{"id":11406,"date":"2010-06-15T13:02:48","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T18:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11406"},"modified":"2010-06-16T07:12:51","modified_gmt":"2010-06-16T12:12:51","slug":"chanting-points-memo-coulda-woulda-shoulda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11406","title":{"rendered":"Chanting Points Memo: Coulda Woulda Shoulda"},"content":{"rendered":"

I could <\/em>make Scarlett Johannson the happiest woman in the world.<\/p>\n

Let’s see if Tom Scheck and Erick Black start staking out Ms. Johannson’s house.<\/p>\n

It might be easier than answering the questions about their coverage of the Emmer campaign.<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

Tom Emmer launched “Emmertruth” – a site dedicated to countering the media’s context-mangling DFL-agenda-m0ngering – yesterday.\u00a0 And right in the nick of time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This past April, Emmer appeared on Gary Eichten’s mid-day show on MPR.\u00a0 Eichten asked Emmer a hypothetical<\/em> question about how he’d hypothetically <\/em>handle Minnesota’s budget.<\/p>\n

Now, as someone who talks on the air live for two hours a week with no more “editing” than a dump button in case Ed starts cursing again, I’ll tell you – every so often you say something on the first try that isn’t quite <\/em>right.\u00a0 So you take another pass at it.\u00a0\u00a0 This happens even if you’re very good <\/em>at speaking off the cuff – which, by the way, Tom Emmer is.<\/p>\n

Most print news people – like Erik Black, formerly of the Strib <\/em>and currently of the MinnPost – <\/em>have a hard time with this; they can go their entire career without a “rough draft” going out to the public.\u00a0 And MPR’s Tom Scheck perhaps is the wrong person to ask about it, since MPR is about as\u00a0 spontaneous and unedited as the Catholic Mass.<\/p>\n

Anyway – according to Emmertruth, this is what happened, with emphasis added by me:<\/p>\n

Emmer did initially say the overall budget should be around $40 billion, down from the current level of $60 billion. But seconds later he clarified with the definitive statement<\/strong><\/em> that we \u201ccan reduce government easily by 20% in the next four years.\u201d When Scheck chose to use the $20 billion figure instead of the more definitive final word on the question, he made a critical and material journalistic mistake.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here – in Tom Scheck’s piece on the subject<\/a>, which extensively quotes state bureaucrats on why Tom Emmer should not cut state bureaucracy – is the quote in question:<\/p>\n

In late April, he suggested he could eliminate a third of overall state spending, roughly $20 billion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You be the judge – but from where I sit,\u00a0Scheck is wrong, or misleading, when he uses the $20 billion number. Emmer said – in the definitive <\/em>take on the\u00a0hypothetical question – he’s cut 20% over 4 years. Not<\/em> that he’d immediately slash $60 to $40 billion.<\/p>\n

It’s not rocket surgery to expect that the local mainstream media will circle its wagons to defend the rest of the media.\u00a0 And some <\/em>of the regional\u00a0 media, including Erik Black’s former bosses in the Strib <\/em>editorial board, are pretty transparently working to see a DFLer gets elected governor this fall, as usual.\u00a0 And while I’m the last person in the world to impugn the integrity of MPR News – whose standards I’ve repeatedly praised in the past – their coverage of Emmer bears watching, since Emmer has spoken of cutting the state’s subsidy of MPR.<\/p>\n

Black continues<\/a>:<\/p>\n

he has launched a feature called “EmmerTruth,”<\/a> in which he will set the record straight about distortions of his record, position and statements.The first couple of entries, though, are pretty weak. In one, he complains that MPR reporter Tom Scheck said that Emmer would cut $20 billion in state spending. But Emmer says he never said he would<\/em> cut $20 billion, only that he could.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then…what?<\/p>\n

He went on to clarify the whole thing!<\/p>\n

So why did Scheck choose to go with the initial – and, via Emmertruth, admittedly bobbled –\u00a0take on the hypothetical, when the clarification is, with a nod to Regis Philbin, “the final answer?”<\/p>\n

And why did Black ignore this?\u00a0\u00a0 Do the facts matter, or is it all about playing “gotcha” with off-the-cuff answers to hypothetical questions?<\/p>\n

Black concludes:<\/p>\n

I’ve about convinced myself that Emmer owes Scheck an apology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m dying to figure out why.<\/p>\n

And he owes the voters of Minnesota some straighter talk, not about what he could do, but what he would do to balance the budget. (Not to say that all the other guv candidates have been clear abut how they would do it. They haven’t.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let me get this straight:\u00a0 the DFL candidates have been “unclear”, but Emmer “owes” everyone an explanation now<\/em> – so the DFL and its friends in the media can bag on it at their leisure until the DFL picks a candidate?<\/p>\n

Why does the MinnPost <\/em>hold Republicans to a different standard than the DFL?<\/p>\n

DISCLOSURE:\u00a0 I recently signed on to have occasional posts from this blog re-posted on MinnPost<\/em>.\u00a0 We’ll see how that works out now, won’t we?<\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring <\/em>and True North <\/em>covers this as well<\/a>.<\/p>\n

CORRECTIONS:\u00a0 In the original take on this story, I’d forgotten that there is, <\/em>technically, a GOP primary.\u00a0 That’s right, Leslie Davis and Ole Savior get their moment in the electoral sun.\u00a0 Als0,\u00a0 I had the wrong date for the original broadcast on the Eichten show that spawned this “controversy”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I could make Scarlett Johannson the happiest woman in the world. Let’s see if Tom Scheck and Erick Black start staking out Ms. Johannson’s house. It might be easier than answering the questions about their coverage of the Emmer campaign. ———- Tom Emmer launched “Emmertruth” – a site dedicated to countering the media’s context-mangling DFL-agenda-m0ngering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,108,63,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-chanting-points-memo","category-lefty-alt-media","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11406"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11409,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11406\/revisions\/11409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}