Somebody want to explain this to me? Here’s the headline from the Times Argus yesterday:

Douglas budget makes cuts, proposes no new taxes

Here’s from the Rutland Herald:

Reductions, no new taxes for $150M state budget hole

Blazing message for all to see. Douglas is holding the line on taxes. Even the casual passersby got the message from the stacks in the stores. Too bad it’s complete crap.

What’s the truth? For that, you have to turn to the editorial page of the Herald/Argus (for a very solid piece, BTW):

It is also noteworthy that as (Governor Douglas) holds the line on new taxes on the wealthy, he has asked middle-income taxpayers to pay higher property taxes. He would achieve this by raising the percentage of income that could be tapped for school property taxes for households earning between $60,000 and $90,000.

Bizarre. Do these folks talk to each other?

So which editor writes the headlines? I don’t know, but don’t let reporter Louis Porter off the hook. From the second paragraph of the piece:

What was not included in his tough proposed budget, drafted to fill a more than $150 million hole in next year’s spending, were any increases in broad-based taxes

Interesting qualification, “broad-based.” Thing is, it doesn’t mean anything. There’s no hard and fast definition, but I have no doubt that the term has been dutifully parroted from the Douglas administration, which in this case is BSing so brazenly (we won’t raise taxes except when we will) that we’ve passed firmly into up is down and black is white territory. Here’s Charlie Crist of Florida engaged in the same “broad-based” parsing. The St. Petersburg Times writer, rather than parroting their Governor’s line, properly called it “distortion.” At any rate, I think “middle class Vermonters” is a pretty broad category.

So Louis Porter and the headline writer served as PR mouthpieces for the administration yesterday. It almost doesn’t matter what the rest of the piece said after those headlines and the semi-qualified restatement in the article’s opening thesis (which is not to say that the rest of the piece covers it in any meaningful way… it all reads like Douglas spin). And its not like it was a trend, here; Terri Hallenbeck’s analysis was perfectly professional. The AP wire report also made no such claim, as half of its six sentences explain the Douglas tax increase, with nary a sign of any no new taxes claim, “broad-based” or otherwise.

If the administration was trying to pass a naked untruth to a reporter as the truth, that in itself should be the news.

The Times Argus and Rutland Herald should be ashamed. “Outrageous” doesn’t begin to cover it. This goes beyond simply misplaced “advocacy journalism,” as the papers promoted an outright untruth in the service of the adminsitration’s public image.