CJR’s Brian E. Crowley acknowledges that Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain showed ignorance of an immigration issue last week, but he questions how aggressively the national media jumped on it. The issue that stumped Cain this time: Miami Herald reporter Marc Caputo asked the candidate how he felt about the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy regarding Cubans trying to come to the U.S. Crowley writes:
The ledes to many a Cain’s Day in Florida stories wrote themselves: grab that familiar (and, not unfounded) Herman Cain is a foreign policy know-nothing story template, plug in fresh anecdote, and, file!
The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, meanwhile, takes Mitt Romney to task for his first paid campaign ad, which includes video of President Barack Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” Lizza points out that Obama was quoting an advisor for John McCain:
This is one of those cases where a candidate has put out something that is demonstrably false. If a journalist or writer quoted someone in such an intellectually dishonest way, you would never trust the person’s writing again. And yet this episode is being reported by some as a clever tactic by the Romney camp to spark a debate about the ad’s accuracy that will serve to highlight its overall message that Obama has been a failure. (See, it worked!)
Related: Wolf Blitzer calls Romney ad a “new low” || Earlier: New Cain campaign ad accuses media of “high-tech lynching” | A viewer’s guide on how to watch campaign ads
