Press releases drive me crazy. Unless they're coming from Glenn Grothman they're not usually fun enough to make up for the disingenuous information they present. There's just something so corny about a statement that is meant to read like a news article. But that's the genius of it just like third-party attack ads, press releases are meant to convey the notion of objectivity.
Of course, when there actually is a real news article a candidate can quote, the possibility for manipulation only increases. A statement on Brett Hulsey's campaign website puts that on display. Hulsey posts part of an article from the Cap Times about the 77th district race, which describes all the candidates' attempts to prove their environmental credentials. However, on Hulsey's page, he conveniently leaves out anything in the article about the other candidates. The article jumps from a description of the race to a quote from Hulsey.
In all fairness, Hulsey specified that what he posted was "from an article in the Capital Times," and provided a link to the real story. Nevertheless, what he did in only showing half the story differs from what his opponents did. Both Dianne Hesselbein and John Imes post the entire stories on their websites. Fred Wade, who has posted other news articles about the race, has not posted it. Unsurprisingly, Doug Zwank, the only Democrat who Spencer Black did not express support for the in article, was not interested in showing the story to potential supporters either.
