I was quite surprised when I picked up a copy of the LA Times today and noticed that the editors were reporting "old news".
On page one, journalists not only touted a "big lead" for presidential candidates - Hillary Clinton and John McCain - in one of their main features, but beefed up the report with a snazzy pie chart on page eighteen inside - with data strung together to reflect the alleged trend in the polls.
Buried down in the article, the newspaper casually noted in a mere line or two, that the data was gathered before the outcome announced in South Carolina on Saturday, January 26th - and prior to the "Kennedy" endorsement of Barack Obama (which was officially announced to the press on Monday, January 28th, 2008).
Curious!
The paper was quick to report on Bush's - "State of the Union" - speech just fresh off his lips last night.
In spite of the fact the polling data was all over the Network News on Saturday, January 26th (the eve of the Obama win) for some inexplicable reason, their writers were incapable of accurately "piecing together" a report of the "updated" trends as they stood at press deadline on Monday eve.
When you consider the fact their "old news" favored Hillary - at the expense of revealing Obama's obvious surge forward toward the throne over the weekend - you have to seriously wonder, is some influence peddling underfoot?