Times' Hacks Feed White House Flacks

Tuesday, the Times buried a report about Democratic campaign spending behind an empty story on GOP lobbyists. Guess which one the White House ran with?

Say what you will about its politics, the New York Times is the finest journalistic institution in the world.  No one breaks more stories.  No one has better reporters.

This week, after running numerous stories about how much money Republicans were spending, the Times finally reported that, in fact, Democrats retain the spending edge in this year’s midterm races.  But they made sure to offset any impact the report may have had by also featuring a story “investigating” how Republican lobbyists are reacting to the potential shift in power.  Apparently, oil and gas lobbyists are pumped up that Democrats are going to be out of power. You don’t say…

Of course, energy lobbyists are excited. But that’s because of what they do: promote their clients interests.  Naturally, if Republicans win back seats, it means lobbyists might get hired again and be able to promote their interests before those in power.  Does the Times think that lobbyists who work for the AFL-CIO and other labor groups were not equally excited two years ago?

And of course it was the story about Republican lobbyists and not about the Democrats’ spending edge which garnered most of the attention.  White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer drew attention to it on his White House blog and you can bet every Democrat on the campaign trail will get a DNC memo urging them to talk up the story.

The New York Times should be better than that.  At least make the White House work for its talking points.

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