The Enquirer Invisibler Has Blown, or Is Still Blowing, the Three Big Local Political Stories

NOTE: This post is about media coverage, and not about the politics of the races involved.
____________________________________________

So, what has The Cincinnati Enquirer Invisibler done with the area’s three big local political stories?

Agendagate, and the Non-Coverage of US Senate Challengers

No news, period. There was at least something from an outside source: Tim Holloway, who published a strong criticism of the lack of challenger coverage at his Battleground PAC site, sent a letter to the Invisibler with his concerns, and they did publish it. Hats off to Tim for his efforts, though I’m concerned that with the printing of his letter, the Invisibler thinks it has done everything it needs to. And the pre-scripted nature of the Hamilton County GOP Executive Committee’s endorsement process has not been addressed by the Invisibler, and probably never will be.

The Hackett Hatchet Job

Though the Invisibler did an ain’t-it-a-shame editorial on Hackett’s withdrawal on Thursday, it was AWOL on the war-crimes rumormongering story until today, and, in my opinion, only decided to report on it because of Hackett’s appearance last night on Hardball, which is the event that drives Malia Rulon’s coverage. Why it took a Hardball interview to make the story important enough to cover is a complete mystery. Ms. Rulon does own up to the existence of the Mother Jones story from last week, but doesn’t explain why it was ignored for four days (unlike OH02 and BizzyBlog, to name just two, who were on it within hours).

The Invisibler has a full transcript of the Hardball interview at its Politics Extra blog today. Matthews brought out three points I wasn’t sure of until he mentioned them (presented in order) — that Hackett only entered when called (so much for the egotism theory); that he (Matthews) had never seen anything done to a politician like the about-face national Democratic leaders did in their support, and then non-support, of Hackett; and that Hackett has been told by multiple sources that Sherrod Brown (personally) is the source of untruths about his (Hackett’s) war service:

MATTHEWS: I’m serious, you were called into the mission by the top guys, you wouldn’t have done it without their call, right?
HACKETT: Absolutely correct.
+++++++
MATTHEWS — You know, I’ve watched politics for 30 some years now and I have never heard of a candidate being urged by party leaders to run and then told not to run once they told him to run.
+++++++
MATTHEWS: Would you swear on a stack of bibles right now that Sherrod Brown has told untrue things about your war service?
HACKETT: Well I would swear that many people have come to me and said that, because that is a fact.

But The Invisibler is still running behind, even beyond not revealing the historical significance of the Hackett betrayal (as Matthews did):

• First, as reported by The Toledo Blade yesterday (and as far as I can tell not reported by the Invisibler), someone in the Hackett campaign released research indicating that Sherrod Brown’s votes show him to be weak on national-security issues. Though that is not exactly a shocker, the fact that the information was released, and the deep divide between party regulars and the grass roots (illustrated in posts and comments found here, here, and here) are significant things that newpaper readers should know.
• Second, in an op-ed in today’s Columbus Dispatch (HT OH02), Dale Butland, who served as senior adviser to the Hackett for Senate campaign, tells us that “The attempted (war crimes) “swiftboating” soon was followed by another whisper campaign falsely claiming that Hackett was expelled from college for sexual harassment.”
  (What’s next? He burned crosses?)

Cleveland.com’s Openers blog was much more on top of stories relating to Greater Cincinnati’s former US Senate candidate yesterday. Zheesh.

The Straw Poll Coverage Takes the (Pan)cake

In a sudden burst of excess, the Invisibler carried Howard Wilkinson’s report on the results of Saturday’s Northeast Hamilton County Republican Party Pancake Breakfast at the top of Page 1 (yeah, THE Page 1) of its Sunday print edition, and almost treated it as the equivalent of the Iowa Presidential caucuses for the Ohio Governor’s race and the 2nd Congressional District contest.

Puh-lease.

Mr. Wilkinson, in the print edition piece, stated that there were about 220 people in attendance, and that about 160 voted because:

Only members of the club, though, cast ballots.

A quick review of the comments at Wilkinson’s Politics Extra blog entry on the Pancake event should at least raise suspicions about the accuracy and completeness of that statement.

Of course, mostly anonymous blog entries aren’t enough to punch holes in a story. But correspondence with a reliable source who attended the event is. What I have learned from that source is that there were not effective controls in place to ensure that:

• Votes for Congress would only be cast by those who lived in The 2nd district, or conceivably even that votes for Governor would only be cast by those living in Ohio.
• That voters who truly were eligible vote had adequate opportunity to cast their ballots before the voting was cut off.

Additionally, it appears that attendees whose origins could not be determined were able to “join” and therefore become eligible to vote on the day of the event (making Wilkinson’s “only members” description superficial at best).

I’m not able to determine who was or wasn’t helped by what from all appearances was a lack of adequate controls over the voting process. I’m only able to say that there is a great deal of reason to believe that those controls were inadequate. Perhaps current Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell should have been more involved in the design (haha).

Wilkinson’s implicit treatment of the voting process as being pure as the driven snow is either ignorant or deceptive. The Invisibler’s prominent placement of the story without addressing the doubts raised gave the reported results much more significance than they deserved.