Context-Challenged Media Doesn’t Tell Full Story About Obama’s Fourth-Quarter Fundraising

Posted by John Nolte Jan 12th 2012 at 5:54 am in Associated Press, Mainstream Media, Politico, elections 2012, media bias

Long, long ago, the Associated Press simply decided to stop being objective. Other than the final act of officially declaring their left-wing bias, the AP has done just about everything else required to announce that they are on a crusade, among other things, to ensure Barack Obama’s reelection. But even then, you would think credibility would mean something to the AP. Biased or not, no one wants to come off as a hack, but hacky the AP is, especially with respect to today’s story about President Obama’s fourth-quarter fundraising for his reelection campaign.

When you read the AP’s reporting, it’s obvious what the AP is up to. The goal is to create the impression that Obama and the DNC represent an unstoppable political juggernaut, that they are unstoppable cash machines firing on all 12 cylinders of competency and popularity:

U.S. President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, together with the Democratic National Committee, raised more than $68 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina said on Thursday. 

Messina told supporters in a video message that 98 percent of the donations were made up of $250 or less, illustrating growing grassroots support for Obama, a Democrat, as he works to hold on to the White House in November’s election. …

The campaign beat its goal of raising $60 million in the final three months of 2011. 

Obama’s fundraising totals dwarf those of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, whose campaign said on Wednesday it had raised $24 million in the fourth quarter.

By hiding the context in this report, the AP intentionally lies through omission to put some wins in Obama’s sagging sails.

Here’s what the AP chose not to report:

The contributions exceed the $60 million number floated by campaign officials but represent a small drop-off from the $70.1 million Obama-DNC receipts collected in the previous three months.

Of the October-to-December cash, $42 million went to Obama’s coffers, with $24 million headed to the DNC — a bit less than the $70.4 million raised by the Bush-Cheney-RNC campaigns in late 2003.

So Obama/DNC fundraising not only dropped off for the AP’s Precious One, but without even adjusting for eight years of inflation, President FailureTeleprompter was unable to beat the amount of money raised by the evil Bush/Cheney at this same time during  their 2003 reelection effort. And I think we all remember how, at this same time, Bush was being pounded and demonized relentlessly by the corrupt MSM (including the AP) over Iraq. And yet, he raised more money than Obama.

How about that.

The information above came from Politico, and here’s an important nugget of information Politico chose not to include:

President Obama has attended twice the number of fundraisers as [as President Bush.] [Obama] attended 58 fundraisers for his reelection campaign since January[.] By comparison, President George W. Bush … attended 29 fundraisers[.]

In other words, in order to raise less cash than Bush, Obama had to attend twice as many fundraisers.

The MSM is so biased that in order to get the full context of a story potentially damaging to the left, you not only have to cobble together information from different sources, you have to remember that this information is out there.

Whether it’s foreign policy, history, economics, or simple stories such as this one about what should be reported as a disappointing fourth quarter for Obama’s reelection efforts, context is Kryptonite to left — which is why outlets such as the AP and Politico refuse to go near it.

Big Journalism