It must be nice to be an obscure Democratic state legislator when a major liberal newspaper runs a puff piece in your favor. Such was the case in a June 27 story in The New York Times highlighting the filibuster of a Texas abortion law by Democratic state senator Wendy Davis.
In total, the 18-paragraph piece read more like a campaign letter to donors than an actual news article, with the substance of the bill buried in the 16th paragraph of page A23. The Times’ Manny Fernandez described Ms. Davis’ actions as a stand that “catches the limelight.” Fernandez clearly had a soft spot for Ms. Davis, characterizing her as full of “stamina and conviction” whose “leg-numbing filibuster...gained thousands of Twitter followers in a matter of hours.”
Fernandez’s gushing didn’t stop there, describing her as “the perfect symbol in a fight over what a woman can do.” Not a single quote opposing Ms. Davis was featured in the campaign style article, in which Fernandez noted that ever since she first elected to the Texas Senate in 2008, Davis has shown “charisma and guts, and her life story has moved voters."
Fernandez continued by peppering his puff piece with quotes from Davis's friends and family, the sort of stuff a candidate does in campaign videos to introduce themselves to voters, not in a news piece in the New York Times. Fernandez then acted like a press flack for Ms. Davis by shaming Republicans who had to:
Make an embarrassing and rare public reversal. Their attempts to derail her filibuster as the midnight deadline neared caused the gallery to erupt in screams, throwing the results of the vote into disarray.
All that was missing from Fernandez’s piece was an address for readers to send campaign donations for Ms. Davis.
