NY Times spins Giuliani's colossal campaign flop

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http://mediamatters.org/columns/200710230002?f=h_column

Reading The New York Times' coverage of the conservative Values Voter Summit held in Washington, D.C., this past weekend, where Republican presidential contenders paraded before evangelical activists, it was clear who the Times thought was the star of the event: Rudy Giuliani.

In the paper's front-page article, it was Giuliani's name that adorned the headline and that anchored the first sentence, it was Giuliani's image that appeared in the article, and it was Giuliani's speech that was excerpted. And at the newspaper's website, it was Giuliani's Values Voter speech that was available in video form. He was the only GOP candidate to receive that kind of all-hands-on-deck weekend coverage from the Times.

So how did Giuliani do in the Values Voter Summit's highly anticipated straw poll? He came in next-to-last, with just 2 percent of the final vote, trailing badly behind "Undecided."

Ouch.

It's hard to think of a more memorable recent instance when a front-running White House candidate was so thoroughly embarrassed on the national stage. But that certainly was not the story The New York Times was telling over the weekend. Rather than putting Giuliani's poor showing in proper context -- the way so many other news organizations did -- the Paper of Record seemed to do its best to disguise Giuliani's painfully public belly-flop.

Indeed, the Times' news account could have been written by Giuliani's communications team, emphasizing how the candidate courageously came to face his most distrusting critics and how, through the power of "direct talk," he (allegedly) won them over. That's great spin. It just didn't reflect reality. And neither did the Times' reporting.