The field of journalism is overrun with awards. If you can string a sentence together and hang around long enough, you’ll bag one o’ them suckers eventually. (See: George Will, Pulitzer.) But one thing is lacking: an award for the worst story of the year.

If there was such a thing in Vermont, we’d have our clubhouse leader for this year’s, mmmm, what shall we call it… Mark Smith Award (in honor of the retired Maximum Leader of the St. J Caledonian-Record, Vermont’s Worst Newspaper, yeah, that’s it)… Nancy Remsen of the Freeploid, for her complete clusterfrack of a story entitled “Political Affiliation Affects Message Reception on Government-Run Insurance.”

There’s so much awful in this story that I’m sure I’ll miss an item or two. But let’s start with the title*, which DUHHHHHH. Of course “political affiliation affects message reception.” Doesn’t it always? Hell, you’re a fool if you don’t consider the source. (Especially when the source is strongly partisan, and has an ideological stake in the issue under consideration.) But in the context of this article, the title means that some messages are unfairly maligned because of the messenger.

* And let’s not overlook the title’s crafty use of “government-run,” the conservatives’ description of choice for single-payer. Thumb on the scale much?

Aaaaaand your unfairly maligned messenger? None other than Wendy Wilton, stunningly unsuccessful Republican candidate for Treasurer, and author of at least two very different estimates of the additional cost of a single-payer health care system. There’s the one she trumpeted throughout the 2012 campaign, assigning a sky-high $3 billion-plus estimate that became the VTGOP’s rallying cry (for all the good it did them). And then there’s a second one which she released, much more quietly as far as I can tell, earlier this year, which pegged single-payer’s cost at about $2 billion.

Remsen ignores all that history, and focuses her attention solely on Wilton’s second estimate. Which, mirabile dictu, is in the same ballpark as the recently released Avalere study, commissioned by a coalition of business and health care institutions. And so, Remsen awarded the crown and scepter in Policy Wonk to Wilton, who accepted with all due fake humility:

“I’m just glad a little town treasurer with an Excel file and some spare time could come with the same number” as the well-paid consultant, Wilton said.

Gack.

After the jump: double and triple gack.  

…Despite her partisan history, Wilton said she didn’t set out to try to undercut Green Mountain Care. “I did the work because I was curious.”

Double gack.

Remsen then lists all the similarities between Wilton 2.0 and Avalere, which I guess proves WIlton’s credibility. Which “proves” the article’s thesis: Wilton was unfairly maligned due to her partisanship. Or, as her anti-reform crony puts it:

“If you are not on the go-along, get-along team, you are the evil stepsister,” said Darcie Johnston, another skeptic with strong Republican connections. The organization she founded – Vermonters for Health Care Freedom – also raised questions last winter about the cost estimate projected in the UMass study.

Oh, so now Johnston is another prophet without honor? Triple gack.

There’s a whole string of illogic running through this story. It completely accepts Avalere’s report as independent and untainted; as we pointed out last week, there are serious problems with that conclusion.

Avalere’s supposed impeccability is then used to “prove” Wilton’s. In the process, Remsen omits any mention of Wilton’s inconvenient 2012 misfire.

This, then, “proves” the thesis statement: “political affiliation affects message reception.” Which, as I said, needs no proof whatsoever. But the implication is that Wilton’s partisan background blinded us all to her wisdom. She is allowed to claim, unchallenged, that her own ideology had absolutely no effect on her estimates.

Which gives retroactive credence to the fundamental claim of Wilton’s 2012 campaign: that she was a policy expert with the training and experience to handle the Treasurer’s office. (When, in fact, the real policy expert was her opponent, Beth Pearce.)

Which is a nice step toward rehabilitating WIlton’s image for another run at treasurer.

All in all, Remsen and the Freeploid did a real solid for WIlton — if not for their readers. Inaccurate, illogical, uncritical, incomplete, misleading, and just plain weird. Ladies and gennum, your front-runner for the 2013 Mark Smith Award: Nancy Remsen, for “Political Affiliation Affects Message Reception on Government-Run Insurance.”