Rudy Giuliani, The Associated Press, And The MSM Worldview

Hugh Hewitt blogs this morning on an AP report about Giuliani that exemplifies a major MSM failing: In their search for stories, they write about what they think is important, and confuse that for issues others will consider important:

"[Giuliani's] recent corporate work could become future political hurdles in a presidential race: energy companies are unpopular in a country still adjusting to the higher cost of gasoline and other fuels, and Giuliani has staked out the controversial position that the United States should build more nuclear power plants to meet its energy demands. The firm's client roster could also open him to attacks that he was aligned with corporate polluters even if he didn't represent all the companies directly."

Attacks from whom? Certainly not GOP primary voters. The thought process seems to be like this: "Ooh! Ooh! Look at what [candidate] has said or done in the past! I do not like that. Therefore, others will not like it, and this could be a big problem for him/her going forward!"

We see this a lot with coverage of Mitt Romney. Many in the news media look at Romney's religion and decide that this Mormon beliefs are going to be a big problem for a substantial number of voters-- whether conservative Christian Evangelicals who simply disagree with those beliefs, or secularists who don't think any rational person can believe such things. The MSM writers think the Evangelicals are weird and scary, and reports their views as such; and the writers mostly share the worldview of the secularists, and reports those views as eminently reasonable and widely-held. The result is a story based on how the writer sees the issue, reported as news. (For more on Romney and the religion issue generally, see Article 6 Blog.)