Is there a dime’s worth of difference between the newspapers printed here in the Quad Cities? Given that they now cooperate on local stories and extensively share distribution channels, their delivery personnel could put the wrong newspaper on a porch or in a vending machine and if someone read you the paper one wonders if you would know the difference? Well not today if they were to start with the lead story. They are both devoted to prioritizing what the Administration’s Publisher (also known as the Associated Press / AP ) says should be the news this morning.
Check out today’s lead stories from the print editions, snap shots provided below. Reading the QCT and the A-D you will see that they are verbatim transcripts of the AP except that the QCT truncated a couple of paragraphs at the end as compared to the A-D. Both are dutiful in promulgating the idea that us rubes out there, the majority of whom oppose the government takeover of health care under Obama, best not change much because it will be “messy” with a lot of “ripple effects.”
I cannot provide a link to the QCT story as it is not part of the story rotation on their Web site nor does a search of the headline produce any results. Scrubbed already?? Well maybe it is because the Washington Post provided a story that went out over the wires regarding United Health Insurance Company. That company announced in a press release that it was going to offer popular aspects of the Obamacare imposed requirements including coverage for dependent children up to age 26 and preexisting condition coverage, no matter what the courts say about Obamacare as to its mandates. So oops, perhaps the tangle mess is not so tangled after all.
I was able to find a link to the Argus-Dispatch story but not easily. Maybe scrubbed isn’t quite the word in their case, but swept aside might describe it. One suspects the original printed stories as both went to press, in service to Obama and big government and total lacky/dependence on The AP, were soon recognized to be “no longer operative.” And so it goes with these assistants to the Obama Administration’s chief scribes.
