Media Poising as Apologists For Romney Not Releasing His Tax Returns

       We've been hearing a lot over the last day that there's some hypocrisy that Harry Reid isn't releasing tax returns. This is a false analogy. Over his career he has released a lot of public information. Plus, he's not running for President. Every Presidential candidate since Romney's father in the 1960s has released their tax returns. What makes Romney special?

     I notice though that the media seems to all be latching onto this false analogy between Reid's tax returns and Romney's. In other words, the reason that Romney is unprecedentedly withholding his tax returns from the American people is because Harry Reid hasn't.

     Why did all the other GOP candidates release theirs then? Why have candidates all released them since the 60s if it's contingent on Harry Reid releasing his though he's not running for anything right now? Yet listen to Politico dutifully write the headline "Reid Not Releasing His Own Returns" to give the false impression that this is a meaningful analogy:

    "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid again deflected questions Monday about releasing his tax returns, even as he continued to pound the demand for Mitt Romney to make more of his own public."

    "Instead, Reid pointed to the financial disclosure forms he files as a member of Congress, which provide different information."

   Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79419.html#ixzz22rnT0LEH

   Notice how they are questioning his words rather than taking them at face value as they do when Romney insists he paid "lots and lots of taxes?"

    They seem to want to perform the kind of due diligence on Reid that they haven't done on Romney. Then there was CNBC shamelessly drawing another false analogy by giving Donald Trump the platform to smear the President about school transcripts. Can they be anymore transparent?

    "Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney should release more of his tax returns only after President Barack Obama makes public his college transcripts, real estate magnate Donald Trump said on CNBC."

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/48545430

   This piece doesn't even bother to point out that there is no tradition of Presidential candidates providing their school grades. Politico wanted to point out that Reid's information is not the same as his tax returns. Yet, CNBC doesn't point out that Trump is demanding very different information.

   It seems that the media is picking sides on this issue right now. Every piece calls out Reid rather than just reporting what he said, whereas, this piece doesn't call out Trump and the media is demurring from calling out Romney when he makes unsubstantiated claims.