Obama spoke, the news media wrote

And, as anyone local living through this election knows, the Las Vegas Sun predictably pulled punches to help the Reid campaign while the Las Vegas Review-Journal played it down the middle as did the Associated Press.

Here's the Sun's coverage.

Here's the Review-Journal's coverage.

And here's the AP's coverage.

All three news organizations noted that Obama made a crack about how slowly Harry Reid moves these days. (You can read my take on that, by clicking here.)

But only the R-J and the AP noted that Obama had to prompt the crowd to chant Harry Reid's name, instead of his. And only the R-J and the AP noted that Las Vegas unemployment had ticked up to an all-time high of 15% on the day Obama had come to town.

Both also noted the small crowd. The R-J estimated it at no more than 5,000 but also reported the official crowd count of 9,000. The AP used the 9,000 number.

The Sun meanwhile, never mentioned the record unemployment rate. Instead it focused on tactics for how Reid might win, including trying to suggest that early voting numbers, which has the GOP running ahead of Democrats statewide, is actually good for their candidate.

As far as the crowd size, the Sun didn't make an estimate itself, and merely went with the 9,000 number, saying, "And while the turnout was smaller than his (the president's) pull elsewhere -- a crowd estimated at 37,500 gathered earlier in the day to hear Obama at the University of Southern California -- the party faithful offered charged responses...." The Sun tells us it was less than the 37,500 at USC. Truth is it was a lot less — maybe 15 percent of the California crowd.

Given the long tradition of never saying anything bad about Reid in the LVSun, not to mention the scandal last week in which the Sun changed on-line at least two headlines after publication to more favor Reid, you gotta wonder whether the poor devils in the Sun newsroom have to run their stories by someone at the Reid campaign from now until Election Day.