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Lillian Pruitt, 68, of Minneapolis, listens to Sen. John Kerry at a fund-raising event, Monday, May 3, 2004, in Minneapolis. (AP Wideworld/Charlie Neibergall) |
David Stout covers President Bush's speech at a pancake breakfast in Maumee, Ohio this morning for the NYTimes.com. But his story, which extensively quotes the president attacking John Kerry, fails to include any sort of response from the Democratic challenger, or to offer readers the most basic assessment of the president's claims. Stout quotes Bush saying, among other things, "My opponent and others believe this [the war on terror] is a matter of intelligence and law enforcement," Mr. Bush said. "I strongly disagree. See, that was the attitude we had before Sept. 11. After the World Trade Center was attacked in 1993, they thought we could solve it with legal indictments." In fact, there's little difference between the two candidates' approaches to combating terrorism: Both have affirmed that it needs to be done through a combination of intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, and, when appropriate, military action. That Kerry, unlike Bush, "believe[s] this is a matter of intelligence and law enforcement" is Bush's spin on his opponent's stand, not his actual stand. It ought to be a reporter's job to point that out. If past is preface, the Times' defense here is that this is a story for the paper's online edition. Editors at various major papers have argued to Campaign Desk that readers understand online stories to be works in progress, and that the print edition provides the more detailed version the next morning. But as we said earlier, that argument presumes that online readers also buy and read the print newspaper. We've seen no evidence of that -- in fact, on weekdays the Times online readership actually exceeds its print readership. And the only indication those readers have that this story is incomplete are the easily-missed letters "CND" (which stand for Continuous News Desk) that appear in the piece's URL. Maybe it's time the Times apply the same standards to its most-read edition as it does to its dead-tree edition. |
Posted 05/04/04 at 05:27 PM |
Television isn't always the easiest form for presidential candidates to master: they have to learn to whittle multipart messages down to compact sound bites, and if they fail, they risk not seeing their face on the news that evening. To get an idea of how intense the pressure to generate TV-ready quotes can be, recall what Sam Donaldson famously said to Paul Brountas, Michael Dukakis' senior advisor, during the 1988 presidential campaign:
These days, even a few seconds of time can be too much for a candidate to ask. Last night, on the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather offered up the standard story about President Bush's campaign trip in the Midwest. "As he began two days of campaigning in Michigan and Ohio," said Rather, "the president had a fleet of star spangled buses, mostly friendly crowds, and he defended his Iraq policy as well as his handling of the US economy." Cut to a shot of Bush speaking at a rally - with no sound. The sound cues up as soon as Bush finishes his thought; all we hear is audience applause. After a few seconds of that, producers cut back to Rather, who continues on as if he hasn't just offered us...nothing. Given that CBS offered the president a mere three seconds of airtime to elaborate on his policies, maybe it's just as well that they cued the tape up to his silence, not to his voice. It's the ultimate reduction of a sound bite: no words at all. |
Posted 05/04/04 at 04:42 PM |
We're not much into critiquing typographical devices here at Campaign Desk, but there comes a time. This is that time. Before an article is laid to bed at a magazine or newspaper, editors squabble over something called the pull-quote (also known variously as the billboard, or teaser, or blurb). Boxed off and printed in a larger font, the pull-quote is a typographical device that calls attention to a particularly biting passage in a piece, or highlights the underlying theme. It's standard practice to "pull" the passage verbatim from the article, and to put quote marks around it if it is in fact a direct quotation. Unfortunately, at The Wall Street Journal, standard practice went down the toilet today with the pull-quote the newspaper employed in an op-ed article by known Kerry critic and Vietnam veteran John O'Neill. We can't show you the print edition of the Journal. But, while the pull-quote is refashioned as a sub-head in the online version, we assure you it appears differently in the print edition. It is set off, boxed, placed in boldface italic type, and surrounded by quotation marks, smack in the middle of the piece. Here's the pull-quote verbatim:
We understand the appeal that passage had to an editor. It's a memorable quote. It would be even more memorable if it were something O'Neill wrote. But it isn't. Those words are nowhere to be found in the accompanying article. What O'Neill does write is that, while he was "on" the same boat that Kerry commanded, he wasn't there when Kerry was. As he makes clear, he in fact was shipped in to succeed Kerry as commander of the boat once Kerry was removed from the combat zone. Additionally, while it's safe to conclude that John O'Neill isn't going to be voting for John Kerry anytime soon, at no point in the article does he write the words, "he doesn't deserve to be commander in chief." The only good thing that can come of this is the fact that the false quote is so compelling that it's bound to pull readers into the article - where they will learn what O'Neill really wrote. |
Posted 05/04/04 at 03:44 PM |
Like a bunch of school kids on a field trip, the White House Press Corps hit the heartland yesterday accompanying George Bush on his two-day "Yes America Can" tour. By the breathless tenor of the prose, you'd think the poor Beltway Scribes hadn't been outta town much recently. First, the descriptions of the Bush Bus, courtesy of USA Today's Richard Benedetto and Judy Keen. "His splashy retinue guaranteed attention. He rode in a customized 45-foot bus with a red-and-white swoosh across the blue body, ''Bush-Cheney '04'' and ''Yes, America Can'' on its sides," the pair wrote. "Behind him were seven more buses, Secret Service vehicles and Michigan State Police cruisers. Freeway ramps and side streets were closed briefly by troopers on motorcycles while the mega-motorcade rolled across the countryside." The Washington Post's Mike Allen offered this detail: "Bush left Air Force One behind after landing in Indiana at lunchtime on Monday. He was driven 225 miles through rural and suburban Michigan in a motor coach, past the Tasty Twist in Cassopolis and Hoppy's Yard and Garden in Schoolcraft, with flag-waving fans lining the streets of town after town. Inside, the bus was swank, complete with flat-screen televisions, a kitchenette and leather captain's chairs. His entourage included seven other buses for staff, Secret Service and journalists." For all the glitz, however, Allen reminds readers, "the trip amounted to a repackaging of Bush's campaign at a time when his record spending on advertising failed to give him a clear lead." This "retail politicking" had Bush dressed in a "workman-like shirt" yesterday in Niles, Michigan, and flipping pancakes this morning in Maumee, Ohio. And in the category of no-detail-too-small to include, USA Today provides this exchange at a Q&A; in the Niles High School gym between the president and a hand-picked audience: "Philip Hegg, who owns an executive recruiting company in St. Joseph, Mich., told Bush that he promised his daughter a trip to Disney World if she `learned to use the potty correctly.' Thanks to savings from Bush's tax cuts, Hegg said, the family took the vacation this year. `That's great,' Bush said." (We predict the poor kid will never live this one down - learning to go potty for a tax refund.) Fortunately, The Cincinnati Enquirer's Gregory Korte retained his cool under the intense hype and hoopla, delivering a thoughtful advance story on the president's arrival later today in Cincinnati, a place where foreign policy, not jobs, is the number-one issue on voters' minds. Korte offers up ample context, noting that in an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati, Bush declared that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, a claim used as a justification for war and later discredited. A local soldier remains the only confirmed hostage still held by Iraqi guerillas. And, the region also has a high number of reservists on duty in Iraq. Korte seems to know his audience, and what they care about - which is life-and-death policy, not leather bus seats or flat-screen Tvs. |
Posted 05/04/04 at 11:59 AM |
This week has magazine scribes raising sweeping questions and relying on a range of sources to supply a range of Magic-8-Ball-like responses. In other words, same shtick, different week. U.S. News & World Report's Roger Simon interviews the Bush campaign's chief strategist, Matthew Dowd, who, along with his colleagues, believes Bush "will win, but nobody is talking landslide." Simon asks, "Might we not have another election where the winner is not known until weeks after Election Day?" Dowd replies that he and his team are "watching that. Closely." Signs point to yes. In other (U.S.) News, is the State Department punishing the foreign media for its anti-Bush attitude? Outlook good. "For the first time since Ronald Reagan ran for re-election in 1984," Paul Bedard writes in Washington Whispers, "the State Department isn't pampering the foreign press by outfitting high-tech briefing rooms at the political conventions." A State spokesperson says, "Money's tight." And an unnamed but "angry administration official" who "barks" tells Bedard, 'They can come and pay like everyone else! It's ridiculous; this is foreign press welfare.'" BusinessWeek's Richard S. Dunham is of the conventional wisdom that "Kerry is well behind where he ought to be against a President who's had a stretch of bad road," and it "can only be chalked up to the senator's stiffness on the stump and a strategic team with the reflexes of a Cape Cod sandbar." Dunham wonders, "can Kerry come back from his silent spring?" Reply hazy, try again. To Newsweek's Howard Fineman and T. Trent Gegax, Kerry's strategy is anything but hazy. "For now, at least," the duo writes, "Kerry's strategy is clear: if the country wants a commander in chief, pick the one who has actually been under fire in war, not the stateside guy who got us into Iraq." But, Fineman and Gegax ask, is Kerry's "plan to take it to Bush on national security a masterstroke, or a fool's errand?" Cannot predict now. Time's Karen Tumulty - if you can tear yourself away from the "Secrets of the Teen Brain" cover story - finds Kerry "tripping over himself on the trail, but not without a little help from the Bush campaign." Do assorted unnamed Kerry insiders concur with Tumulty that Kerry "has something of a gift for the toxic sound bite?" It is decidedly so. Tumulty quotes an unnamed "Democratic strategist," a "former aide," and "an advisor" saying as much. Is the Republican National Committee wounding Kerry with its well-staffed, lightening-quick opposition research operation? Signs point to yes. The Atlantic's Joshua Green delivers an absorbingly detailed piece on all things opposed, which, he writes, "will be the key, and hidden, factor in the campaign" for both sides. Green concludes ominously that "the portrait Republican researchers are painting of John Kerry is the one they painted of Al Gore." Jeffrey Toobin recently "had a conversation [with Kerry] about his legal career" and is kind enough to share the fruits of that discussion with New Yorker readers. Has Kerry's six-year stint practicing law in the '70s and early '80s - first as an assistant prosecutor in the Middlesex (Mass.) County D.A.'s office, and later in his own practice - helped him in his long-unfolding quest for the White House? It is certain."For a politically ambitious young lawyer like Kerry," Toobin writes, "especially one who was known only as a protester, it... made sense to earn a law-enforcement credential." Moreover, Toobin writes, Kerry - like Clinton - "has used tough-on-crime positions to offset an otherwise predictably liberal profile." And finally, no need for Magic 8-Ball forecasts in Ben McGrath's "Talk of the Town." McGrath introduces one Kathryn Cason, a founder of the Requisite Organization International Institute, who "scientific[ally]" predicts - with, she says, "one hundred percent" confidence - this election's outcome: John Kerry will beat George Bush. It all has to do, Cason contends, with the candidate's "serial/conditional processing on the campaign trail." Analysis of "serial/conditional processing" or a black, plastic sphere containing a floating icosahedron? It's a toss up. |
Posted 05/04/04 at 11:16 AM |
Democrats are afraid. We know ... because the Associated Press's Ron Fournier told us so on Friday, in a "newsview" piece headlined, "Dems Fear Kerry Looks Like Gore." And Adam Nagourney told us once again on Sunday in a New York Times piece titled, "Kerry Struggling to Find a Theme, Democrats Fear." According to Fournier, "Democratic leaders" fear that Kerry is "getting 'Gored,'" that Republicans are successfully painting Kerry as a flip-flopper in the same way they painted Al Gore a "serial exaggerator" in 2000. For Nagourney, it is Kerry's "trouble in settling on a defining theme" that has "Democratic party officials" living in fear, along with the "pace of his advertising and his progress in setting up field organizations in battleground states." But, it turns out, what many of these Democrats fear the most is ... going on the record with AP or the New York Times. Donna Brazile, Gore's campaign manager in 2000, is an exception. Both Fournier and Nagourney quote her more or less supporting their respective theses. Fournier also got Tony Coehlo -- a former Gore campaign official who "clashed" with Bob Shrum, now a Kerry advisor -- on the record worrying about the Goring and about Kerry campaign's "structure." But after that, Fournier resorts to sources such as "Democratic leaders," "scores of Kerry supporters," and "Kerry supporters." And, of course, those old standards, the "several other Democrats [who] expressed similar views, but only on the condition of anonymity" -- including a "senior official at the Democratic National Committee" who called the Kerry campaign "rudderless." Nagourney's piece relies on an eerily similar cast of characters. After telling readers in his lede that "... party officials say [Kerry's] campaign is being regularly outmaneuvered by the White House as it struggles to find a focus," he turns first to Donna Brazile who frets about this "crucial moment in the campaign." Which other "party officials" are similarly concerned? Well, anonymous aides of Sen. John Edwards who assert that Edwards himself is worried about flaws in Kerry's campaign. But in the next sentence, Nagourney notes that Edwards disputes this, and in fact asserts that Kerry is "running a strong campaign." Next, Nagourney turns to a Fournier-like litany of sources -- "Democrats outside the campaign," "many Democrats," "other Democrats," "some aides," and, simply, "Democrats" -- who detect "internal bickering" and "growing pains" in the Kerry campaign, as well as a general "mismatch" with the Bush camp (favoring Bush). Getting more specific -- slightly -- Nagourney quotes "one senior Democratic official, who refused to speak by name about the campaign" agonizing over the Kerry camp's lack of "message discipline," and "one Democratic member of Congress, who spoke on condition of anonymity" expressing his incredulity over "this Vietnam thing" and worrying that Kerry managed to "lose" on that issue in recent weeks. These pieces fall into a pattern that has become almost predictable lately -- present the reader with a legion of anonymous Democrats "worried" about one aspect or another of the Kerry campaign, along with quotes from actual named Democrats disputing the premise. Nagourney's article follows the script to a "T". In fact, many of the people Nagourney quotes by name are the ones disputing his lead. Exceptions are Rep. Harold E. Ford of Tennessee, a Kerry campaign co-manager, Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, and Carter Eskew, a onetime senior advisor to Gore, all of whose quotes, at best, imply some vague concurrence with Nagourney's premise. (Ford admits that Kerry isn't good at the 30-second sound bite, Rendell asserts that Kerry can beat Bush, but he better start soon hammering his case home to the American people, and Eskew notes that Bush has a very clear message.) Ironically, Nagourney actually provided some examples of why Democrats perhaps should be afraid, sourced to no one at all: unlike the Bush campaign, Kerry's "has yet to open its own full-fledged war room ... to deal with Republican attacks and systematically marshal surrogates to make Mr. Kerry's case," and while the Bush camp three months ago set up and staffed an Ohio campaign headquarters, "Mr. Kerry has yet to hire a state director or open a campaign office" in that battleground state. All the more reason Nagourney didn't have to rely so heavily on all those fearful anonymous Democrats. |
Posted 05/03/04 at 03:45 PM |
An alert reader points us to a Reuters story today about the deaths of four soldiers in Iraq. According to the piece, "[t]he deaths take to 545 the number of U.S. troops killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein." We're not completely sure where the 545 figure came from, but, according to the latest figures, 755 American soldiers -- not 545 -- have been killed in Iraq. Perhaps Reuters was following the lead of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who recently mistakenly estimated the number of American casualties at "approximately 500." Perhaps the agency was trying to relay the number of troops killed since President Bush announced the end of major combat on May 1, 2003, which this article puts at 545. Or perhaps it was trying to tally deaths by hostile fire, which presently stand at approximately 557. We understand that small mistakes in the day-to-day reporting of troop casualties are inevitable. But, at a time that the growing death toll in Iraq has become a campaign issue, for a major news outlet like Reuters to underestimate American deaths by roughly 30 percent is inexcusable. |
Posted 05/03/04 at 02:53 PM |
By Zachary Roth In Sunday's New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller sets out to make the case that, despite what some students of the administration think, President Bush really is in charge at the White House. Here's Bumiller's evidence: - Michael Deaver, President Reagan's deputy chief of staff and image consultant, says so. "For people who know, Bush is clearly in charge," he tells Bumiller. - So does White House communications director Dan Bartlett. Sort of. "He's happy to keep expectations low. He's been underestimated in politics since he first ran for office.'' - Bush has sometimes "overruled" Cheney: For instance, he sought U.N. support for the Iraq war, over Cheney's "strong objections." And, he decided not to inoculate every American against smallpox, as Cheney advocated. - Bush "did most of the talking" to the 9/11 Commission this week. He "answered tough questions without hesitation, and with little help from Mr. Cheney and Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel." - Bush told the 9/11 Commission that he was "aware of the more heated statements that were made about the administration in past public hearings." He even "got off a couple of good shots," according to John Lehman, one of the commission's Republican members. - According to administration officials, Bush has been "engaged" with the challenges in Iraq this week. - Bob Woodward's new book Plan of Attack portrays Bush as "decisive and engaged." - Cheney is said to refer to Bush as "the Man." So here's what we have: quotes from three Republicans (one of whom is Bush's communications director); two issues (one relatively minor) on which Bush over-ruled Cheney; the fact that Bush answered questions from the 9/11 Commission without prompting from Cheney or his lawyer, and showed he was aware of the highly-publicized testimony of previous witnesses; Bush's aides telling reporters, predictably, that the president was "engaged" on Iraq, during one of the worst weeks yet since the invasion; and a pithy summary of a lengthy and complex book. We remain unconvinced. The root of the problem here is that Bumiller sets up a straw man in describing the supposed charge that Bush is disconnected. As she sees it, "An angry left, still stinging over the 2000 election and now furious over the shifting reasons for war in Iraq, sees in Mr. Bush's less-than-articulate news conferences a less-than-sharp mind. Therefore, Mr. Cheney must be running the country from under Mr. Bush's Oval Office desk." more... |
Posted 05/03/04 at 02:00 PM |
It's a rainy, depressing morning in New York, and the blogs aren't doing much to shake us from our weekend stupor, with the conservative/liberal tit-for-tat of fact-free charges seemingly nastier, and less substantive, than ever. Thank goodness we've got Wonkette! to take the air out of everybody's sails. Her report from the White House Correspondent's dinner discusses who cut in line (Jeff Bezos and a Meg Ryan-toting Howard Fineman), who's short (Blitzer), who's hot (Cooper), who's ubiquitous (Franken), and the question of whether journalists look like hobbits. (Was there ever any doubt?) Unsurprisingly, says Wonkette!, the journos failed miserably at affecting that blasé attitude Los Angeles types employ when dealing with actual celebs. "Anyone above famous-for-D.C. standards is manhandled and manuevered into more digital camera still photo shoots than make up a Wallace and Grommit movie." In more substantive but no less salacious news, Ezra Klein at Pandagon claims Fox News Channel has finally come out of the closet. How? By announcing that it would spend an evening reporting successes in Iraq as an explicit response to the "Nightline" special focusing on fallen soldiers. Says Klein:
Atrios has a lengthy takedown of Barbara Bradley Hagerty's Friday NPR piece on John Kerry and religion. "She is NPR's religion reporter and always writes about the hot-button social issues," he writes. "She's careful -- very careful -- to not let her reporting appear to be obviously slanted, but it's hideously slanted in a subtle manipulative fashion. The good guys and bad guys are always clear in her stories, even as she seeks to provide 'balance.'" Meanwhile, Tim Graham of the Corner is mocking David Brock for starting a new conservative media watchdog website, Media Matters. Writes Graham: "Is there anything funnier on Earth than factually challenged David Brock starting a web site to fight 'erroneous assertions' by the conservative media? What kind of pitch is this? 'When I was a conservative journalist, I lied through my face. Now count on me to be your guardian of media ethics?'" Finally, Mickey Kaus continues his scorched earth campaign against John Kerry, referring to him as a "vain, pompous, dissembling candidate." (Memo to Mickey: Like all relentless drumbeats, this endless attack-by-adjective is not only tiresome, it eventually causes a deep longing for nouns. Wistfully, Campaign Desk picks through the haystack, looking for a single, solitary fact buried inside the blizzard of pejoratives. Our only consolation: We get paid to do it.) |
Posted 05/03/04 at 12:31 PM |
The presidential campaign is being waged in just 18 states, where, in 2000, the difference between the vote for Al Gore and George W. Bush was ten percentage points or less. That's where the swing votes live, and those are the votes that will decide this whole thing. As for the rest of the country -- one candidate or another considers you a given, so get used to politicians who just drop in to pander to views that you already hold. In the third installment of his series "The Great Divide," Bill Bishop of the Austin American-Statesman reports there is no national campaign for the presidency (registration required). "Bush and Kerry are campaigning in the dwindling number of counties where Democrats and Republicans mix in nearly even numbers," writes Bishop, in his ongoing analysis of the shift to partisan politics that began sometime in the 1970s and has increased with each election. When Jimmy Carter defeated incumbent Gerald Ford in 1976, 46 percent of all American voters lived in counties where the presidential election was decided by ten percent or less, Bishop writes. By the year 2000, only 25 percent lived in a county where there was a good chance of running into, or perhaps even being friends with, someone with political views unlike your own -- and just eight states had an electorate that was as politically integrated as what at one time was the national norm. All eight of these states are battlegrounds in the current race for the White House. "One of the ironies of democracy," Bishop writes, "is that citizens who see both sides of an issue are less likely to vote and become politically active than those people who are angry, partisan and unsympathetic to those who think differently." Put another way, it's devilishly hard to mobilize the undecided few who may well actually decide who the next president is. All the more reason for the campaigns to spend time and money working on winning those folks over. But most of the country isn't like that. In most of the country, as Bishop sees it, the disappearance of community diversity -- of class, of income, of race and of political views -- has also meant the disappearance of voters who can be swayed by rhetoric, policy or debates. In such places, campaigns are increasingly preaching to the choir, a strategy based less on persuasion and more on generating a "hatred" of a political opponent, aimed more at arousing supporters and getting them to the polls than at winning over the undecided. And that strategy just polarizes the electorate even more, as Bishop has reported previously. "It's calcifying our politics," says Paul Maslin, who did polling for Howard Dean's unsuccessful candidacy. Maslin's work has found that the intensely partisan tone of national politics now also permeates debates over legislation. As Campaign Desk has noted before, Bishop and his editors have spotted and thoroughly documented an historic shift in the political landscape. Their work especially stands out in a year during which all-too-many campaign reporters at higher-visibility outlets are content to swallow whatever the partisan spin of the moment is -- and then to call it journalism. |
Posted 05/03/04 at 12:09 PM |