The 'hometown paper' attack

Newspapers may not get much respect these days, but the "hometown paper" still does.

On Monday, the campaigns of both U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole and state Sen. Kay Hagan used lines from each other's "hometown papers" as an attack.

Both showed the risks and rewards of that strategy. 

The quote from Dole's spokesman made it sound as though the newspaper had called North Carolina a "Mecca" for illegal immigration, when the original Greensboro News & Record article said "critics" call the state that.

The quote from Hagan's spokeswoman noted that the Salisbury Post said that Dole had "failed to fix" the illegal immigration problem, but it did not make clear that it was the Post's editorial board that had written the line, not the news staff.

As much as they bash the media, campaigns like to quote newspapers in their attacks because it lends an air of third-person impartiality. To use an opponent's "hometown" paper adds an extra layer of credibility, since the presumption is that, if anything, it would favor the opponent.

But in many cases, the original context of the quote is much different than the campaign's attack.