Presidential Reporting, Vol. II
Today Barack Obama released his tax returns to the media. This isn’t a very interesting event in itself, but I think that the different ways the media covered it is, judging from this CNN article and this Fox News article.
The CNN article has the headline “Obama releases tax returns, follows Clinton to challenge suit,” and ledes with pretty much the exact same thing. The Fox News headline, however, focuses entirely on Obama: “Obamas open tax return, earned nearly $1M in 2006.” It doesn’t mention Clinton until the third paragraph, when it indirectly quotes her.
This brings up the same question as my last post: what part of this is newsworthy, or in this case, more newsworthy? The Fox News writer doesn’t feel that the Obama challenge to Clinton is the most important part of the story, and focuses instead on his earnings (which the CNN article doesn’t address until the tenth paragraph, pretty low on the inverted pyramid scheme of things). I’m honestly not sure which is more important in this situation, since neither of them are particularly interesting; if I had to pick, I’d probably go the CNN route because Obama’s challenge is more recent and timely than his releasing of the forms, as much as I dislike the idea of making a story out of something a candidate feeds to the press.
