Check out the first sentence of this Reuters piece from today, which is entitled “National Mourning Helps Bush Politically For Now”:
A week of national mourning for Ronald Reagan has helped President Bush politically by shunting Democrat John Kerry to the sidelines and driving bad news from Baghdad off the front pages.
Now have a look at the second sentence:
This week’s burst of Reagan nostalgia, which included a flood of tributes to the Republican icon and reminders of Bush’s claim to Reagan’s legacy, could provide at least a short-term political boost for the president in his race for re-election. (Emphasis added.)
The initial claim that Bush has benefited politically from Reagan’s death is presented as an absolute in the headline and lede, but in the second sentence it mysteriously transforms into nothing more than a maybe, maybe not. That sets us up nicely for the rest of the piece, which in fact presents no real evidence to support either headline or lede.
This could be either the work of an overzealous editor, or of a reporter intent on souping up his story to make the wire — after all, the more strongly-worded initial assertion is certainly more eye-catching than the speculative follow-up.
But that’s no excuse for offering us a statement that you can’t back up.
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.