Two Papers in One!

On Friday, we noted that ABC News had engaged in some sleight-of-hand to conceal Charlie Gibson's misrepresentation of a Sarah Palin quote. On Saturday Jacques Steinberg, a reporter for the New York Times, noted it too:

The questions some respondents took issue with included Mr. Gibson's reference to a recent church speech, in which he quoted Ms. Palin as saying, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." In an excerpt of the speech on YouTube--which ABC spliced into the interview when it was shown--Ms. Palin had prefaced that comment by appearing to say she was praying that America's mission in Iraq represented God's will.

But Palin's meaning escaped the Times editorial page, which repeated the falsehood that her prayer was an assertion:

Her answers about why she had told her church that President Bush's failed policy in Iraq was "God's plan" did nothing to dispel our concerns about her confusion between faith and policy. Her claim that she was quoting a completely unrelated comment by Lincoln was absurd.

How about this exchange from Barack Obama's January interview with Beliefnet.com:

Q: Is it difficult in the rough and tumble of campaign politics to stick to that, to live out your faith? And can you talk about whether you have a favorite prayer or what you pray about?

Obama: The prayer that I tell myself every night is a fairly simple one: I ask in the name of Jesus Christ that my sins are forgiven, that my family is protected and that I am an instrument of God's will. I'm constantly trying to align myself to what I think he calls on me to do. And sometimes you hear it strongly and sometimes that voice is more muted.

Obama, like Palin, prays that he is on God's side. Palin, unlike Obama, does not (so far as we know) claim to hear the voice of God. Why is she the one who gets painted as a religious nut?