SPIN ALLEY

On NPR a few minutes ago, Juan Williams (who, of course, also gets paychecks from Fox) managed to get the phrase "trial lawyer" into his story on the upcoming VP debate three times. Once he used it to help explain why Halliburton was likely to come up in the debate (yes, Williams actually said Edwards will probably bring Halliburton up because he's a trial lawyer). Very fair; very balanced.

*****

UPDATE: I was so angry about the repeated use of "trial lawyer" that I missed the fact that Williams repeated Bush's "global test" distortion in the same piece, as Eric Alterman's guest blogger, Siva Vaidhyanathan, notes:

... this morning on NPR's Morning Edition, even Juan Williams bowed to the creeping laziness and conservativeness of NPR management and repeated Bush's accusation as if it were fact.  "He talked about getting global consent for America to take preemptive action," Williams said of Kerry.  The anchor, Renee Montaigne, said nothing to correct Williams.  Don't they watch the debates or read the newspaper at NPR?