It’s this kind of dishonest reporting that makes my blood pressure rise a little. In a news segment on ABC News last night, Jonathan Karl equated Bill Burton’s ad suggesting Romney is responsible for the cancer death of a steel worker’s wife with Romney’s ad saying Obama gutted welfare reform. Now Karl rightly points out that Burton’s ad is the “single most outrageous ad of the campaign”, citing that Soptic’s wife died in 2006, years after Romney left Bain.
But then in transition to Romney’s welfare ad Karl reports “the Romney campaign has hit below the belt too currently with a misleading ad claiming President Obama has gutted welfare reform.” I was on the edge of my seat wondering who they were going to cite as their source calling the ad “misleading”. Ad to my shock it was the Obama campaign:
The Obama campaign is calling that a bold face lie. The administration is allowing states to experiment with changes to the welfare law but insists it is still requiring people to work.
Of course the Obama campaign going to say that. Why take his word for it alone? How about a little independent research to find out if it’s true or not instead of trusting a campaign that has provably lied about Romney from day one. And I’d start with this article from Heritage and go from there.
Also, isn’t it a reasonable to question Obama’s denial or even Romney’s assertion, after Obama’s very own administration has run ads suggesting that people sign up for welfare because it’s healthy?
For heaven’s sake Jonathan Karl, do some research on your own for a change and stop taking Obama’s word on its face!
All that said, what really got to me about this ad was the equating of the two campaign ads which is preposterous on its face. One is a provably false, outrageous character assassination attack and the other is an ad about policy that can be honestly debated. How in the world can ABC News compare them? They can’t, at least not honestly.
The purpose of equating these two ads is to take the sting out of Burton’s ad which is connected to the Obama campaign as we all know. By saying Romney did it too, it makes it sound like both campaigns are playing dirty and people are more likely to either dismiss this as a whole or to aim their outrage toward both camps.
And people wonder why we say there is media bias.