As I read through the Charlotte Observer’s partisan primary run down of municipal elections in the Queen City, I was looking to see if some of my friends on the right had been victorious in Tuesday’s balloting. Instead of fully enjoying the victory of Tea Party Activist Matt Ridenhour as well as the win by longtime conservative activist Jaye Rao, I was stung by an inaccurate thorn in one of the stories.
I just love when the press has the theme of the story all laid out and then tries to shoe horn the facts to make them fit their agenda. Here is the worst part of the article:
“The facets of race, protest
Democrats hope to win their first mayoral race since 1987, when Harvey Gantt won a second term. The primaries leave the party with a ticket that features its first African American mayoral candidate since Gantt and three black at-large candidates. They’ll face an all-white Republican slate.” (emphasis mine)
Pretty clear, huh? Those darn white Republicans are at it again. Except, there’s only one problem:
Charlotte’s GOP slate of municipal candidates are not “all white.” Jaye Rao is from an Indian heritage and Tariq Bokhari is obviously not from a European background.
My disdain for this lack of good reporting was replaced by shock when I looked up the byline of the article and saw that it was by Jim Morrill, one of the top political journalists in the state. Now, I’m sure Morrill knows for a fact that the GOP slate is not “all white.” So the next question becomes why would he put this in the story?
Its because it fit the story line that the leftist media want readers/voters to hear. Charlotte is becoming a more and more diverse city every year and that is reflected in the city’s elections. Just don’t mention the fact that the GOP is diverse too. It confuses people.
Next time I want to check election results in a city outside of my media market, I’ll just look up the numbers with the county board of elections so I won’t have to read the media’s version of what happened.
Jim, did you catch the other error in the Observer paragraph you quoted? Foxx is certainly not the “first” black Democratic mayoral candidate since Gantt, he’s at least the fourth as far as I can recall (after Martin, Scarborough and Earle) and those are just since McCrory has been mayor.
I pointed this – and the error about Rao and Bokhari – to Morrill in e-mail on Wednesday. He e-mailed back saying that a correction would be run, but only for the Foxx-Gantt matter, not the “all white GOP” matter. I have yet to see the correction on-line.
I get the feeling that some people want to portray this as a Cinderella story for Foxx, all the facts be damned.
Did the Char-O ever correct this?