Yesterday on NBC Nightly News:
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Tim Russert, Williams, NBC shows the SC poll and the white/black split.
Polls show WHITE vote as:
Obama: 20% Clinton: 39% Edwards: 28%
Tim says, "Obama in third place amongst whites..."
A Race Assumption...
Tim says, "If John Edwards was not in this race, every indication would be, it would be very good news for Hillary Clinton, getting more white voters in her camp."
What!?
How can NBC-Tim assume 1) that 28% of Whites are making 'race' a driving concern and 2) that this 28%'s second choice would be driven by race, not issues or CHANGE (the natural assumption given WITH DATA)
Did NBC create an assumption OPPOSITE to the DATA...WITHOUT THEIR OWN DATA?
The NBC logic I hear: Whites switching from Edwards would make their second choice based on RACE, not CHANGE
All the prior data was 'change-based' and 'progressive or union-based', not 'race'. Did NBC flip this upside down without the data? If they did, then they just re-framed.
Q: Can you steal hard evidence with assumptions?
A: Depends on the size of your audiece and the tenacity of your watchdogs.
Therefore...
I IMPLORE everyone to call NBC News and ask for the evidence on which they based their race assumptions and their purported causation.
Disclosure: If I were an Obama suppoter, I would be LIVID, because this is the heart of the race assumption Obama has clearly been trying to avoid. He doesn't need this from NBC. None of us do. I'm an Edwards supporter. But, on these issues, I'm Democrat.