Monday, May 7, 2012

Whitewashing Slaughter's Attendance Record

On Thursday we noted a New York Times story of that date on Rep. Louise Slaughter .   In the third paragraph of the original print and online versions, the Times noted that Slaughter "... had one of the worst attendance records in the House last year. . .”

By the next day, that line had magically vanished from the online version. (We'll post a screen shot of the original print article shortly.  See Update below.)

Last October, back before Slaughter had a credible opponent, the New York Times observed also that Slaughter had one of the worst attendance records in the House.   She was one of only 18 members to miss more than 10% of votes – meaning she missed more votes than about 95% of her House colleagues.

And last December the Buffalo News ran a story highlighting that Slaughter had missed, “. . . more than 2 1/2 times as many as the Buffalo area's three other House members missed combined.”

Just compare the Buffalo News story, which bore the headline, "In missed House votes, Slaughter tops area peers" , with the Rochester D&C's clumsy attempt over the weekend to camouflage Slaughter's neglect of her responsibilities.   Jill Terreri's May 5th story on Slaughter's election prospects buried the attendance information, and then only reported the raw data, without context or comparison.

Contrast with the lead sentence in the Buffalo News report: "Rep. Louise M. Slaughter has missed 83 votes on the floor of the House this year -- more than 2 1/2 times as many as the Buffalo area's three other House members missed combined."   Just as the D&C would report the story if Slaughter were a Republican.

 


 

Update
The political censors at the New York Times scrubbed their original online story, but not their Archive search.   Search the NYT with the terms "slaughter attendance" and you get this abstract (our screenshot), showing the original line, even though the link takes you to the scrubbed story.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Luke Mayo at the D&C continues the attack on Maggie Brooks by accusing her of not talking about ANY federal issues. As normal people and a commenter on the article knows, Maggie's staked out a position on perhaps the most important issue in this year's Congressional elections, Obamacare. Mr. Mayo has therefore penned a blatantly false article.

The D&C deleted a story another write penned that pointed out facts and concerns about Louise Slaughter and her health.

Let's see if they pull this story which is patently false.

Any bets on if they'll treat Maggie like they do Louise?

Anonymous said...

Continued media bias against Maggie Brooks:

Compare both of their campaign websites (maggiebrooks.com and votelouise.com)

The have what I'd call the same amount of content, news articles and announcements, and cover accomplishments on several issues.

Yet the Democrat & Chronicle is actively attacking Maggie for apparently not doing more than Slaughter who has been a Congresswoman for 26 years?

And while the D&C bashed Brooks for not talking about issues, How many articles have we read from them about all the issues Slaughter has talked about in this campaign thus far?

Nothing but sympathy garnering puff pieces about how supposedly hard Slaughter is working (really?) and how much energy she has... even though they ignore the fact that she's done nothing but claim to be doing something.

Do federal election rules state that Slaughter must show the costs for all the free press coverage the media is giving her to help with her re-election campaign?

Quite pathetic.

Anonymous said...

Slaughter has been in the hospital since April 2nd for a "broken leg"? Sounds to me more like a broken hip. When any 83 year old person falls it's more than likely to break a hip before a leg will break. I would guess her campaign probably doesn't that out. I wish her a full recovery no matter what her injury but I got think if that is true her campaign will suffer from that.