Today’s Washington Times featured an article suggesting that Democratic Senator Richard Durbin’s recent comparison of guards at Guantamano prison to Nazis did not get nearly as much coverage as Trent Lott’s little slip-up three years ago at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, when he said that if Thurmond had won the 1948 presidential campaign (run on a segregationist platform), we “wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years.”
Lott’s comment sparked weeks’ worth of news coverage, and eventually cost him his position as Senate majority leader. But only nine days after Durbin’s comparison of Americans’ treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo to the work of “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings,” outrage over his remarks seems to have died down. Even the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Anti-Defamation League and the Republican senators who initially spoke out against Durbin’s comments have now accepted his apology.
The Washington Times thinks he got off too easy.
In the article, James G. Lakely presents bits of data comparing coverage for the two offensive statements. The New York Times “ran just two stories about the Durbin furor — one a 180-word brief from the Associated Press and one with a staff byline — and the Washington Post published three.” But “[I]n the eight days from when Mr. Lott’s comments began to elicit outrage, the New York Times published five stories, including front-page stories three consecutive days. The Washington Post also published six stories, including two on the front page.”
At first we thought that little qualifier, “from when Mr. Lott’s comments began to elicit outrage,” might be a tip-off to some statistical trickery. But our own search of the Nexis database showed that Lakely is on to something. We started our search from the day Lott’s comments were made (instead of when they “began to elicit outrage”), and looked at the coverage in major newspapers for the next nine days — the same amount of time that has elapsed since Durbin’s remarks. The result: 43 hits containing “Durbin” and “Nazi” or “Nazis,” and a whoppin’ 252 with the words “Lott” and “Thurmond.”
Just as we were getting all geared up to write a confirmation of Lakely’s critique, however, we had to question the validity of this particular comparison. Lakely is correct that both Lott and Durbin made remarks that “generated firestorms of criticism from both the opposing political party and outside groups who took offense.”
But are all offensive remarks created equal?
Not according to Steve Rendall of the liberal Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, who argued in the Washington Times piece that the two remarks should not be given “equal weight.” “‘Trent Lott gave a tacit endorsement to a campaign whose slogan was “Segregation Forever,”‘ he said. ‘It seems to me that Lott’s transgression was much greater than that of Durbin’s.'”
Luckily for everyone, there’s a more apt comparison right under our noses. Remember when Republican Senator Rick Santorum dropped his own little Hitler comparison last month? Responding to Democrats in the Senate who were protesting against a potential rule change that would have killed filibusters against judicial nominations, Santorum said, “The audacity of some members to stand up and say ‘How dare you break this rule’ — it’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, ‘I’m in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It’s mine.'”
Santorum’s remarks are much closer to Durbin’s than anything Trent Lott said. So let’s compare coverage of Durbin’s remarks to coverage of Santorum’s:
Durbin’s remarks generated 43 hits. Compare that to a search for “Santorum” and “Hitler” in major papers for the nine days following that comment.
And the verdict is: 20 hits for Santorum!
Not satisfied? Let’s check out TV coverage. Using TVeyes, which allows us to search through transcripts of television coverage, and the same search words and time periods, the Santorum search gets 22 results and the Durbin search gets 121 (including 40 mentions on Fox News, 16 on MSNBC, and 3 on CNN).
Hmm. Looks like the Liberal Media Machine might not be going so easy on Durbin after all.
But we see grist for a brand new conspiracy theory! Maybe they’re all closet Santorum supporters.
Samantha Henig was a CJR Daily intern.