Posted by
Mike Bates on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 1:06:29 AM
So what do you do if you're reporting on an MSNBC interview with
McCain adviser Carly Fiorina in which she states that neither of the
major party presidential candidates nor their vice presidential running
mates qualify to run a major corporation? If you're the folks at
CNNPolitics.com, you headline the story
"McCain adviser Fiorina: Palin not ready to run a corporation."
The MSNBC story, "If she can't run a major company..."
cites a recent Fiorina radio interview in which she was asked if Sarah
Palin has the experience to run a major company like Hewlett-Packard,
which Fiorina formerly served as CEO:
"No. I don't," Fiorina said. "But you know what? That's
not what she's running for [laughs]. Running a corporation is a
different set of things. I would just remind you that it is Barack
Obama who is running for president, John McCain who is running for
president. Sarah Palin has more executive experience than Barack Obama
has. Barack Obama has never made an executive decision in his life. He
has been a state senator and during his time there when a difficult
issue came up, he voted present over 100 times instead of standing up
and being accountable to a yes or no vote. He has been in the U.S.
Senate for a very short period of time and has been running for office
most of that time.
"Sarah Palin as a mayor and a governor has
made executive decisions, challenged her own party, taken
accountability for those decisions, so I find it quite stunning
actually that the Barack Obama campaign is questioning Sarah Palin's
experience who's got more executive experience than he does -- and
she's the vice presidential nominee. Barack Obama is the presidential
nominee."
But later she told NBC's (Andrea) Mitchell that neither McCain nor Obama nor Biden were qualified to run a major corporation.
"Well,
I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation; I don't think
Barack Obama could run a major corporation; I don't think Joe Biden
could run a major corporation.
CNNPolitics.com started its report:
Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO turned
top John McCain aide, said she doesn't think Sarah Palin is qualified
to run a major corporation. For that matter, Fiorina said, McCain,
Obama and Biden aren't capable of that kind of job either.
To the right of CNN's headline are "Story Highlights." These are listed in this order:
Carly Fiorina also tells MSNBC John McCain isn't ready to run a corporation
Fiorina was the CEO of Hewlett-Packard and is now a McCain adviser
She also says Barack Obama, Joe Biden not ready to be CEOs
So even though the former HP CEO went out of her way to praise Palin
and to point out that governance requires different skill sets than
business, CNN chose to highlight Palin's supposed inadequacies.
This just shows, once again, that skimming mainstream media
headlines can be very misleading. Even - perhaps especially - if the
Web site is run by the self-styled "most trusted name in news."