Fact-esque

NYT Ombudsman Takes a Hard Look at Paper. Decides that it's a Miracle!

I'm glad Daniel Okrent will be giving up his position as ombudsman of the NYT in May.  He just doesn't have the stomach for the job.  Okrent himself dispelled any doubt of that in his year-end column  on Sunday:

Several weeks ago I decided that I'd write a year-end column enumerating a bunch of The Times's crimes and misdemeanors over the past 12 months - the ones I never got around to writing about because they seemed of insufficient interest to support an entire column, or because they were replays of transgressions I had already addressed. Or because articles I'd clipped, notated and misplaced months ago suddenly showed up in my sock drawer.

He's folksy, our Dan.  And lazy.  I know why I have piles of old NYT cluttering my house.  But I don't have an office and unilimited access to the NYT archives.  I also don't get paid for enumerating a bunch of NYT crimes and misdemeanors - even in only one area of their reporting - so it's hard to justify the time that takes to my family.  What's Dan's excuse? 

Apparently he's not lazy.  No, he's been blinded by the "daily miracle" that is the New York Times.  It was this story by Robin Toner that led to his convenient epiphany.

It addressed an extremely contentious issue without betraying the writer's own views. It avoided the euphemistic use of those specious and self-serving slogans "pro-life" and "pro-choice," and instead used "anti-abortion" and "abortion rights" to describe people who are, as it happens, against abortion or are supporters of abortion rights. It explained the nature of abortion-related legislation to be debated in the coming Congressional session, examined the strategies apt to be employed and weighed the likelihood of passage. People on each side of the issue were given a fair hearing. From reading Toner's piece, I learned much about an important public issue.

Dan's right about the balance and completeness of the story.  Her choice of labels though was a mistake.   "Anti-abortion" covers plenty of people who are pro-abortion rights.  "Anti-abortion" also sets up the Dems as "pro-abortion," which the party is not, although the GOP would like it to be labeled just that way.   The better name for the GOP opposition would be "anti-abortion rights."  I'm not sure why Dan caves on the "pro-choice" label since it simply emphasizes the private aspect of the abortion issue, which has been established as crucial to the debate.   He seems to have forgotten his own law here - The pursuit of balance can create imbalance, because sometimes something is true.

So instead of a hard look at the many dire failings of the NYT, which would have been especially meaningful in the wake of the latest violence in Iraq and an election that was marked by abysmal  campaign coverage, we get a column about the continuing daily miracle of putting out a national paper, 'cause, you know, that's hard work.   

Okrent ends his column by listing all the good things that NYT is doing: assigning a reporter to cover political and social conservatives to balance all that liberal bias at the paper, doing better with using anonymous sources (I haven't seen any evidence of this at all), implementing an op-ed corrections policy, improving communications with readers, and the formation of a panel to study all of the above.   It would have been great if Okrent could have helped us remember why the NYT thinks they need to do all of those things. 

Related Note:  The non-evil Roger Ailes  found this story that captures Okrent's attitude about his job.  Read what Roger says, but also read the article because it includes some really good insights from media watchers who understand that they aren't employed to be cheerleaders. 

My favorite three:

Geneva Overholser, the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in public affairs reporting, Missouri School of Journalism, Washington bureau

"This was the year when it finally became unmistakably clear that objectivity has outlived its usefulness as an ethical touchstone for journalism. The way it is currently construed, "objectivity" makes the media easily manipulable by an executive branch intent on and adept at controlling the message. It produces a rigid orthodoxy, excluding voices beyond the narrowly conventional.

"And it leads to a false balance of `on the one hand, on the other hand' stories that make the two `hands' appear equal even when factual weight lies 98 percent on one side. Objectivity's most effective use today is as a cudgel in the hands of those who wish to beat up on the media."

Steve Lovelady, managing editor of Campaigndesk.org, and former newspaper and magazine editor

"I think the most important media story of the year was the way in which the press was so easily manipulated by spin machines all the way through the election campaign, partly thanks to the fact that it was hopelessly hobbled by some of its own outdated conventions and frameworks. And that, in turn, is related to its embarrassing performance in 2003 on weapons of mass destruction and on the question of an Iraqi tie to 9/11.

"[It is also related to] its inability to be as nimble or fast on its feet as some blogs, and to continuing media consolidation, which invariably leaves editors with less staff and less space to make sense of the world for their readers. In some fairly scary ways, it all dovetails together."

Barry Sussman, editor of NiemanWatchdog Project and former newspaper editor

"We learned two main things about the news media in 2004: First they do some great work, large organizations and small ones both. Second, get past the great work, and the rest tends to be mediocre to poor to a disservice. No sense of what's important, what's not. One- or two-day stories that became regular beats; stories of immense importance ignored altogether. Network TV disappeared from view."

"But one great story stands out in my mind so vividly was a joint effort by the Washington Post and [PBS's] `Frontline' in which a number of Post reporters and `Frontline' spoke about the Iraq War. It was just a stunner. I'm not used to seeing things that good, and TV is such a marvelous vehicle for reporters who are knowledgeable.

"The problem is that what sticks in the mind isn't the good work, but rather the failures. I think the failures are systemic. It's the way the owners and chief editors want it. They don't want to rock the boat. They set the tone, and reporters are quick to understand. They won't do better until the publishers and chief editors want to do better."

The Bizzaro World of the NYT Political Reporting

The political reporting in the NYT is getting more and more ridiculous as we get closer to November 2. As far as I can tell, the paper hasn't been doing a bad job on the Al Quaquaa story. Jim Dwyer and David Sanger had a story yesterday that outlined what is known about the explosives so far. But what's up with today's Wilgoren and Bumiller aticle that gives BushCo all the pre-election cover he needs about the missing explosives?

The exact timing of the disappearance of the explosives is critical to the political arguments of each campaign. Mr. Kerry's contention that the administration did not adequately secure the country and was unprepared for the war's aftermath presumes that the explosives disappeared after the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, as officials of the interim Iraqi government say.

If the explosives disappeared before Mr. Hussein fell, as Mr. Bush now says is possible, that would undercut Mr. Kerry's argument and bolster Mr. Bush's contention that his opponent is making charges without all the facts.

Those are the seventh and eighth grafs of the story. The lede is that BushCo is fighting back. Above all, NYT readers, never forget that BushCo is vigorous and resolute. There's a single sentence that mentions that the story "could be hurting the president" and that finally speaking out is a reflection of that possibility. Compare that one sentence to the hysteria that was reported when Kerry held back from dignifying the Swift Boat Liars with a comment and how that decision was costing Kerry the election.

The rest of the story, up until the last two paragraphs, is devoted to putting forth BushCo's lies about what happened to the weapons. They were gone when the troops got there. The Iraqis moved them. Kerry hates the troops. His accusations are wild! Kerry was wrong about Tora Bora too ... I understand that the story is reporting what BushCo said, but if he said that water boiled at 97 degrees, would it be right to devote the bulk of a story to explaining that assertion? It isn't until the last two paragraphs that we get to what should have been the lede of the piece:

But Mr. Bush on Thursday did not address a critical issue raised by the discovery of the missed explosives: why American forces were not alerted to the existence of a huge cache of explosives, even though the atomic energy agency and American officials had publicly discussed the threat it posed, and knew its exact location.

The commander of the troops that went into the Al Qaqaa facility on the way to Baghdad in early April, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, has said he was never told the site was considered sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited it before the war began.

It's not "a critical issue." It's the critical issue. It would be impossible to have made this story any more confusing and less informative.

Now look at the a today's Wilgoren story about Kerry in Iowa. He's desperate and needs Iowans to save him again. He's phony and pandering when he speaks to Iowans. It's more of the same poison peanut butter we get from her about Kerryt. Here's the lede:

The urbane, Boston-bred Senator John Kerry likes to say his quest for the White House has taught him to "measure my life by the height and color of the corn" in this state. He waxes about its "smart citizens." He lists the discovery of biodegradable soy lubricant at Northern Iowa University in Waterloo, as a symbol of America's can-do innovation.

But the very state that in January catapulted Mr. Kerry toward the Democratic nomination has become, as Election Day approaches, the most difficult of those that Democrats won in 2000 to defend. He spent most of Wednesday here, his fourth visit this month, begging Iowa's voters to save him a second time.

That biodgrabale soy lubricant that has Kerry so jazzed and Wilgoren sneering? That's part of Kerry's energy policy. The same energy policy that the NYT has been ignoring completely. And has the NYT ever characterized BushCo as "begging for votes?" The same BushCo who is an incumbant that can't break 48% nationally?

BushCo's coverage is pure peanut butter, but it's the yummy kind that candidates love. Here's Sanger's BushCo in Iowa story from yesterday.:

At each stop, Mr. Bush looked energetic and almost ebullient, playfully joking with crowds that sometimes seemed larger than his margin of defeat - 5,708 - four years ago. He spent 15 minutes at the dairy farm of John and Connie Turgasen in tiny Viola greeting four generations that have worked the same farm - the endangered species he says his tax policies will benefit.

There are those valuable Ketchum Points again. He's happy, ebulliant, energetic, playful - drawing big crowds. When he stops at a dairy farm it's to make a policy point, not to play political footsy with some yokels for a photo-op. Gosh, that Rove is an effin' genius, isn't he? He found a dairy farm in Iowa.

Or how about Stevenson's fawning and unnecessary analysis of BushCo's stump speech, also from Wednesday: (emph mine)

His stump speech evolves from day to day as he hustles with increasing urgency through the battleground states seeking to score points against Senator John Kerry. But no matter what the venue or the topic, President Bush always starts by thanking his partners - one in love, one in running the country.

Before getting on with his withering assault on Mr. Kerry, the president tries to establish an emotional connection with his audience by making clear his deep affection for Laura Bush, his wife of almost 27 years.

Then it is on to an expression of loyalty to Vice President Dick Cheney, a lightning rod for the administration's critics but a hero to conservatives like those who wait hours in arenas and on ball fields and in parking lots to hear Mr. Bush speak.

"I readily concede my running mate does not have the waviest hair in the race," Mr. Bush said on Tuesday in Onalaska, Wis., drawing appreciative laughter with his hardly veiled belittling of Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards. "You'll be pleased to know I did not pick him because of his hairdo."

A stump speech is in many ways a look into the mind and character of a political candidate. In Mr. Bush's case, the speech is delivered with typical discipline; he almost never veers from his text by more than a few words.

In nearly all its incarnations, the speech mixes glimpses of his warmth toward his family with calculated signals to his conservative base, references to his religious faith, flashes of his wisecracking humor, policy prescriptions, succinct explanations of his worldview and a gauzy sense of his basic optimism.

"Freedom is on the march," he said Tuesday in Wisconsin. "Freedom is on the move. And our country is better for it."

Except we heard several days ago that BushCo has retooled his speech completely. Remember how Team BushCo punk'd the cable networks by saying he had a new policy speech to deliver? The NYT fell right in line with front page coverage even though they had time to figure out that it was nothing of the kind. They covered their butts by saying that it was shiny and new. Now we're back to disciplined consistency that almost never varies by more than a few words.

To add insult to injury, Stevenson ends the story by recapping the now mythic tale of the person (Stevenson doesn't mention that it used to be a fireman or policeman but now BushCo can't remember which.) who said to BushCo from the rubble, "Don't let me down." All that was missing was the closing line: "I'm George W. Bush and I approved this message."

Now look at Halbfinger's 10/26 story about Kerry's stump speech:

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush could not be more different on the stump. While Mr. Bush is still delivering many of the same punch lines he was months ago, Mr. Kerry's change by the hour. And while little changes from day to day in the president's speech except the names of the cities he compliments and the local officials he praises for "filling the potholes," Mr. Kerry has never given his stump speech the same way twice.

This is partly by design: he is a speechwriter's nightmare, adding needless words and phrases to a prepared text the way some catalog companies bury products in foam peanuts.

Mr. Kerry works with building blocks, extended chunks of material that he constantly mixes and matches and remolds, as if he feels his listeners deserve not only his full attention but spontaneity to boot. And he is only too glad to provide it, as he did in Orlando, when the wind picked up his sheet of notes and blew it into the crowd. "That's all right, let it fly," he said. "I don't need it."

This is also by inclination: some of his funniest lines are improvised. A month ago, playfully mocking Mr. Bush's economic policy of "tax relief," Mr. Kerry likened it to the kind of relief felt when someone "breaks into your living room and relieves you of your TV set." The audience roared and a new riff was born, though it disappeared a few days later.

At other times Mr. Kerry's winging it means he is left searching for his place, distracted by his own thoughts, trying to make sure he has covered every subject and said everything he can about each one.

It's actually a good story. I've seen Kerry seem to lose his place as he thinks about what he's saying and I have noticed that his speeches change frequently. However, I attributed that mostly to having to keep up with the constant revelations of BushCo's incompetence, instead of some kind of personality quirk as Halbfinger does. The difference between this and the ode that BushCo got from Stevenson couldn't be more clear. Kerry is a human being; BushCo is a god. Imagine this ending ever showing up in a BushCo story: (emph mine)

Mr. Kerry frequently works into his speeches the names and stories of people he has met along the campaign trail. But this mystery woman had given no name; she had just passed along to a Kerry staff member a simple message for the candidate. "Senator," it said, "we've got your back."

If the story is true, it is just as well the woman did not give her name and say what issue or problem motivated her. Because now, as he closes out each speech with her words of encouragement, Mr. Kerry can turn it into a message to every voter.

"Here's the deal," he said in Orlando. "You want to do the things we need to do to have clean air and clean water, and leave this earth in better shape to our children than we were given it by our parents? You want to lift this country up? Then give me the privilege on Nov. 2 of being able to stand up, and every day I go to that Oval Office I'll be able to look you in the eye, and I'll say to you, 'I've got your back.' "

"If it's true"??? Someone should jot that question down and pass it over to Ms. Bumiller and Stevenson. It's a phrase that would come in handy for them as they follow our vigorous, ebulliant, loyal and consistent Dear Leader from disciplined stop to disciplined stop.

Miserable Fact Checking from the NYT

David Rosenbaum and David Halbfinger fact check Kerry's latest stump speeches that are, according to them, unfairly critical of Dear Leader. But look what has the Davids concerned:

On Social Security, Mr. Kerry said over the weekend that Mr. Bush planned a "January surprise" that could cost retirees up to 45 percent of their monthly checks. On the draft, Mr. Kerry told The Des Moines Register last week that there was "the great potential of the draft" if Mr. Bush won a second term. And on the vaccine, Mr. Kerry has maintained for days that the president ignored warnings of a shortage. [snip]

The truth is that Mr. Bush has promised not to cut the Social Security benefits of current retirees or those nearing retirement age. He said flatly in the debate on Wednesday that he had no plans to reinstate military conscription.

And as for the vaccine shortage, experts say Congress is as much to blame as the president for allowing domestic manufacturers to stop production. In his years in the Senate, Mr. Kerry apparently never addressed the matter, either.

"The truth is"? They've got to be kidding.

As for the draft, Davids, have you read your own paper:

The Selective Service has been updating its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in case of a national emergency that overwhelms the military's medical corps.

In a confidential report this summer, a contractor hired by the agency described how such a draft might work, how to secure compliance and how to mold public opinion and communicate with health care professionals, whose lives could be disrupted.

As for the flu vaccine, why was it Kerry's job to mention the shortage first? And wouldn't that have been considered alarmist for someone in his position to do? That was a classic Picklering by the Davids. And who cares if the Republican Congress that operates at the behest of the Republican president is partly responsible? The buck stops with Dear Leader. I know that he doesn't like it. It's hard work to be king. But the NYT shouldn't be providing him cover when he tries to shift the blame - again.

As for Social Security, if all we've got to go on is BushCo's election year promise that he won't gut it in a mad scheme to privatize it - when we have heard Alan "Go with variable rate mortgages kids, I'm sure interest rates will stay low forever and ever" Greenspan go on record saying that in order to protect BushCo's foolish tax cuts for the elite, cuts in benefits are inevitable, well, forgive Kerry for peaking behind the curtain. The Davids observe disapprovingly that "Mr. Kerry's implication, though he did not explicitly say it, was that current retirees would have their benefits cut if Mr. Bush won." The truth is that privatizing Social Security is a brass ring for the Norquistas and their ilk and Kerry is right to point that out to voters. Because BushCo hasn't endorsed a specific plan, we have no idea when the benefits will be cut, only that if BushCo has his way, they will be.

NYT Does Okay

Credit where credit's due - the NYT benefitted from some good political reporting over the last couple of days. Wilgoren wrote a smart and breezy White-House-Letter style piece about Kerry on Monday, which was a long time overdue. The NYT ran it opposite the actual White House Letter, which was interesting.

Richard Stevenson covered BushCo in New Mexico and Colorado. BushCo had just rolled out his attack on Kerry's use of the word "nuisance." Stevenson does a good job explaining what Kerry really said:

Mr. Kerry went on to draw a parallel to his experience as a prosecutor, suggesting that it was impossible to eradicate prostitution, illegal gambling or organized crime, but that they could be contained so that they did not threaten people's lives.

He could have mentioned that the race in Colorado, formerly considered a gimme for BushCo, had tightened, which was why the candidates are spending more time there. I had to go to the pro-war WaPO to find that out.

Halbfinger reported on Kerry's trip to New Mexico. I didn't understand his criticism of Kerry's plan to cut US purchases of Middle Eastern oil, but the rest of it was fine. I especially liked the way it focused on Kerry's energy policy, which has been WAY undercovered in all the media. From the way Halbfinger is talking though, I have huge hopes that Kerry will lay out a Manhattan Project for energy independence tonight. Be still my heart.

NYT site is hinky - I'll put in the links later.

Daniel Okrent Doesn't Get It

The long-awaited (by me) Okrent piece on the NYT coverage of the candidates came out today and was a deep disappointment. Which isn't to say that I disagree with everything Mr. Okrent said. I agree that when people criticize reporters they should stay professional. My pet peeve, which Mr. Okrent mentions, is the seemingly instantaneous leap people make to sexual insult when criticizing female reporters. It's not only wrong, it's unimaginative and distracts from the issue at hand. I don't do it. I don't like it when I read other people do it.

Mr. Okrent is also right when he makes the very pedestrian observation that people are swayed by their passions and that bias colors their reading of the paper. But he seems to miss the real problem at his paper, which is how its political reporters establish a narrative that suits them and then cram reality into that storyline no matter what. The best and most recent example of the problem is the "Who among us doesn't like NASCAR?" debacle.

Kerry's quote:

KERRY (2/17/04): This president went to Florida just the other day to start the NASCAR races. There isn’t one of us here who doesn’t like NASCAR and who isn’t a fan,

became the fictitous version in which Kerry sounds like a pompous phoney, which is part of his narrative. More from the Howler:

Dowd didn’t bother to check the quote—a “quote” which was simply too luscious to check. She simply put the “quote” into print, mocking Kerry for having said it, and four of her colleagues then followed suit. From July 25 through September 5, pompous Kerry was mocked four more times for having made this laughable statement. And you know how those Timesmen are! By August 22, the fake quote wasn’t funny enough any more, so Timothy Egan jacked it up just a tad. “Who among us doesn’t love NASCAR,” Kerry was now alleged to have said. Frank Rich also used the embellished version of the original fake in his September 5 column. The fake quote didn’t seem fake enough any more. The fake quote now needed improvement.

That's just shameful. But it illustrates the problem perfectly. The narrative is that Kerry is rich, weak and indecisive. His faith is a big problem for him. The Dems are hapless campaigners and doomed to fail. The book on BushCo is that he's strong, in charge, resolute and and underestimated by his enemies. He's a man of God, loved by all people of God. The GOP, led by political genius Rove, are masterful abd ruthless campaigners and daunting to all who come before them. This storyline isn't the exclusive invention of the NYT. It's a product of the groupthink that permeates corporate journalism - the same groupthink that got us into an unwinnable war in Iraq and is getting people killed every day.

Mr. Okrent never touches on this issue in his column on Sunday. Instead he takes the easy and obvious way out as we hear about how people of passion can't see clearly. We're like parents looking at our children. And how sure, a journalist who is digging deep for a story will inevitably have to make judgments and that "every judgment, it appears, offends someone."

All that would be fine if the judgments made were as random as Mr. Okrent suggests they are. But the forced narrative doesn't allow for that sort of equality of errors. And neither does the NYT's choice of reporters covering the campaigns. On Kerry's side there's generally Wilgoren, Nagourney the Noble and Halbfinger. (and here) Between Nagourney's doom and gloom and his Rol-o-Dex of anonymous Democrats ready to slit their throats over the direction of their party/campaign and Wilgoren's flat out snark and slavish devotion to the Kerry narrative, how can Kerry get a fair shake?

On the BushCo team there's generally Bumiller, Stevenson and Rutenberg. Ms. Bumiller, famous for the incredibly unbalanced WHLetters and being afraid to challenge BushCo during the rare press conference; Stevenson, who can't control his action hero writing style when writing about Dear Leader but manages to stay calm for other topics and who is the living embodiment of the new objectivity: I'm a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other; and Rutenberg, who hasn't read an RNC memo he hasn't retyped for publication.

That's an uneven playing field, to use an election season term, and their writing reflects it. But is that because the corporate press' narrative for Kerry is basically negative and BushCo's is flattering? The reporters are stuck in bizzaro world? I'm willing to believe that that is part of it. (Although, I think Wilgoren just hates the people she covers or at least pretends to.) But even if that's true, the NYT doesn't get a pass on being sucked into the groupthink (yet again). There are obvious steps they could take to balance the scales. Why, for instance, isn't there a WHLetter-style lovefest set aside for Kerry every week? Why is Wilgoren allowed to get away with the snide tone she uses? Why did that NASCAR comment have such legs in the paper and why has it never been corrected?

I know this is a long post but there's more. And let's face it, my blog has been leading up to this moment since it started. Mr. Okrent uses two stories in his column to illustrate how balanced the NYT coverage has been over this election: Kerry as the Boss: Always More Questions and Bush Takes On Direct Role in Shaping Election Tactics. He claims that both are stories about the candidates' leadership styles and so, voila! the NYT is fair and balanced. But if Mr. Okrent looked at the stories, instead of the headlines, he would have seen that they do more to reinforce my point than his.

Both pieces start off with introductions that are really the best part of either effort. But the body of the BushCo story (Nagourney/Bumiller) is dominated by reporting that confirms the BushCo narrative - he's in charge, he's resolute and he's underestimated by his enemies. The subheadings tell it all: Learning from Father's Loss (another favorite part of the BushCo narrative is that he's got some psycho drama going on with daddy) Gambling on the Attack and A Confident Campaigner. Of course, there's the obligatory mention of the infallible Rove and his Breakfast Club where the ace political operative plots strategy over eggs and bacon. We know that at least half of all that isn't true now that we've seen the debates and now that we've seen Rove for more of what he truly is - lucky the narrative breaks his guy's way, lucky the press doesn't seem to care that they've been suckered in, lucky he's got all the money he needs and so absolutely terrified by recent turns of events that he's been forced to do some campaigning himself. By the way, that last bit is way off his approved wizard-behind-the-curtain storyline - and so not mentioned much in the papers. How are those breakfasts now?

The Kerry piece (Nagourney/Wilgoren) describes Kerry as indecisive, slow to take action, bogged down in detail and resented by a staff that suffers low moral from the regular firings and constant wild goose chases for facts their boss rarely uses in speeches. There are no subheadings, but if there were, they'd read something like Slow to Act, On a Quest for Information and Different People, Different Advice. There's no real examination of how someone so plodding and isolated has been able to be such a consistent winner. When the story was published, before any of the debates, the "good closer" rep wasn't surfacing in the narrative yet so it got left out, although it's always been the way Kerry has won.

That's the problem with the NYT political reporting. It's not whether Kerry or BushCo look good in a photo or if the headlines are biased. It's the much more dangerous problem of yet another outlet of the media, the paper of record no less, lazily feeding us the storyline that they have decided will describe this campaign regardless of the facts on the ground. They did it in 2000 to disasterous results. They're doing it now when the stakes are even higher and when they should have learned from their shameful behavior of four years ago.

I'm very disappointed that Mr. Okrent chose to discuss the ridiculous and ignore the single most destructive force in political reporting today. It would have been painful to take a real look at what his paper has been putting out there and it would have required a ton of research, but it would have been a service to his readers and the paper, which is what he's supposed to be providing.

Note: Atrios and Sisyphus Shrugged weigh in on the column as well on a completely separate issue.

Weekend NYT

Bumiller and Halbfinger

Elisabeth Bumiller and David Halbfinger teamed up on the first post-debate account of BushCo's return to the safety of invited, hysterically supportive crowds.  They even picked up on a now-familiar sign of trouble in paradise:

But in a sign that the Bush campaign suddenly found itself on the defensive, the president's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, who is normally elusive to the press, sought out reporters to push the campaign's argument that Mr. Kerry was a walking contradiction on Thursday night and that Mr. Bush was focused and pensive during the encounter, not peevish.

"That wasn't irritated," Mr. Rove said. "I know irritated."

The last time Rove walked among us, it was in the wake of BushCo's famous stadium basement interview when he exposed the depth of his ignorance of key issues facing the country, i.e. global warming, North Korea. 

But Ms. Bumiller and Mr. Halbfinger don't dwell on what Rove's appearance means for the campaign or analyse the timing of his emergence in broad daylight.  They move right on to unquestioned reporting of a lie BushCo is jetting around the country to tell:

The president said Mr. Kerry "wants our national security decisions subject to the approval of a foreign government." As the invited crowd booed, Mr. Bush added: "Listen, I'll continue to work with our allies and the international community - but I will never submit America's national security to an international test. The use of troops to defend America must never be subject to a veto by countries like France."

Mr. Kerry did not mention France in the Florida debate, although he did utter the words "Charles de Gaulle" in the context of the global test, saying that that French president accepted the word of President John F. Kennedy about crucial evidence during the Cuban missile crisis. The Bush White House, in the run-up to the Iraq war, was enraged by what it considered France's obstructionist behavior, and the Bush campaign and other Republicans have mocked Mr. Kerry for his distant French ancestry.

That second paragraph is what passed for an explanation of what John Kerry actually said during the debate:

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. 

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

The DeGaulle reference came in the same answer, but was a reference to the loss of American credibility thanks to Colin Powell's dishonest performance at the UN.  (It was a devestating comment to call the President's word worthless, by the way.)  Kerry's use of "global test" referred to the president, if forced to take a preemptive action, being able to make the case after the fact to the world.  It may be a subtle concept, but it would be nice if we could count on our press, if not to explain the idea, then at least not to help the opposition mangle it beyond recognition and even give it a little twist of their own:

Mr. Kerry, too, talked of national security issues and did not back away  from his calls for more international support for United States efforts.  In Tampa, he repeated his vow to hold a summit with leaders of Arab and Muslim nations.

The bastard.  

Friedman

Tom Friedman is back with a chatty and throughly horrible column all about how BushCo ruined the invasion of Iraq, which was supposed to be such a beautiful thing.  And it's really unfair to Tom because, as he says:

What I resent so much is that some of us actually put our personal politics aside in thinking about this war and about why it is so important to produce a different Iraq.

Poor Tom resents looking like the sap he is - remember his infamously naive and thoughtless "Because We Could" column, in which he explained the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason for the war?  He drank the Kool Aid and now he doesn't even have the grace to spit out what's left in his mouth:

Being away has not changed my belief one iota in the importance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq, to help move the Arab-Muslim world off its steady slide toward increased authoritarianism, unemployment, overpopulation, suicidal terrorism and religious obscurantism.

Not one iota has his opinion changed that killing and dying  in Iraq was precisely the right way to modernize the Middle East.  Just so we're clear that Tom is still right.  It's just everyone else who's been wrong:

But my time off has clarified for me, even more, that this Bush team can't get us there, and may have so messed things up that no one can.

No one can.  And yet:

We have to immediately get the Democratic and Republican politics out of this policy and start honestly reassessing what is the maximum we can still achieve there and what every American is going to have to do to make it happen. If we do not, we'll end up not only with a fractured Iraq, but with a fractured America, at war with itself and isolated from the world.

So c'mon everyone.  Let's fix this unfixable thing by doing what we are going to have to do to make it happen!  

Nagourney

Nagourney the Noble is back.  He must have been jonesing for his fix of spin after his bravely hyped detox on Debate night because his Sunday story is all polls and conjecture, spin and RoveSpin (a more virulent form of spin that can actually be dangerous to living things).  It seems that Rove is really getting around - Nagourney doesn't think that odd or portentous.  Besides, he's got quotes from everyone!  I swear that by the last several paragraphs, I had a headache from reading the constant stream of back and forth from named and unnamed sources casting and recasting everything that has happened in the last two days. 

Interestingly, Nagourney goes with the GOP quotes that stick to the insanely unrealistic narrative that until Thursday night, the election was in the bag for Dear Leader. (setting eVoting aside)  All those stories about swing states?  Useless jabber.  Questions about polling methods?  Stupid nitpicking from know-nothings!  This thing was o-ver.  But now it's a horse race; Kerry has life; he got up, but he's still wounded; a window has been jimmied open; a meltdown averted.  It's all very dramatic stuff from the now thoroughly spun scribe, just not at all in the realm of reality.   

And since he's shooting spin again, Nagourney also plugs the "Global Test" lie, as his colleagues had before him:

Mr. Bush's senior aides said that no matter what Mr. Kerry did, the president would continue to challenge his foreign policy fortitude, seizing in particular on Mr. Kerry's suggestion in the debate that he might not engage in a pre-emptive war without putting it to a "global test."

You know, Adam was right to stay away from Spin Alley.  Someone so gullible shouldn't be around political operatives without supervision.  Too bad he's off the wagon.

Catching Up on the NYT

I've fallen behind on the NYT again but I'm determined to catch up before WHLetter Day.   Fasten your seat belts:

9/10: Jodi Wilgoren can't understand that Kerry would cite the Bible when talking to a "Baptist crowd."   After the headline: Kerry Invokes the Bible in Appeal for Black Votes and two paragraphs, we find out that he was addressing the National Baptist Convention, where invoking the Bible wouldn't be  cynical and would  - with Rev. Jesse Jackson at his side -  make sense.   There's also a characterization of Kerry sounding like he's on an "endless tape loop", but anyone who reads Wilgoren regularly is used to the snark. 

9/16:  A red-letter day for the Gray Lady as the paper goes with a front page Archibold/Nagourneyclassic about the role Edwards is playing in the campaign: Democrats are worried, as you probably guessed.  And there's this paragraph:

Part of the reason that Mr. Edwards might seem to some Democrats to have faded away is because Mr. Kerry's campaign has dispatched him, for the most part, to rural areas where he is not likely to draw much national attention. His aides say that he has received extensive, and usually glowing, notices from the newspapers and television stations in places where he has appeared.

I don't get it.  When did the Edwards Isn't Visible Enough meme start?   The NYT's own Rick Lyman pointed out eleven days earlier that Dick "dick" Cheney has been on the same sort of rural campaign schedule, typical for VPs:

So expect in coming weeks to see both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Edwards focusing on rural and small-town areas.

And in this story on the September 23, the NYT (online version only) had a story by Craig Crawford of the Congressional Quarterly that refutes everything that Nagourney and Archibald wrote:

The Democratic vice presidential nominee has not disappeared off the face of the Earth, as many in the news media suggest, and he is not holding his punches against Republicans, as some in his party lament.

You just have to get out of the big city hotels to find Edwards. And when you do, his words are plenty tough.

If only the NYT could find Edwards.  But he's stumped them by visiting those apparently inaccessible "rural areas".  This is the paper of record, ladies and gentlemen.  Intrepid within a two-hundred mile radius of major urban centers.  For the record, even though the NYT has been kicked off Air Force Two,  Cheney is effectively "stalked" by Rick Lyman as he goes from rural town to rural town.   Lyman's article on the subject is pretty funny:

In a little over two weeks since the end of the Republican convention, I have taken 16 flights totaling 10,496 miles and driven more than 1,000 additional miles to and from distant events. I have changed hotels and rental cars almost every day. I ate burritos in New Mexico, barbecue in Memphis and a steak the size of a hubcap in Minneapolis. My expense account will be a splendid thing.

At a campaign event in Oregon, the vice president told the crowd - which included me - that he understands that new security demands may be a hardship. "I know it's not pleasant sometimes," he said. "Of course, I don't fly on commercial airliners. But I hear from people who do, and the process can sometimes be burdensome."

But Edwards is out of touch.

On the jump page we get another process piece  about the Kerry campaign, this one about the addition of Joe Lockhart to the staff.   David Halbfinger wins this month's Anonymous Source Award with only three sourced quotes, each of which sounds like it came from the press conference announcing Mr. Lockhart's arrival.  Read it.  It's funny.

9/23: Four days after Daniel Altman wrote Are Some Red States Blue About Jobs, which  had this quote in it:

Professor Auerbach also warned against a last-minute spending or tax-cutting spree aimed at attracting votes. "Anything that the president would propose in the last two months before an election would amount to pandering," he said, "and that just isn't good fiscal policy."

The front page of the paper has the story of Congressional leaders agreeing to forget about how they're going to pay for an $145B extension of tax cuts sought by BushCo.  Professor Auerbach should climb down from his ivory tower and look around at exactly how craven politicians are.  There is no pandering depth to which they will not stoop or be dragged, especially in an election year.

There's also a not-horrible piece from Richard Stevenson in the 9/23 paper: Kerry maintains Domestic Focus, Turning to Social Security and Medicare.  It avoids the excitement that Stevenson can generate when he writes about BushCo.  And he mentions that BushCo has left quite a bit about his wacky privatization scheme for Social Security unexpained.  But he doesn't offer even a sentence of impartial analysis of how much in trouble Social Security is - or isn't - in so we're left with another he said/he said story that makes both candidates look like they're evading the issue of Social Security.  That's probably the truth, but it doesn't help readers understand the issue or decide which dissembler they want to support in November.

9/24: This was the day after the Rosy Garden appearance by BushCo and his srtrongman Allawi, during which Allawi said that elections would not be put off.  It was the same day that Rummy, speaking on behalf of an administration that knows the value of imperfect elections better than any other, said that if violence in Iraq allowed for elections to happen in only parts of the country, well then that's better than no elections and anyway, "nothing's perfect in life."  Ms. Bumiller dutifully reports all of this in this story and she even points out that the Allawi visit was more campaign stunt than anything else.  But it's another choppy effort that makes it hard to connect the dots.  The information is there if you read carefully enough and have been following the story for a while.   

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but at least Ms. Bumiller's sources aren't calling people to clarify her quoting of them, as Douglas Brinkley did after he read this Wilgoren story. 

"A story in the September 24 New York Times leaves the false impression that I think John Kerry was not 'the war hero we thought he was.' Nothing could be further from the truth. He was a great American fighting man in Vietnam and deserved all of his medals. Over the past year I have vigorously defended Kerry's military record and will continue to do so.

"My comment was meant to be about the political consequences of the anti-Kerry Swift boat attacks vs. the anti-Bush National Guard ones. I was speaking about public perceptions not my personal beliefs."

The story is an old one, but Wilgoren does use a quote from BushCo's Matthew Dowd that would make a good story - especially if a NYT reporter tackled it:

Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for the Bush campaign, said his candidate had never talked about Vietnam. To Mr. Dowd, the main residue of the recent National Guard controversy is a public that has become more skeptical of the mainstream news media during the campaign's final 40 days.

Indeed. 

Also of note in the 9/24 paper is a story about a journalist, Zeynep Tugrul, who was kidnapped and released in Iraq.  Ms. Tugrul makes this observation:

"These are people who think they are living in the time of the Crusades," Ms. Tugrul recalled in a four-hour conversation at an Ankara cafe this week. "They say they are fighting for Islam first and Iraq second. They think their religion is being attacked."

Don't you feel safer now?

9/25: Robin Toner did a good job covering Kerry's speech at Temple.  She even reported the points Kerry has been making  - but not loudly enough - that set him apart from BushCo:

Outlining his own antiterrorism plan, Mr. Kerry said he would "make Afghanistan a priority again, because it's still the front line in the war on terror.'' He said he would put new emphasis on "denying our most dangerous enemies the world's most dangerous weapons," by securing and reducing nuclear stockpiles. And he said he would lead a new effort to block nuclear weapons programs in North Korea and Iran.

Mr. Kerry also promised to "wage a war on terrorist finances every bit as total as the war we wage on the terrorists themselves.'' He drew one of his biggest rounds of applause when he declared, "I will do what President Bush has not - I will hold the Saudis accountable,'' noting that there had been no public prosecutions of terrorist financers in Saudi Arabia since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Democratic challenger said he would substantially increase money for securing borders, airports and seaports, including $2 billion to upgrade security on subways and railroads, "so that what happened in Madrid doesn't happen here."

Mr. Kerry also said the United States must have a long-term strategy to deny terrorists "recruits and safe havens.'' He argued that Al Qaeda was engaged in a struggle for the "heart and soul of the Muslim world,'' and the United States could win that war when the people in the region "once again see America as the champion, not the enemy, of their legitimate yearning to live in just and peaceful societies."

To that end, Mr. Kerry advocated an array of proposals to strengthen economic and political development in struggling states, including a new emphasis on debt relief for countries engaged in reform and major increases in money for global health initiatives, particularly those concerning AIDS.

Ms. Bumiller almost does an equally good job.  She points out the many inconsistencies in the BushCo administration's most recent blatherings about elections in Iraq.  When she quotes BushCo saying that Kerry would prefer Saddam to be in power to the situation in Iraq today, it sounds so desperate that I almost didn't mind that she spent the rest of the column outlining BushCo's travel plans instead of explaining the dishonesty behind the remark.

David Brooks showed up on Saturday, as he always does.  His column was a new low for him though.  It was poorly written and reasoned, which is par for Brooks' course, but it was also so deeply disingenuous and sarcastic, that it deserves special mention. 

Brooks compares the situation in Darfur to Iraq, wanting us to agree that the UN is a useless organization that spends time drafting resolutions instead of actually doing something while people die waiting.  The worldwide inaction regarding Darfur is frustrating to everyone involved, and it exposes impotence, but not so much of the UN than of the USA.  The fact is that BushCo would have loved few things more than to solve the problem in Darfur in time for election day, but we are unable to move China on the subject and that's all she wrote.  We're out of options, thanks in large part to our involvement in Iraq but also because we can't take on China, which has 4, 000 troops in Sudan to protect their oil interests. 

Brooks should be ashamed of himself for using the suffering of the Sudanese people to try to score points for Dear Leader's misquided efforts in Iraq.  He should be shunned by polite society for suggesting to readers of the NYT that the people of Darfur are dying because the UN is afraid of doing something that would:

... lack legitimacy! Strain alliances! Menace international law! Threaten the multilateral ideal!

As if it's only the USA's respect for the UN's unfathomable multilateral policies that are holding us back from single-handedly saving everyone suffering in Darfur.   We just aren't that strong.   But I'll be looking forward to a future Brooks' column explaining our success in Haiti and why we haven't sent several thousand troops and a billion dollars there to help them recover from the latest devestating storm:

The situation remains critical," he said in an interview with Agencia Brasil. "Even those who were not directly affected are going hungry without enough water and are suffering from a shortage of medicine and medical assistance, because the government infrastructure was already weak and, after this tragedy, is virtually nonexistent."

China?  Little help?

Credit Where Credit's Due

David Halbfinger has had four pieces in the NYTimes in the last six days. One of them, Kerry Addresses the N.A.A.C.P., Attacking Bush for Not Doing So and Kerry Outlines Plans to Improve Intelligence Gathering were both straight reporting of major speeches Kerry gave last week.

The most recent one, Kerry Building Legal Network for Vote Fights is the weakest because I can't shake the idea that it casts the Kerry campaign in a paranoid light. From the story:

But it is the campaign of Mr. Kerry that appears to be doing the most to apply lessons from the Florida recount and that is adopting the more fiercely partisan posture in the early going.

Its plans include setting up SWAT teams of specially trained lawyers, spokesmen and political experts to swoop into any state where a recount could be needed.

Partisan SWAT teams swooping into any state? Calm down, David. They're lawyers for Pete's sake.

The lessons of Florida include fairly mundane ones. Democratic lawyers said, for example, that they had such a hard time obtaining office space in Tallahassee, presumably because landlords in the state capital feared antagonizing Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican and brother of President Bush.

Losing Florida by around 500 votes (when the recount was stopped) while the state disenfranchised thousands of Af-Ams and Democrats was not a mundane lesson to learn. It's what has galvanized millions of Americans to take action to prevent that from happening again. This is what drives me crazy about the NYTimes news coverage of the 2000 election and all the voting-related events that have happened since. They skirt the issues at hand and end up wondering if anything bad really happened at all.

To his credit, Mr. Halbfinger does include some examples of why Team Kerry thinks it's a good idea to watch registration procedures before Election Day and have SWAT teams of lawyers ready to swoop on Election Day. But the coverage is too superficial. What this story has been crying out for since 2000 was some in depth, heavily financed investigative journalism along the lines of what Greg Palast has been doing on his own. Instead we got a series of good editorials too late and a series of disjointed news stories that never get below far enough below the surface to let readers see what happened in Florida four years ago and what is happening in more states this year.

Sen. Kerry is in His Hideaway! Halbfinger Doesn't Miss a Second.

Even though John Kerry has been busy this week with issues like China trade, stem cell research, rising family debt and a major address on the strengthening the middle class (the last two are key in the face of the latest numbers on the economy). And even though the Kerry campaign has been shattering fundraising records, (all links here) Halbfinger is going after the most pointless part of the picture today (again) with the Great Veep Hunt. It's like a snipe hunt only less fun to read about. Which is probably why he's spiced up the story with some intrique:

Despite feints and ruses, Mr. Kerry's decision to return from campaigning in Ohio for unspecified office work in his Capitol hideaway left the Capitol police and the Senate sergeant-at-arms struggling to keep reporters at bay.

Feints and ruses ... Reporters at bay ...

Mr. Kerry himself took part in trying to throw reporters off the trail. Arriving with aides and bodyguards at his cubbyhole office about 3:40 p.m., he announced, "I'm just going to be here a couple of minutes," then asked his entourage if anyone had a key to the hideaway.

Throwing reporters off the trail ... bodyguards ... a cubbyhole that's a hideaway! It's smaller than an undisclosed location and bigger than a spider hole and apparently the keys to it are lost, but it's definitely mysterious and a perfect place to interview candidates for the VP slot. And if only Halbfinger could have peaked inside, we would know what the carpet looked like. If only.

Way too much later Halbfinger, bruised but unbowed from all that denial of access, gets to telling us that Mr. Kerry addressed working parents and their children when he spoke in Columbus the day before. His plan is to expand the tax credit for child care to ... cover ...up to $5,000... Wait. I think I saw Bill Richardson get off a bus and he's headed this way! Someone radio ahead to the hideaway.

According to Halbfinger, Kerry Can't Even Mourn Right

Everyone is watching Kerry to be sure he doesn't politicize the death of Reagan. We all know that only Republicans are allowed to politicize death. So here comes David Halbfinger:

On his way to pay his respects to Ronald Reagan, Senator John Kerry, his campaign otherwise suspended until the former president's funeral, nonetheless managed to take a swipe at President Bush for marginalizing Democrats in Congress and to highlight his own role in Mr. Reagan's history.

That shameless bastard. How dare he relate his past experience with his present. Didn't he promise to suspend campaign activity and become a mouthpiece for the RNC for the week? All hail Dear Leader!

And this is unbelieveable:

Mr. Kerry, who came to Los Angeles to see his daughter Alexandra, 30, graduate from the American Film Institute on Wednesday, briefly paid his respects to Mr. Reagan at the presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., Tuesday afternoon. Momentarily cutting through a cordon of mourners, he saluted Mr. Reagan's coffin with his hand over his heart, bowed his head, crossed himself, saluted again and left - all in the space of a minute.

He cut through the line of mourners and only took a minute to grieve publically. There you have it. He's history's greatest monster. On the other hand, considering how many of those mourners were suffering in the Simi Valley heat, it was awful nice of Sen. Kerry to keep his mourning brief.