The folks in the office of Gov. Pat McCrory still have the news release machine humming at full speed this election year, issuing statements and claiming credit for as much as they can even when it doesn’t make sense.

This week it was the news that UNC-Chapel Hill and East Carolina were both ranked in the top 100 colleges that provide the best value, with UNC-CH ranked 14th and ECU ranked 99th, that prompted questionable claims from the governor’s office.

The office issued a press release about the rankings touting McCrory’s support of higher education including legislation capping fee increases and lowering tuition to $500 a semester at three campuses—not UNC-CH or ECU.

McCrory’s release doesn’t mention the budget cuts of several hundred million dollars to the UNC system in the last four years that he supported or his frequent statements that the universities are graduating people with degrees that are not marketable.

The news release from his office points out that the ranking analyzed “labor market outcomes of graduates from 1,200 accredited four-year colleges or universities that enroll 750 or more students.”

It turns out that students who graduate from UNC-CH and ECU are actually doing pretty well even with courses that McCrory and his supporters complain about.

And it’s worth nothing that UNC-CH has long been ranked among the best higher education values in the country. McCrory’s not so subtle attempt to somehow use that history for political gain is another reminder that this is a heated election year.

TILLIS’ CONFUSING MESSAGES ABOUT YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis had an interesting post on his Facebook page this week on National Voter Registration Day, a 23 second video in which Tillis says he thinks it “is very important to be involved in the election process from a very early age so your voice can be heard.”

Exactly right, though the message is not exactly in line with the voter suppression law he shepherded through the General Assembly when he was Speaker of the House, most of which a federal appeals court struck down.

Among the provisions in the law that Tillis continues to defend was one that ended pre-registration of 16 and 17 year olds. Apparently Tillis doesn’t think it is that important to be involved at an early age after all.

PARTISAN CLAIMS FROM A MISIDENTIFIED FORMER JOURNALIST

“Former White House reporter says media has foot on the scale for Clinton.” That was a recent headline in the Fayetteville Observer that seemed to support the frequent allegation from folks on the Right that the media is somehow biased against conservative candidates.

The story was about an appearance at Methodist College by Richard Benedetto—described as a former White House Correspondent—as the featured speaker in the school’s third annual Presidential Lecture Series.

The Observer reported that Benedetto said that the media “wrongly believe that it’s their job to stop Donald Trump,” and that the “press is really, really, into supporting Hillary Clinton.”

That will likely come as a surprise to the Clinton campaign.

Benedetto is hardly an impartial observer. It is true that he was the White House Correspondent for USA Today for many years but he has abandoned his own impartial journalistic path and is now a frequent critic of progressive politicians.

A column by Benedetto in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago carried the headline “How Obama gets away with it,” with a sub headline about the “president’s dismal record.”

That’s absurd of course, but Benedetto is entitled to that opinion. But it is not one of an impartial observer of the political scene.

Benedetto is an adjunct journalism professor at American University in Washington and also affiliated with the Fund for American Studies at George Mason University, a conservative education organization with many conservative political figures on its board.

In other words, Benedetto is hardly just a former White House correspondent when he weighs in on the media and the presidential race.

He is also a conservative commentator and part of a right-wing organization. That is his right and there’s nothing wrong with him speaking to students at college campuses, but students and the public and the readers of the Fayetteville Observer deserve to know more about his background so they can put his partisan remarks in context.

Chris Fitzsimon is founder and executive director of N.C. Policy Watch.

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Chris Fitzsimon

Contributing Columnist