While virtually everyone in the so-called mainstream press is hammering GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan regarding what he calls an “honest mistake” about his time while running in a marathon 22 years ago, only one major network has reported an embarrassing flub President Obama made over the weekend -- twice.
If you want to learn any aspect of the controversy involving the Wisconsin Republican, you don't have to look far. From Ryan's original claim that he finished a four-hour marathon in less than three hours to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's accusation that the Republican used “fictitious math” in the matter, you can find it in virtually every news organization across the country.
The very long list includes all of the television news networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, and even Fox News; and newspapers ranging from the New York Times New York Times to the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald, as well as USA Today.
Even such diverse outlets as Yahoo! News, National Public Radio, and the Runners World magazine's website have articles on Ryan's error.
And as NewsBusters previously reported, on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday, substitute host Norah O'Donnell not only asked Ryan about how he could have gotten his marathon time wrong from more than two decades ago, she also equated the error to Al Gore saying he invented the Internet.
But while reporters in the mainstream media were giving Ryan's mistake full-throated coverage, other newsworthy events were taking place that were covered by only one network: ABC News.
According to an article written by Mary Bruce and Jake Tapper, President Obama made a campaign stop in Kissimmee, Florida, where he told supporters: "We can create a million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years, because we’re selling goods around the world stamped with three proud words: 'Made in the USA.'”
Yes, you read that correctly. The current occupant of the White House apparently used “fictitious math” when he described his “proud words.”
As if that wasn't bad enough, the president addressed voters in nearby Melbourne, Florida, the following day and told them that he was going to “change our tax code so we stop giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas.”
Let’s reward them for investing in new plants and equipment here in the U.S., and training new workers here in the U.S. … creating jobs right here in the U.S., making products that we sell around the world stamped with three proud words: “Made in the USA.” That’s what we’re fighting for. That’s the future we want.
Apparently, no one in the campaign staff corrected the text in the teleprompters or told Obama that he'd made a mistake worthy of Vice President Joe Biden.
Of course, this wasn't the first time the president stumbled in public. While campaigning in May of 2008 to win the White House, Obama said he'd visited 57 states but not Hawaii and Alaska because his staff didn't think it was worth the effort.
Perhaps the most significant public mistake Obama has made took place this past March when he was holding another joint press conference with Medvedev.
Unaware that the microphone was “open,” the U.S. president told his Russian counterpart that he'll have “more flexibility” after the upcoming election.
Then on Monday, ABC News reported that Obama was interviewed by author Bob Woodward in July, and the president said that he didn't know Rep. Paul Ryan was going to attend a major speech he delivered last year on spending and debt.
"I'll go ahead and say it-- I think that I was not aware when I gave that speech that Jack Ryan was going to be sitting right there," the president told Woodward. "We made a mistake."
That wasn't the only error Obama made. He mistakenly identified the Wisconsin Republican as Jack Ryan, the name of a famous Tom Clancy character and the Republican candidate who was slated to run against Obama in his 2004 Senate campaign before Ryan withdrew in the wake of a sex scandal.
Still, I have to give ABC News credit for not entirely following the herd of reporters sifting through Paul Ryan's past in the hope of finding he misspelled a vegetable or forgot how many states there are in the U.S.
Let's hope this continues at least through Election Day on November 6.
