Friday, February 29, 2008

Maine Papers

Remember the faux "tracking" scandal? When supporters of Sen. Collins got hot and bothered because the junior senator was videotaped...from a safe distance...at public events?

More than a year before election day, Maine newspapers ran no fewer than ten stories about it. I count four articles in the Bangor Daily News alone.

But Collins jumps the shark with a vicious attack linking her opponent to unpatriotic thugs (and rich Jews)--and what happens? It takes three weeks for any coverage in the local papers.

And as far as I can tell, BDN and Portland Press Herald--two of the state's biggest papers--have still not run a single word about it.

What's that about?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

CW: Jonathan Kaplan has written at least two stories about the smear ad for Blethen - these after the editors ran two LTE's about the ad BEFOE his work was published. I wrote to the PPH asking why they are running LTE's about a story that they hadn't yet covered.

As far as I know, the BDN has not written a word about it, but that is to be expected, isn't it?

As you know, Maine Public Radio had a piece that I wrote about (by A. J. Higgins, who played a part in the 1996 smear), that literally took words verbatim from the Collins ad and broadcast them as news.

You are correct - the reason that this is has not been front page news since 8 Feb is because the Maine news media doesn't want it to be. Don't blame it on the reporters (except Higgins) - blame it on the editors and publishers. They are burying it.

Gerald Weinand
Turn Maine BLue

Contrapositive said...

I could be wrong, but my recollection is that Kaplan has only written one story about the video.

You may be counting this piece about Moveon, but it doesn't address the video. (Or is there another?)

The point about editors and publishers is an important one: They decide what's news.