The war of press releases continues in Raleigh, but this time, instead of going after Gov. Roy Cooper, the Republicans are going after the Raleigh News & Observer.
A press release from Republican state Senators Harry Brown and Bill Rabon has a headline that’s hard to ignore. “The News and Observer Has Written More Stories About Gov. Cooper’s Cat Than About NC’s Massive Surplus.”
According to the press release, a Google search showed that the N&O had written three stories about Cooper’s cat and zero stories about the state’s $900 million surplus which the Republicans attribute to the tax cuts and regulatory reform they have put in place.
In the N&O’s defense, a cute cat video can go viral in no time, but no known budget video has ever gone viral. So perhaps the editors are figuring that if cat videos go viral, their readers would also rather read about cats than budgets.
The press release states that according to the N&O the reason no stories mentioning the $900 million state surplus were found is that Associated Press (AP) stories that run in the N&O are deleted from the website after two weeks. So even though they didn’t show up in a Google search, the N&O had run two stories on the surplus.
However, Brown and Rabon don’t give up easily and note that even with the two AP stories, the N&O had still run more cat stories than $900 million budget surplus stories.
The press release also states that the N&O has run stories about a $169 million budget surplus in Maine, a $1 billion budget surplus in Massachusetts, a $300 million budget surplus in Louisiana and the fact that tax collections were up slightly in Kansas.
All that, but no N&O stories about the $900 million North Carolina budget surplus.
It does make you wonder.
