Corollary 5

Over the weekend the Minneapolis Star Tribune returned from hiatus, resuming their election coverage with stories the last three days running.  In doing so, they seem to be proving true the old Borscht Belt joke about the local resort’s terrible food, whose punchline reads “and such small portions!”

In fact, the return of election news to the Star Tribune has inspired me to promulgate a Corollary 5 to  Glahn's First Law of media coverage:  Sooner or later (more likely sooner) every Democrat talking point will be reprinted as fact by local media.

Incumbent U.S. Senator Democrat Al Franken, the state Democrat party, and their front-group the Alliance for a Better Minnesota has determined that they will label Franken’s Republican challenger Mike McFadden as “Minnesota’s Mitt Romney.”  Forget for a moment that everything Romney said in the last presidential campaign turned out to be correct.

Millionaire Franken thinks it will help his campaign to portray businessman McFadden as a top-hatted, monocle-wearing, out-of-touch plutocrat.  The Star Tribune piles on with an article headlined, “New Al Franken ad criticizes Mike McFadden's corporate move to Bermuda.”

For those readers who get beyond the headline, it turns out that McFadden didn’t move anywhere, much less to Bermuda.  Somehow, the Star Tribune twists this non-move into support for Franken’s claim that McFadden is guilty of “tax evasion.”  Tax evasion is a Federal crime, punishable by jail time.  Neither the Franken TV ad, nor the accompanying press release, uses the loaded word “evasion.”  The Star Tribune, based on no evidence, decided to take the Franken charge one step further to smear McFadden.

The Star Tribune piece includes as “context” (“comes on the heels of”) the unrelated corporate move of Burger King to Canada.  If the party labels were reversed, the Star Tribune would have included references to Franken’s serial non-payment of corporate taxes, which the Star Tribune itself documented back during his first run in 2008.

Not to be outdone, Minnesota Public Radio goes after GOP candidate for governor, Jeff Johnson, using the Democrats’ preferred label for him as a “Tea Party Republican extremist.”  To be fair, MPR and the Democrats decided on the Tea Party extremist label for the Republican candidate even before the Republicans decided on a candidate for governor.

Democrats would have been embarrassed to write a headline like MPR’s “Johnson: ‘I am not a tea party extremist.’  As the political wisdom would have it, if you are on defense, you are losing.  To curry favor with the ruling party, state-taxpayer-dependent public radio is happy to pose “when did you stop beating you spouse”-style loaded questions to Republican challengers.

Apparently, focus groups find the phrase Tea Party Republican extremist” frightening.  Democrats hope to motivate their base and/or scare low-information voter with the epithet.

Corollary 5 looks to get a workout in the next seven weeks.