate, the need for reporters to help voters make sense of them is especially great. However, journalists who have covered the story both here in New Hampshire and nationally have largely failed to fact-check the Obama campaign’s claims...
Read the whole thing for more.
In addition to its dishonesty, the ad wrongly implies that a President will take the same actions as he did in private business. The demands of the two jobs are entirely different, so a President will perform different tasks.
Worrying that Romney's Bain background would lead him to outsource jobs as President is as silly as worrying (in 1976) that President Carter's background would lead him to devote his Presidency to growing peanuts.
Posted by: David in Cal | July 10, 2012 at 11:13 AM
Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC tried to defend the President's ad on Outsourcing, but John Sununu effectively showed why this issue may turn out to be a loser for Obama. You can watch the interview at http://weaselzippers.us/2012/07/10/must-watch-romney-surrogate-john-sununu-steamrolls-andrea-mitchell/
Posted by: David in Cal | July 10, 2012 at 08:13 PM