The defection of Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords from the
Republican Party brought into sharp relief the
contrast between George W. Bush’s mantra about
changing the negative tone of Washington and the reality.
The conservative Washington Times may have expressed
the schizophrenia best on its May 24 editorial page. The
newspaper, which is financed by South Korean theocrat Rev.
Sun Myung Moon, highlighted what it called the “outrage of
the week” in an editorial that accused Senate Democrats of
delivering “a major hit” to “the political civility that President
George W. Bush committed himself to restore in Washington.”
The editorial complained that Democratic leaders had
balked at a plan to let 98-year-old Sen. Strom Thurmond,
R-S.C., skip some late-night votes by “pairing” him with a
Democratic senator who would agree not to vote. Though this
decision seems to have come from the Democratic
leadership, the Times tossed in freshman Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton for blame, with a gratuitous slap at profits
she made from commodities trading in the 1970s.
Then, in its own strange “pairing” – given the concern for
civility – the Times published a crude editorial cartoon
depicting Jeffords with donkey ears. “If he talks like a
jackass, walks like a jackass, looks like a jackass, and calls
himself an elephant, then he’s probably a dumb jackass,” the
Washington Times cartoonist wrote.
This unblushing juxtaposition of high-minded language about
civility and the politics of insult has become typical of this new
political landscape in which language grows ever more
distant from reality. Bush’s supporters, in particular, wax
eloquent about their commitment to political gentility while
continuing the opposite behavior, without a wince for the
hypocrisy.
The Jeffords defection, which cost Republicans control of the
Senate, ripped off the genteel masks big time. The Wall
Street Journal dubbed Jeffords “a big baby” in one online
editorial. “Benedict Jeffords,” howled the headline of the New
York Post.
The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg observed ruefully, “I
know that it’s illegal to sew a half-starved weasel into his
small intestine, but there are other options.” [For a
compilation of these and other conservative comments about
Jeffords, see The Washington Post, May 25, 2001]
Judicial Restraint?
Beyond language, the events of the past decade have made
clear that even the application of law is now just a political weapon.
On the same days as the civility editorial and the
Jeffords-jackass cartoon, The Washington Times carried
advertisements for a “tribute to Honorable N. Sanders Sauls,”
the Florida judge who rejected Vice President Al Gore’s
motion for a Florida recount after Sauls had eaten up
precious time last fall and then refused to examine the ballots
that had been introduced as evidence. [WT, May 24, 2001]
This latest Sanders Sauls tribute – scheduled for June 7 – is
sponsored by the right-wing Judicial Watch, which filed an
endless string of lawsuits against Democrats during the
Clinton administration and intervened on Bush’s behalf in the
recount battle. Sauls, who apparently sees nothing wrong in
siding openly with partisan factions, also is being honored in
June by the FreeRepublic.com group, another far-right
collection of Clinton-haters.
But the Right’s media and attack groups are not alone in their
campaign to consolidate public opinion around the legitimacy
of Bush’s ascension to the presidency. Elements of the
mainstream news media, which increasingly moves in synch
with the conservative media, are serving that effort as well.
In a May 16 column, Washington Post columnist Michael
Kelly torched those who still object to Bush’s victory or see a
pro-Bush tilt in the media. To make his point, Kelly blended
three old and new myths about the national press corps.
A 'Liberal' Media
Kelly’s argument opens with the old canard about a “liberal” news media.
The core of this argument – dating back about a quarter
century – is that surveys have found Washington journalists
more likely to vote Democratic than Republican, though some
more refined studies, such as one sponsored by Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting, judged working journalists
generally more liberal than the average Americans on social
issues while more conservative on economic ones.
Nevertheless, the fundamental illogic of the “liberal” media
argument is the supposition that working reporters control the
news coverage, rather than the people who own the
newspapers and television networks.
The key -- and obvious -- point is that the owners set the
editorial policies and hire editors who enforce these policies.
Reporters are essentially hired help whose careers rise or fall
depending on how well they please the news executives.
Hypothetically, for instance, a poll of the news staff at the New
York Post might show that rank-and-file editorial workers
favored Gore over Bush, say, 2-to-1, a not-unreasonable
supposition given the newspaper’s base in New York City.
Using the “liberal media” logic then, one would conclude that
the New York Post was an overwhelmingly liberal newspaper.
What that “logic” would miss, however, is that the owner,
Rupert Murdoch, is a conservative who hires senior editors
who reflect his point of view. These editors decide how
stories are assigned, edited and placed within the
newspaper. They also write the editorials, pick the columnists
– and fire or demote reporters who don’t get with the
program.
Therefore, it matters little that the lady writing obits might
have voted for Gore or that the fellow putting headlines on
wire copy might have voted for Bush. What matters is the
political perspective of the people in charge.
Kelly, who is editor of The Atlantic, writes as if he’s oblivious
to this basic fact of journalistic life.
A Second Myth
Kelly’s second myth was his insistence that “independent
news organizations have reported that, under almost any
conceivable scenario of recounting the Florida vote, George
W. Bush beat Al Gore.” Kelly wrote that because of this
supposed fact, “the cry that Bush is a robber-president has
lost a bit of oomph.”
Again, Kelly either was not aware of the latest news from
Florida or chose to ignore it. The most recent findings of the
unofficial newspaper studies of the Florida vote indicate that
Gore – not only was the winner nationally by more than half a
million votes – but was the choice of Florida voters.
USA Today estimated that Gore lost a net of 15,000 to
25,000 votes from confusion over poorly designed ballots –
far more than Bush’s 537-vote official margin.
Yet, even ignoring those spoiled ballots, the Miami Herald
and USA Today found that Gore would have won under
reasonable standards for judging the clear intent of voters.
Gore would have defeated Bush by 242 votes if a statewide
recount had counted so-called “overvotes” – those mistakenly
kicked out by machine counters as having more than one
presidential choice – and “undervotes” with perforated chads
or multiple indentations, indicating that a malfunctioning
voting machine had prevented voters from punching through
their choice for president and other races.
Gore’s margin would have been larger if ballots with
indentations only for president were counted, too. Bush would
have prevailed only if all ballots with indentations were thrown
out, the newspapers found. [USA Today, Miami Herald, May
11, 2001]
So, Kelly’s assertion that Gore lost under “almost any
conceivable scenario” is wrong.
A Flawed Study
The third myth in Kelly’s column was his reliance on a new
study by a group calling itself the Project for Excellence in
Journalism, an organization funded by the Pew Charitable Trust.
This group put out a report that purported to find that “contrary
to Democratic complaints, George W. Bush has not gotten
an easier ride from the American media in the first 100 days
than Bill Clinton did in his famously rocky start. … Despite a
very good first month, Bush’s coverage overall was actually
less positive than Bill Clinton’s eight years ago.”
Rather than show any skepticism about these findings, which
clash with any clear recollection of the harsh treatment of
Clinton versus the rave reviews for Bush, Kelly embraces the
report as if it were holy writ.
Kelly even cites as support for his position an article by The
Washington Post’s John Harris. But Harris’ article actually
had concluded the opposite, that Bush’s coverage indeed
was softer than Clinton’s. “The truth is, this new president has
done things with relative impunity that would have been huge
uproars if they had occurred under Clinton,” Harris wrote,
[WP, May 6, 2001]
In his May 16 column, Kelly also forgets that he was one of
the commentators who earlier had perceived a friendly media
attitude toward Bush. In a March 7 column listing several
factors in Bush’s early success, Kelly wrote that Bush
“benefits from an easy and shallow charm, which is useful in
winning over an easy and shallow press corps.” [Washington
Post, March 7, 2001]
Yet, this one Pew-funded study swept away all the
observations of Bush getting an easy ride. In a different
journalistic time, a study that sharply conflicted with what was
apparent to nearly any observer would draw its own scrutiny.
What methodology was employed? Were the judgments
slanted for some reason?
Any careful examination of the report would have shown it not
to be worth the money that Pew ponied up for it. As Bob
Somerby of DailyHowler.com has noted, the Pew-funded
report covered not the first 100 days as advertised, but only
the first 60. (Actually, the study examined about 30 days of
the first 60 days, according to the study’s methodology.)
Limited Sample
More importantly, the study based its conclusions on a very
narrow – and to a great extent, outdated – selection of news outlets.
The study looked at only two newspapers, The Washington
Post and The New York Times. No examination was given of
the increasingly influential conservative news media or even
major regional newspapers. There was no counting of
articles from The Washington Times, the New York Post, the
Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, or the Los Angeles Times.
It’s also not clear why the Pew-funded study did not look at
the two biggest-circulation newspapers, USA Today and the
Wall Street Journal. Since The Washington Post and The
New York Times both endorsed Clinton and Gore, their
editorial pages could be expected to be more supportive of
Clinton and more critical of Bush, the key fact that skewed the findings.
By contrast, if the Wall Street Journal had been used, its
relentlessly anti-Clinton, pro-Bush opinion articles would have
tipped the survey in a different direction.
As for magazines, the study checked out only one --
Newsweek. There was no tabulation of the coverage in
Murdoch’s Weekly Standard or other influential right-wing
journals, such as the American Spectator, National Review
and Moon’s Insight magazine.
For television, the survey was slightly broader but still missed
the point about how today’s media influences the public.
The study looked at the evening news programs from CBS,
NBC, ABC and PBS. It ignored coverage from the cable
networks and the pundit programs, major shapers of political
opinion. The study ignored MSNBC and its roster of
loudmouth commentators, as well as Murdoch’s
conservative-leaning Fox News and AOL Time Warner’s
CNN.
Other important media outlets, such as talk radio, were
missed altogether, although the impact of the conservative
voices of Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy were central
to tearing down Clinton at the start of his administration and
building up Bush at the start of his.
The Pew-funded study had other major shortcomings,
endemic to such efforts to categorize coverage as "positive"
or "negative" and equate that with fairness. The simple fact is
that some actions are more deserving of critical coverage
than others.
To say, for instance, that most coverage of Oklahoma
bomber Timothy McVeigh, has been negative would not
necessarily mean the coverage was unfair. Similarly,
politicians deserve negative coverage sometimes and other
times they don’t.
One might hope that the Project for Excellence in Journalism
would have exhibited a more sophisticated understanding of
the workings of journalism. But this Pew-financed operation
seems to be living in the 1950s when a couple of mainstream
newspapers could dominate the media agenda and the
major TV networks had a lock on what the public would hear
from broadcast news.
Trashing the White House
This approach to quantifying coverage also misses the
journalistic twists of individual stories. The first weeks of the
new Bush administration, for instance, were dominated as
much by critical coverage of former President Clinton as they
were by positive coverage of Bush.
One of the principal tales was the story of Clinton aides
allegedly trashing the White House and stripping Air Force
One before departing. The story received front-page
coverage in The Washington Post and was trumpeted on the
pundit shows and across much of the national news media.
In this case, the Bush White House played a clever game.
Officially, Bush's surrogates acted magnanimous in urging
the press not to make too big a deal of the vandalism. On
background, Bush's operatives fed the press juicy tidbits
about slashed wiring, pornographic graffiti and looted
government property.
Typical of the media’s lack of journalistic rigor when dealing
with negative Clinton stories, the Washington press corps did
not demand proof of the vandalism, such as photographs or
other hard evidence. Instead, the press corps simply
published unattributed accounts of vengeful Democrats
ransacking government property, a theme that meshed well
with Bush’s public call for a restoration of dignity in the White
House.
Nearly four months later, the General Services Administration
issued a report finding no evidence that Clinton’s aides had
trashed the White House. “The condition of the real property
was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when
tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy,”
the federal landlord agency said.
Unlike the front-page treatment of the allegations, the GSA
report was either buried deep in newspapers or ignored
altogether. The Washington Post ran a wire story on page
A13 on May 18, 2001.
Nine days later, Jake Siewart, Clinton’s last press secretary,
wrote an opinion column published in the Post’s Outlook
section. “After years of watching the Washington press corps
at work, I know it’s pointless to ask for apologies,” Siewart
wrote. “Apparently, most of the commentators and reporters
who reported this story four months ago have ‘moved on.’
Being a journalist today means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Siewart contrasted the apocryphal damage to the White
House to the real damage to the reputation of Clinton aides.
“The Clinton staff, who offered the new Bush team detailed
briefing books, one-on-one meetings and personal tours to
make the transition seamless, got to go home and have their
reputations trashed by the people they had helped. All in the
name of ‘changing the tone’ in Washington. And the press
corps did not just sit back and watch the vandals at work; it
lent a hand.” [WP, May 27, 2001]
A New Era
What all this indicates is that the nation has entered a new
era -- not one of political civility but one in which the words of
day-to-day political discourse have grown almost fully
estranged from any real meaning or attachment to fact.
Propaganda – not journalism – is ascendant.
Yet, rather than climbing the ramparts to battle for the
traditional values of journalism – reason, fairness and truth –
many Washington media figures have chosen to spare
themselves and their careers.
In the 1980s, Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-contra
stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek.