Local Paper Hoodwinked: "Two Republican Governors Unseated"?!

The national media worked overtime last week insisting that Democratic victories in governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia were huge setbacks for the Bush administration and national Republican party. Apparently, the liberal media spin was enough to hoodwink an unsuspecting headline writer at the Albany Herald in Albany, Georgia.

“Two Republican governors unseated,” read the November 9 headline over an article written by Associated Press correspondent Robert Tanner. The AP story does not appear in the Herald's online archives, but someone from the area noticed the humorously off-base headline and sent us a copy.

While the AP article below the headline accurately noted that the two new governors will both be replacing Democrats, meaning that the election merely reinforced the status quo, who could really blame the headline writer for thinking that a pair of GOP incumbents had been ousted? After all, headlines in other papers carried similar spin, such as the New York Times’ assertion: “Stinging Defeats for G.O.P. Come at a Sensitive Time.”