Zito Shills For The Romney Campaign. Again.

And remember, this is one of the people the Trib's news division has covering the Romney campaign.

She begins her opinion column with a bit of Romney-dishonesty:

Mitt Romney was fired up.

“The president actually said, if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen.” He paused and threw his hands up before adding: “Really?”

Ah, Selena. But that's not all the president said, did he?  As the good book says "the truth shall set you free" (John 8:32).  To see the truth, we have to take a look at what the president actually said.  There are two things to keep in mind here - how Romney lies about it and then how Selena Zito lets him get away with it.

The current Romney lie was snipped from a campaign speech in Roanoke Virginia:

[L]ook, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. [emphasis added]

Now go back and look at how Romney characterized it.  Take a look at the middle paragraph.  Obama was
talking about various forms of infrastructure (roads, bridges, the internet), pointing out that a business' success is built upon the infrastructure that someone else built.

And yet, Romney, by snipping out the context, makes it sound as though Obama said that someone else built the successful business.  A lie.

Whatever the rhetorical distance you find between the truth and Romney's spin on it, is exactly the rhetorical distance that Zito allowed him to have - by not correcting him.

And this is a reporter that the Tribune-Review sends to cover the Romney campaign.