Spin and bear it

By GottaLaff

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Mladen Antonov / AFP/Getty Images

A computer screen in Paris shows President Obama’s virtual town hall meeting. The event drew more than 104,000 questions, and 3.6 million votes on which questions he should answer.

What ever happened to actual news reporting? Here are a some examples of the spin the L.A. Times put on just about every Obama story today. These were not found on the Op-Ed pages. These are front page and/or Section A reports that are supposed to represent real news, not editorializing:

On Thursday, the president took another step in embracing the power of technology -- hosting a virtual town hall that elicited more than 104,000 questions and drew 3.6 million votes to determine which the president would answer.

In the end, given that the questions were vetted by the White House, it felt about as spontaneous as an infomercial. [...]

What Obama had to say Thursday about the economy, education and healthcare was nothing new. [...]

Which may be why at 9 a.m. in the airy lobby of USC's Annenberg School for Communication, a dozen students who were sprawled on armchairs or sitting at tables barely seemed to take note. A wall was filled with TV screens, but only one was showing Obama holding forth.

"They'll probably be playing it on repeat at CNN," said Susy Garcia Salas, 26, a conference coordinator who recently graduated from the communications school. "I might go look for the highlights online." [...]

USC communications major Laurel West, 20, said: "I like that they're trying to get people more involved with the process.

"But I'm not sure about its effectiveness."

She said she didn't have time to watch. [...]

But was the event truly engaging the public, or only creating an illusion of doing so?

Can't get more objective than that, right? There were a few parts that weren't negative, but the overall tone was a big ho-hum review of the president's online town hall meeting. Key word: Review.

Then there was this piece about the White House Easter Egg Roll:

Maybe we should go back to standing in line.

The White House's Internet distribution of free tickets to its South Lawn Easter Egg Roll appears to have begun with a splat.

Yes, there were glitches:

Thursday's release of tickets in batches produced what some described as large gaps in availability, creating frustration and confusion.

In recent years, most people wanting tickets for the rite of spring -- a free event held the Monday after Easter -- would stand in line, often for hours, the Saturday before.

In the years before that, huge lines would form Easter Sunday and into the next morning.

The switch to online distribution was envisioned as a way to ease the process and make tickets available to people across the nation. By 6 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, the tickets had been snatched up by people in 41 states, a spokeswoman said.

Complaints began surfacing early Thursday, shortly after the tickets became available.

Again, the overall tone seemed unnecessarily critical. Come on, huge lines and endless hours of waiting wasn't a piece of cake, either.

It's fine to point out flaws or have opinions, but after reading these two "news" articles, I came away with a feeling that President Obama's attempts to bring us into the 21st century were being scoffed at instead of reported dispassionately.

Transition isn't easy, whether it's into a new world of technology or a new administration. But why the negative spin? Or am I just being overly sensitive?