The news media and google have been flogging this news item in the past 24 hours:
Will Nobel mean Gore will run for president?
By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, Oct 12 (Reuters) – The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Democrat Al Gore on Friday increases pressure on him to launch a late bid for the U.S. presidency, but advisers say he is showing no signs of interest in the 2008 race.
This isn’t journalism. It’s campaigning.
If Al Gore wants to enter the race now, fine. I don’t like the idea of candidates in either party wrapping up their nominations early, like George W. Bush did. If he has supporters who want to take advantage of the Nobel prize to push the issue, fine.
But disguising this campaign as Reuters has done? This is not reporting. This is beating the drums for a bandwagon.
There is no reason a Nobel prize puts pressure on anyone to run for president. Lots of people have won Nobel prizes without it putting pressure on them to run for anything. It might give people some publicity they can use to their advantage, but it doesn’t pressure them.
Here’s an honest lead sentence Reuters might have used: “Gore supporters are using the recent award of a Nobel prize to promote the idea of a run for the presidency.”
Or if it wanted to be a news agency instead of a partisan campaign agency, maybe it could instead do a little investigative reporting, and find out the role of these Gore groups in getting him the Nobel prize. We’ll probably find out anyway, several years from now. But Reuters could get a scoop and tell us about it now. That would be newsworthy.