The Tweet watchers at Michelle Malkin's Twitchy.com caught an Associated Press reporter seeking out (perhaps the term should be "solicitweeting," with "solicitweetion" as the related noun) negative comments about Mitch Daniels on Twitter earlier today from Purdue alumni and students about the appointment announced today of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels to become that school's next president.

After the jump, readers will see AP reporter Tom LoBianco's birdbrained tweets, followed by what should be considered an embarrassing mistake in the copy of his co-authored story (saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes):

Here are the Twitchy "solicitweetion" grabs:

Perhaps if LoBianco weren't so obsessed with finding naysayers, he might have noticed this embarrassing sequence in the dispatch he co-authored with reporter Tom Coyne (note the repetition in the first and fourth paragraphs presented at the AP's home site):

Okay, guys, we get it. There's a "perception." You and Margaret Ferguson seem to be the only ones who have it.

The loathsome LoBianco and Coyne burned an awful lot of bandwidth questioning Daniels's supposed lack of academic credentials. Hmm -- the three Democratic Party examples I'll name predate the Twitter era, but I wonder if AP reporters tried as hard to get negative feedback about Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey when he became President of the New School in 2001, former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala when she took over at the University of Miami in Florida that same year, or former Senator David Boren when he got the CEO role at Oklahoma University in 1994?

Does anyone think there was similar skepticism about Boren's, Shalala's, or Kerrey's academic cred? Don't be silly. For Boren and Shalala (I was unable to find a Kerrey-related item quickly), the respective answers are: puff piece and puff piece.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.