Cutting Perdue some slack

From the Democracy NC Link of the day:

A WRAL-TV report follows the standard “gotcha” approach of emphasizing only the negative aspects about a series of amendments filed by the campaign committee of Gov. Bev Perdue. Most recently, the Perdue committee sent $48,000 to the State Board of Elections that it received from donors tied to Rusty Carter of Wilmington from 2005 to 2008, but now believes were likely from Carter’s business, an illegal source of campaign money. Perdue should actually get more applause for hiring staff to audit her committee’s finances so thoroughly and ferret out problems that have occurred with campaigns of Republicans and Democrats for years.

But the one-track media (that boasts of being the state’s best) wants to take credit for exposing wrongdoing, even when the Governor is the one who exposes it, as when her staff exposed improper gifts by Verizon to DMV employees during the Easley administration. The state Republican Party wants Perdue and her committee interrogated at a State Board of Elections hearing. As a Charlotte Observer editorial illustrates, look for media outlets to continue to pile on Perdue rather than take a balanced approach. The system of private donors supplying millions of dollars to politicians is guaranteed to produce enough fodder for an endless flow of gotcha stories.