-Caveat Lector-
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20127-2000Nov5.html
Is the Press Helping Bush?
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 6, 2000; Page C01
If George W. Bush wins the White House tomorrow, some liberal
pundits have already figured out whom to blame: the press.
If only journalists had been as tough on Bush as on Al Gore, the
argument goes, the governor's weaknesses would have been exposed
for all the world to see, and the vice president wouldn't have
been forced on the defensive over trivial exaggerations.
One flaw in this theory is that the media are not as all-powerful
as some of their practitioners like to think. While journalists
play a crucial role in framing issues and fanning controversies,
the voters also have been exposed to eight days of conventions,
41�2 hours of candidate debates and thousands of hours of paid
ads.
Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, not surprisingly, sees the coverage
tilted the other way. "How many stories have we seen in the press
about the Texas record, and how few about Gore's record?" he
asks. "There has been ongoing scrutiny of every piece of news and
data coming out of Texas, as if George W. Bush can be blamed for
everything bad in Texas. The governor has been judged very
harshly every time he flubs a word. The vice president has
received no such scrutiny. He confused 'mammogram' and 'sonogram'
and there was barely a peep."
Here's the indictment delivered by three commentators on the
left. Washington Monthly Editor Charlie Peters: "The media's
approach to George Bush's misrepresentations, as opposed to those
of Al Gore, has been notably sotto voce, even though it seems to
me that Bush's have been a good deal more substantial than
Gore's. . . . The unfortunate result of all this is that Gore's
credibility rating in the polls has plummeted. If Bush wins this
could be the first election decided by the press and the irony is
that I'm sure most reporters will finally cast their own votes
for Gore."
Salon's Jake Tapper: "With the media curiously refusing to shine
a light on the things Bush doesn't seem to know or understand . .
. Bush's stylistic superiority during the debates furthered his
momentum. Call it the 'soft bigotry of lowered expectations.' He
faked his way through it. . . . Raising questions about his
fundamental competence seems partisan in a way that tweaking his
candlepower does not."
The Nation's Eric Alterman: "The media have given George Bush a
pass on pretty much everything that matters in a president. . . .
Reporters have simply assumed the enormous policy differences
between Gore and Bush . . . to be of trivial importance . . . For
while [the media] was focusing on 'Bush the dummy' and 'Gore the
liar,' reporters did not notice that Bush had a far more serious
credibility problem than the vice president."
To be sure, if Gore had said, as Bush did in the second debate,
that the Europeans should put troops in the Balkans (they already
provide most of the peacekeeping forces), it would have been a
far bigger story. And hardly anyone focused on Bush holding just
one news conference in two months, although Gore was chided for
doing the same thing earlier. The media simply created different
narratives for Gore (the exaggerator) and Bush (the lightweight);
the governor was covered harshly in some respects but not in
others.
Still, as Tapper observes: "If he's so dumb, how come he's on the
brink of becoming the next president of the United States?"
Going Negative
Those who believe the media were easier on Bush will find some
support in a new Project for Excellence in Journalism study.
Examining television, newspaper and Internet coverage from the
last week in September through the third week in October, the
report says Bush got nearly twice as many positive stories as
Gore. The majority of all stories were negative, and in the
period during the debates, fewer than one in 10 pieces considered
the candidates' policy differences. Two thirds, by contrast, were
about the candidates' performances, strategy and tactics. Not
only were 24 percent of Bush stories positive, compared to 13
percent for Gore, but Bush stories were more likely to be related
to issues, while Gore's coverage focused more on his campaign's
internal politics.
Television framed half its stories around political strategy, the
project says, while newspapers were most likely to write about
issues that affect readers (32 percent), in part because of
editorials and columns. Regional newspapers, meanwhile, were
three times less likely than national papers to write about
Bush's character.
Battle of the Advocates
Washington writer Andrew Sullivan has picked a very public fight
with the Advocate magazine that has led to a trial separation, if
not a divorce.
Sullivan, who is HIV-positive, has written for the gay magazine
over the years, but he denounced the Advocate after it published
what Sullivan dismissed as a very soft interview with President
Clinton.
Unloading on the Advocate's Chris Bull, he wrote on
AndrewSullivan.com that Bull's interview with the president
"reads as if Bull was on his knees, polishing Clinton's shoes
with his tongue. . . . If anyone needs proof that the gay press
is still not ready for prime-time, this interview is Exhibit A.
Next time, the Advocate should just get a Democratic Party
activist to interview Clinton and be done with it."
A harsh critic of Clinton, the former New Republic editor was
outraged at the president's attempt to equate his impeachment
with discrimination against gays.
Advocate Editor Judy Wieder says Sullivan "had taken it upon
himself to viciously attack the magazine because we didn't handle
Clinton the way he would have." While she is "a great fan of
Andrew Sullivan," she says, "I was understandably confronted with
a pretty furious staff. The temperature in the office was quite
heated. Why would he want to write for a magazine he doesn't
think is ready for prime time?"
Wieder says she withdrew a pending assignment and suggested that
they "let things calm down" before Sullivan writes for the
magazine again. But Sullivan proclaimed himself banned: "Poor
Judy, who has worked wonders with the magazine, gets mau-maued by
the Stalinists for even asking me to write." Sullivan adds in an
interview: "What does it tell you about a magazine that it spikes
writers for ideological reasons in an election campaign?"
But Wieder notes that she published Sullivan's anti-Clinton views
during the impeachment saga and says he's welcome to write again
� down the road.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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