Fact-esque

Resisting Framing is Hard Work. Can't One Angry Editorial Cover All the Bases?

After an editorial that exposed BushCo's desperate attempts to reframe the awkward and politically poisonous "private accounts" as "personal accounts," the NYT reporters are still referring to those private accounts as "personal accounts." (here and here )

They've also found what I think they consider a compromise "individual investment accounts." I'll suggest some other options for them. For stories sourced with Dems they can use "Speculative Money Management Ventures" "Uncertainty Investment Sweepstakes" or "Wall St. Cash Cows." For stories with primarily GOP sources, why not "Capitalist Accounts," "Free-market investment treasures," or "Money Growing Freedom Guarantees"?

Or ... they could make it clear in every story that there is a framing issue afoot and that both sides are pushing for certain terminolgy. It wouldn't take more than a sentence or two and would remind the reader that they need to read beyond the spin. Of course, then they'd expect to be able to read real information in every story, which would be a challenge for the reporters for sure. But this is the NYT! I have in on good authority that they're going forward with really good journalism. This is a good time to let that policy rip.

When "Personal Accounts" Starts Testing Bad, The Corporate Media Will Go With BushCo-Approved "Magic Money Making Sure Thing" Accounts

Watch for the corporate media to happily bounce along with BushCo's frantic re-framing of his plan to destroy Social Security:

AP:

Liebman says he favors personal retirement accounts -- the cornerstone of the Bush Social Security plan -- as long as they are implemented with certain safeguards.

The Indianopolis Star:

AARP, the nation's largest lobbying group for seniors, has been arguing against personal savings accounts in an extensive advertising campaign. The group says the accounts are too risky and expensive.

That's from a story that looks at red-state Indiana's concern about fiddling with Social Security since it is the state's biggest source of federal money.

From the pro-war WaPO:

1/20:

And they fleshed out a point alluded to by House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) on Tuesday: To break the partisan stalemate on Social Security, Republicans may have to finance their proposed personal investment accounts through some mechanism other than the 12.4 percent Social Security tax.

1/29:

Bush repeatedly cast his plans in grand terms, speaking of his desire to do "big things," despite his promise to cut the deficit and the failure of the White House to explain how he wants to pay for an agenda that includes permanent versions of his tax cuts and an expensive conversion of Social Security to allow personal accounts.

That was the fourth mention of either personal or individual accounts after an opening paragraph that refered to BushCo's plan for "partially privatizing" Social Security.

But from the usually helpful NYT a few surprises:

David Rosenbaum parts the curtain:

PRIVATIZATION AND CRISIS From polls and focus groups, President Bush and his Republican allies learned that the public was not receptive to their argument that the Social Security system faced a "crisis" and that the solution was "privatization."

Thus, a switch in terminology. Instead of "crisis," President Bush, in his press conference on Wednesday, talked about "serious problems" and "bankruptcy." Instead of "privatization," he said "personal accounts."

No dummies, Democratic senators used "privatization" over and over at a hearing on Friday and maintained time and again that no "crisis" existed.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, in a story about Democrats, tells the truth:

If Mr. Bush prevails and persuades the nation that the cure is private investment accounts, Democrats will have ceded one of their core issues to Republicans - and with it a core constituency, the elderly, who are already voting Republican in bigger numbers than ever.

But, oh! David Kirkpatrick, reporting on the GOP, lets himself be spun right round:

The president compared his proposed personal savings accounts with the Federal Thrift Savings Plan for government workers, Mr. Santorum said, meaning that individuals could be able to allocate some part of their Social Security payroll taxes to a short menu of broad-based stock and bond index funds managed by an outside administrator at a very low cost.

On Saturday Richard Stevenson looked like he was trying to make everyone happy:

At a public meeting on Friday morning on Capitol Hill, Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, a Democrat in White House sights, called diverting tax money into personal retirement accounts "a horrible, horrible public policy" that would "undermine retirement security."

but

At each stop, he will attend events to discuss Social Security with a cross section of voters and promote his plan to create private investment accounts within the retirement system and put it on sound financial footing, administration officials said.

Then he mentioned "private accounts" one more time before hitting us with three versions of "personal accounts" as he staggered to the end of the piece.

And lastly from David Rosenbaum, who wrote the blurb that explained the GOP's trickery -

When he's talking about Republicans:

In his re-election campaign and in the months since he won, Mr. Bush has used words like "crisis" and "bankruptcy" to describe the Social Security system. The answer, he has argued, is to let workers divert part of their payroll taxes to personal investment accounts, and he has made this his top domestic policy priority for this year.

When he's talking about Dems:

Democrats and organizations opposed to the plan have argued that no crisis exists, because there is enough in Social Security coffers to pay full benefits until the middle of the century. They have questioned whether it is sensible to borrow trillions of dollars to pay benefits already promised to retirees to offset the tax revenues placed in the private accounts.

I think that's where the NYT has come down on this for the most part. When a reporter is talking about or to the GOP, they'll use the new-fangled yet to be found horrible "personal accounts." When they're talking to or about Dems, they'll use their favorite - and former BushCo terms of choice - "private accounts" and "partially privatize."

Look, this isn't a big mystery to anybody in the corporate media. The pro-war WaPO reporters saw the language shift coming and asked BushCo about it when they interviewed him a few weeks ago. But a question that shows up in a transcript, but not the story of the interview, and a one-paragraph blurb in the NYT about the new branding isn't enough. If this is a tactic being used by the WH to reframe the issue in the press, then the press must report on it every time it's done or they are complicit in the reframing.

"Private" and "privatization" were BushCo words and he should have to stand by them or explain why he doesn't.

UPDATE: 2/1: I posted the pro-war WaPO link to the BushCo interview. Here's the bit I referred to:

The Post: Will you talk to Senate Democrats about your privatization plan?

THE PRESIDENT: You mean, the personal savings accounts?

The Post: Yes, exactly. Scott has been --

THE PRESIDENT: We don't want to be editorializing, at least in the questions.

The Post: You used partial privatization yourself last year, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes?

The Post: Yes, three times in one sentence. We had to figure this out, because we're in an argument with the RNC [Republican National Committee] about how we should actually word this. [Post staff writer] Mike Allen, the industrious Mike Allen, found it.

THE PRESIDENT: Allen did what now?

The Post: You used partial privatization.

THE PRESIDENT: I did, personally?

The Post: Right.

THE PRESIDENT: When?

The Post: To describe it.

THE PRESIDENT: When, when was it?

The Post: Mike said it was right around the election.

THE PRESIDENT: Seriously?

The Post: It was right around the election. We'll send it over.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm surprised. Maybe I did. It's amazing what happens when you're tired. Anyway, your question was? I'm sorry for interrupting.

I bet he was real sorry he interrupted.

Misty, Watercolored Memories

Exactly as she shone during the weeks around the GOP convention, Elisabeth Bumiller has been luminescent in the weeks leading up to and including the inaguration. Not surprisingly she's had a story nearly every day - a few on the front page. Her experience as a style reporter has held her in good stead to be able to handle the gripping questions facing our country like Which millionaires are pals with BushCo? and Which will be raising money for him? Equally valuable is her facility for morphing a political story into a frontpage paean to Dear Leader, which we're sure has not gone unnoticed.

I put off looking at Ms. Bumiller's inaugural oeuvre until the day was mercifully behind us. But now let's walk together down Ms. Bumiller's Road to the Coronation.

The journey started weeks ago with three puff pieces that explained to the peasants how the coronation would be funded (PRIVATELY! With no help from Enron!) and why, in the face of the greatest natural disaster of our lifetimes and while we're in the middle of losing a war fought on false premises, it's a good idea to spend tens of millions of dollars on parties for people who are buying access to power. (here, here and here) Over the weeks, Ms. Bumiller faithfully regurtitated WH spin, including the idea that anyone who questioned the wisdom of the four-day wartime exercise in excess was taking a "political shot."

Those three stores were followed by a two-page spread devoted to an Up Close and Personal look at one of BushCo bestest friends, some rich guy he knew at Yale. From rich guy we learned that BushCo is full of common sense and isn't as conservative as people think. He, via Ms. Bumiller, told us that BushCo brought Cheney to the 9/11 panel because he wanted to show how he was "calling all the shots." We learned that it was this rich guy who persuaded BushCo to have the GOP convention in NYC even though we had been told in previous Bumiller stories that the idea was all BushCo's - or was it Rove's? Those are RNC talking points and Ketchum point-grabbers 2 - 5, 11, 17, 25 and 46 for those of you keeping score at home.

But there's more! On the Tuesday before the Big Day, Ms. Bumiller teamed up with Richard Stevenson to crank out an apparently in-depth look at how the administration's own superhero, Dick "dick" Cheney, is working to advance his BushCo's reckless bold domestic agenda: (emph mine)

Vice President Dick Cheney is playing a potentially pivotal role in shaping the Bush administration's ambitious domestic agenda, supporting larger personal investment accounts for Social Security than many other Republicans and helping gauge how the White House should proceed on Capitol Hill, administration officials and associates of Mr. Cheney say.

On issues like Social Security and overhauling the tax code, they say Mr. Cheney tends to mix an instinct for free-market conservatism with a pragmatic knack for vote counting, being the former House member that he is. Although Mr. Cheney is most identified in the public mind with foreign policy, he has also begun assertively rebutting administration critics on domestic issues, as he did in a speech last week on Social Security, while he works behind the scenes to hold together an increasingly fractious Republican Party.

As on Iraq and other foreign policy issues, Mr. Cheney's views on domestic matters tend to favor bold action even at the risk of short-term political backlash - what his critics would consider overreaching, reinforcing President Bush's own instincts. But even as he usually favors conservative approaches to whatever issue is under consideration, he also has a realistic streak honed by his keen sense of what members of his party on Capitol Hill are willing and able to push through Congress and deliver to Mr. Bush's desk, people who have discussed domestic issues with him say.

Holy politics, Batman! After that the rest of the story goes into sleeping-pill mode as it drones the list of Cheney's plans for the country's economy. We could use some of Stevenon's trademark action-packed writing in this section but instead we get innocuous, WH/Ketchum-approved phrases like "incentives for more savings and investment" and a story that makes it seem as if Supply Side Economics wasn't a giant scam to redistribute wealth. And, despite the excrutiatingly obvious comparisons between the way the country was hustled into a bad war in Iraq and the way BushCo is currently trying to hustle through the destruction of Social Security, there's no mention beyond the above, As on Iraq and other foreign policy issues. And, just in case that phrase rang any bells with the odd reader, threatening to wake her up, the story is quick to tell us that Mr. Cheney's supporters say he has no desire to elbow aside cabinet secretaries or run economic policy day to day. That should shut up any nagging voices that try to remind us that Cheney did exactly that when he strongarmed the CIA to come up with intelligence that would get us into Iraq.

The WHLetter for Coronation Week was a profile of Michael Gerson, the man responsible for Bushco's dreadful speech that mentioned freedom and liberty 237 times, but justice not once. Gerson "defended" his use of religious imagery. It's too bad Ms. Bumiller didn't interview him after we heard the speech so he could have defended his use of revisionist history and mind-numbing platitudes that rendered any ideas in the speech meaningless. Live and learn.

Despite her best efforts to stay in the plus column Ketchum-wise, she couldn't help but stir up some trouble for the WH, which goes to show you that even a blind, bound and gagged squirrel can find an acorn every once in a while. On the day after the coronation, Ms. Bumiller had one more column reminding us why BushCo the country desperately needed this four-day extravaganza. It was all about the troops and democracy:

When President Bush delivered his Inaugural Address on Thursday, it was the culmination of a meticulously planned White House communications strategy to portray a $40 million weeklong party as a tribute to troops overseas and an enduring symbol of American democracy.

The rest of the story is a look at exactly how insecure and needy BushCo is hidden in talk about the troops and BushCo's pre-inauguration media blitz. But in the last two paragraphs, Ms. Bumiller, who's practically Nellie Bly if you think about it, can't resist reminding us that she did break two stories over the last several weeks. It was she who had the scandalous Kid Rock booking first, almost three weeks before the Big Day - even though the WH insisted on saying that he was never confirmed, although she backs off that part:

Kid Rock, the rap star whom Barbara Bush, the president’s daughter, wanted to perform at a youth concert, did not. Conservatives had complained about the often profane lyrics of the rapper, who has described himself as the “pimp of the nation.’’

She also reminds us that way back in November, she helped to ruin the day for one of the chief inaugural fundraisers, Brad Freeman, when he told the LAT a sexist joke that she reprinted verbatim

"I told the president, 'I finally figured out that dating one 50-year-old is better than two 25-year-olds,' " Mr. Freeman told The Los Angeles Times. In any case, Mr. Freeman is now focusing his attention on what he estimates will be at least a hundred phone calls he needs to make to the best names in his Rolodex. As incentives for a big check - there are no limits, unlike those on campaign contributions - Mr. Freeman and the inaugural committee will offer benefits like invitations to select dinners with Mr. Bush, good seats at the swearing-in on Jan. 20 and tickets to the best balls.

My goodness - imagine telling the president that! He loves his old girl, Waura. Mr. Freeman was not allowed to talk to the press after that.

And so here we are, full circle, back at the early days of Ms. Bumiller's excellent coronation adventure, when she was unknowingly breaking meaningless stories, simply by taking dication. It's good to be king - or, you know, the king's stenographer.

Tonight on Crossfire, NYT v. NYT

More whiplash from the NYT this week. On Sunday Richard Stevenson filed a Ted-Koppel-esque, it's-all-so-complicated rundown of the Social Security question. He started by telling readers that trying to understand the debate would require aspirin since it's "migraine-inducing in its complexity." Then he went on to answer some simple questions about Social Security assuming the persona of a slightly less dishonest WH flak. For instance, one question asked if the SocSec trust fund was running out of money. "No, no, no, well, yes," Stevenson said:

The trust fund, though, is not cash in a bank. Successive Congresses and administrations have used the money to pay for general government spending, leaving the fund with nothing more than a promise to pay it back eventually. To make good on that promise, the government will have to reduce other spending, raise taxes or borrow more money.

Do you love the "Successive Congresses and administrations" line? Exactly which admininstrations do you suppose he means? And just once in any story about Social Security, I would love someone to explain exactly which taxes would be raised when they lump that possibility in a mournful litany of alternatives to privatization. It likely means raising the income ceiling, which will affect people making over $87,000 a year. Or maybe getting rid of BushCo's tax cuts on the moneyed elite. I don't think the specter of the raising taxes slightly on the upper middle and upper class is going to make anyone who's counting on every penny of their SocSec benefits lose any sleep.

As for the trust fund being left with nothing more than a promise to pay it back, the NYT editorial board has something to say about that today: (emph mine)

In suggesting that 2018 is doomsyear, the president is reinforcing a false impression that the trust fund is a worthless pile of I.O.U.'s - as detractors of Social Security so often claim. The facts are different: since 1983, payroll taxes have exceeded benefits, with the excess tax revenue invested in interest-bearing Treasury securities. (An alternative would be to, say, put the money in a mattress.) That accumulating interest and the securities themselves make up the Social Security trust fund. If the trust fund's Treasury securities are worthless, someone better tell investors throughout the world, who currently hold $4.3 trillion in Treasury debt that carries the exact same government obligation to pay as the trust fund securities. The president is irresponsible to even imply that the United States might not honor its debt obligations.

Stevenson didn't get that memo. Then he offers this helpful analysis. Remember, he's an expert:

Q. Will Americans be better off under the new system?

A. No one can say for certain. Because stock and bond markets can fluctuate a great deal from year to year, even though they have yielded reliable gains over the long run, people could do much better or much worse than average, depending on when they happen to retire. And there is no guarantee that historical market trends will hold true in coming decades.

White House officials argue that, at least for younger workers and succeeding generations, the new proposals should be compared not with what the current system promises in benefits for future retirees, but with what the system will be able to pay after the trust fund runs out. Remember those annual statements you get in the mail from Social Security telling you how much you will receive in benefits when you retire? According to Social Security's actuaries, after 2042, if no changes are made to the system, Americans will get less than three-quarters of what has been promised to them.

So who knows? Ya' rolls the dice and ya' takes yer chances. There's no mention of the fact that if the economy did well enough to pay market returns that would make us all rich, SocSec wouldn't be in any trouble. And if the economy tanks and takes the stock market with it, well you should have invested better, Grandma.

Stevenson also helps BushCo along by serving up some fruit of the poisonous tree. He reminds us that the WH wants us not to compare the possible results of our future high rolling market speculation on what a solvent SocSec system would pay out, but instead on what the mythical broken bank SocSec system of BushCo's terrifying fantasies would pay out, which, for young and unborn workers, would be less than 75% of what they expect. Scary! Except the pro-war WaPO has let us know that if you're twenty today, BushCo plans to cut your benefits by nearly 33%. Scarier! And left unmentioned with any kind of clarity in Stevenson's column. Maybe the numbers made his headache worse.

If the NYT is serious about giving us clear reporting about the Social Security debate so that we can make an informed choice, they could start by canning analyses like Stevenson's.

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."

It's a Liberal Thing

It's fashionable in the corporate press to cast the battle over Social Security as a Liberal/Conservative thing. To be fair, it should be Liberal/NeoConservative thing. To be accurate, it should be Politically Diverse Groups/NeoCons. Richard Stevenson on Dear Leader's performance earlier this week: (emph mine)

He said his emphasis for now would be on convincing lawmakers that a "crisis is upon them" with regard to Social Security, because without that sense of urgency, Congress might not summon the will to act. Many Democrats agree that Social Security's finances are sufficiently shaky that some action should be taken to ensure the system's long-term health, but a growing number of liberal groups are taking exception to the administration's assertion that there is a crisis that demands wholesale changes.

Many Democrats? Richard must be borrowing the Noble Nagourney's rolodex. And here's one of those "liberal groups" lining up to save Social Security.

The best things any group interested in saving Social Security can do right now is not to let themselves be pigeon-holed as "liberal" and also work to get the other side described as "radical." They also need to start organizing very visible demonstrations that go to the heart of the issue: there is no urgent crisis facing Social Security. If we lose that battle, it's going to be hard to recover. That is even more true for the other side.

Improving the Financial Condition of Social Security

Richard Stevenson, who is lazy, tired, in the tank or all three, re-words the agenda from yesterday's session of FlatterCon '04, adds some quotes and calls it a day. Today's story is a classic example of a buried lede (no real discussion at FlatterCon '04), meaningless back and forth reporting and even of bias as Stevenson helps BushCo's privatization scheme along by painting the Social Security debate as politically motivated. Liberals are opposed to BushCo's plot because they're liberals. He even separates them from most Dems in Congress, which is interesting. From the last few paragraphs of the story:

There were no real dissenting viewpoints from the panelists. Away from the conference, some opponents of Mr. Bush's approach, mostly liberals who want to preserve the current Social Security program, said in interviews that the administration was exaggerating the scale of the problem to create an air of crisis that justified radical but unnecessary changes like creating private investment accounts.

Noting that Social Security can pay full benefits for at least 38 years, Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center on Economic Policy Research, a liberal research group, said the system's financial condition now was no worse than it has been at most points in the last few decades.

"This whole idea that Social Security needs to be fixed is false," Mr. Weisbrot said.

Democrats in Congress say they support taking some action to deal with Social Security. But many say Mr. Bush is leaving the false impression that personal investment accounts will take care of the system's financial problem.

The story has its priorities backwards. FlatterCon '04 deserved two paragraphs. The differing viewpoints among the powerful as to what Social Security needs and doesn't need deserved to be explored beyond "Liberals hate BushCo" and "Democrats in Congress say."

On the bright side: Edmund Andrews lets us know who at least some of the regular folk showing up to pay homage to Dear Leader at FlatterCon '04 are:

The exchange was an example of how Mr. Bush promotes his agenda with testimonials from "regular folks," in the words of Joshua B. Bolten, the White House budget director, who introduced Ms. Jaques.

But Ms. Jaques is not any random single mother. She is the Iowa state director of a conservative advocacy group, FreedomWorks, whose founders are Jack F. Kemp, the former vice-presidential nominee, and Dick Armey, the former House Republican leader.

Ms. Jaques also spent much of the past two years as a spokeswoman in Iowa for a group called For Our Grandchildren, which is mounting a nationwide campaign for private savings accounts.

Oh, snap! The story goes on to talk about the battle lines being drawn and the action groups being formed to try to sway public opinion in the upcoming debate (I'm hopeful that we'll have a debate) over privatizing Social Security. Good job, NYT. Now if you'd also follow up when the propaganda starts hitting the fan, we'd be in business.

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.

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.