The headline makes it pretty clear -- the story is about the president's energy proposal.

Bush touts proposal to cut back on gas

So why is this the opening paragraph?

It must take a lot for President Bush to cancel out on raising campaign cash for a fellow Republican.

In fact, the first FIFTEEN PARAGRAPHS are devoted to the relationship between the President and Senator Jeff Sessions, their conflicts over the immigration bill, political fundraising, and the president getting winded going up some stairs. Only in paragraph 16 do we get this first glimmer of information about the energy proposal.

At the power plant appearance, Bush touted his approach for cutting gasoline consumption as the Democratic-controlled Senate opened debate on a broad energy bill.

That would be the first of seven paragraphs on the president's objections to the Democratic energy proposal in Congress. By my count we have now gone 22 paragraphs without actually talking about the President's "proposal to cut back on gas."

But wait -- here it comes!

Bush wants the standard increased to 35 billion gallons a year by 2017. He calls it an "alternative fuels" standard, instead of a renewable fuels standard, because he would count so-called coal-to-liquid fuel and other nonrenewable sources.

That's right -- paragraph 23 actually deals with the topic indicated in the headline. Now we are in for some substantive reporting on the subject, right?

Wrong. The article has only two paragraphs left. I present them for your consideration.

He also pushed increased use of nuclear power, from the plant that is home to the first U.S. nuclear reactor to go online in more than 20 years. Browns Ferry's Unit 1 reactor began producing power again last month after being shut down for safety reasons in 1985. Its other two reactors returned to service in the 1990s.

The reactor was shut down two days after its restart when a leaky pipe burst and spilled non-radioactive fluid. Such problems prompted Greenpeace to call Browns Ferry "a strange poster child for a nuclear future."

Nope -- nothing about gas there.

And so we get a grand total of two sentences about the president's proposal to cut back on gasoline usage -- despite the fact that the headline was about the president's proposal to cut back on gas usage. Even if we are generous and count the criticisms of the congressional plan as "touting" the president's proposal, we still see only 1/3 of the story devoted to what the headline tells us the story is about -- and the third at that!

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Posted by: Greg at 12:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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