Michael Luo followed Republican candidate Mitt Romney on the trail to Iowa for Friday's front-page report, "Romney Works to Put Skeptics' Doubt to Rest [1]."
Luo prominently called attention to Romney's Mormonism, while suggesting only the religious right has a problem with it.
"In national polls, Mr. Romney is still sometimes in single digits. But his more immediate problem, given his need to do well among Republican primary voters in the first contests early next year, may be the continued concerns of many conservative Christians about his religion - some evangelicals view Mormonism as something akin to a cult - and his relatively recent shift from supporter of abortion rights to opponent."
But do only conservativeChristians view Mormonism "as something akin to a cult"? Left-wing race-baiter Al Sharpton thinks so as well, as Luo well knows, given thatLuo wrote a story [2]Thursday [2] (with a pro-Sharpton-slant) about Sharpton suggesting Mormons weren't real Christians.
Luo also went a bit label-crazy with "conservative," using it to describe various people and interest groups 11 times in the 1,300-word story (not includingthelabelin the subhead) in a manner reminiscent of the paper's former conservative-beat [3]reporter [3]David Kirkpatrick.