Article attempts to mislead voters

An article posted by opensecrets.com and Published by Massie Ritsch on August 7, 2008 10:40 AM attempts to mislead voters by suggesting that Obama receives money from Oil Execs. The headline article "Oil Industry Leans Toward McCain, But Big Producers Favor Obama[,]" suggests this.  However, I hardly think that employee contributions qualify as "oil producers." Ritsch combines PAC contributions and individual contributions and then compares McCain's monetary figure to Obama's monetary figure: "overall, McCain's campaign has gotten three times more money from the industry than Obama's has -- $1.3 million compared to about $394,000." Ritsch makes the mistake of equating industry contributions to individual contributions to make his misleading headline more credible. However, one assertion can be made, perhaps, is that "big producers" is ambiguous. Is he saying that the "big producers" are the individual contributors? or is he suggesting that the "big producers" are  the oil companies? In any case his comparisons are flawed. You simply cannot compare industry contributions to individual contributions, and then lump them together to compare them with someone who only receives individual contributions. Here is a passage from Ritsch's article: "Tallying contributions by employees in the industry and their families, we found that Exxon, Chevron and BP have all contributed more money to Obama than to McCain."  I suspect Massie his trying to do a royal screwover on Barack, or maybe he just doesn't understand. My point is this, Ritsch needs to take responsibility for encouraging these notions. Despite what the body of the text clearly shows (that Obama  receives money from individual contributors within the oil industry), people who harbor hostility and racism towards Barack are looking for data or reasons to not vote for him. They look for "evidence" to validate their false perceptions about Barack so that they can continue to express their hate-filled rants behind their computers. To simply distort factual evidence to assert your headline is selfish and irresponsible. These types of articles, and this one in particular provide a  safe haven and validates twisted and  hated-filled assertions. People who are in search for these types of articles, will read the headline and cherry pick quotes to affirm their stances, despite incontrovertible evidence that supports the antithesis. Ritsch ought to either brush up on logical comparisons or not write at all.

Link to article: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/08/oil-industry-leans-toward-mcca.html