How would you classify this story?

DQ often says — and I know he’s correct — that I tend to be too harsh on the media, forgetting that the media’s goal is to sell the most interesting spin pm a story, even if that story doesn’t comport with my view of how the same story should be reported. He and I have had some vigorous (but always friendly and civil) debates about coverage coming out of Iraq and Israel. With regard to reports from these two regions, I often find them biased because, with regard to Iraq, the press omits good news, and with regard to the Israel, the Press (a) gives moral equivalence to Israelis and Palestinians, something I don’t think Palestinians, by their conduct, deserve; and (b) focuses obsessively (and on the front page) on Palestinian children the Israelis kill, while pretty much giving short shrift (and back page status) to any children, Palestinian or Israeli, that the Palestinians kill.

By the way, as to Iraq, I’m certainly in good company in thinking that the media reports only bad news, not good. DQ might say good news isn’t news, but I think that’s true only in “bleed and lead” local reporting. When it comes to Iraq, which is the major political issue of our time, after pounding the bad news, the fact that good things are happening should be news too.

With that in mind — the fact that I tend to be suspicious of MSM coverage — I have a question for you. The SF Chronicle just did a story about Obama, which is presented as political analysis, but which I read as a puff piece by a wishful thinking reporter. How would you classify this story?

UPDATE: Incidentally, here is what I think of as an interesting fact based news story that ought to be given prominence as an offset to the endless “grim milestone” reports that the papers like to run on a regular basis.

UPDATE II:  Here’s some more news that the media doesn’t consider news.