politics

The Post Roots Out One Speaker’s Distortions

September 1, 2004

Today The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler takes a hard look at Rudy Giuliani’s criticism of John Kerry delivered during his speech at the Republican National Convention on Monday night. While the piece, printed under the section head “For the Record,” does an excellent job of fact-checking Giuliani’s misstatements, the Post undermines its own story’s influence with a tepid lead and obscure placement.

Kessler compares Giuliani’s parsed quotations of Kerry with the Massachusetts senator’s actual words, effectively limning Giuliani’s distortions. Specifically, Kessler examines Giuliani’s attempts to mislead the audience on Kerry’s stance on Israel’s security fence, Kerry’s infamous statements about foreign leaders, and on his status as an anti-war candidate.

Then he undersells his own story with an understated lead that declares only that Giuliani’s paraphrases “often lacked context.” A more effective approach would have been for an editor to hijack the subhead above the article — “Meaning of Democrat’s Comments and What’s Being Cited Often Don’t Match” — and convert it, word for word, into the lead.

The Post further undercut the influence of Kessler’s story by burying it on page A22. (Yesterday, The Post dedicated two front page stories, in part, to Giuliani’s speech — and one of those included one of the misstatements critiqued a day late by Kessler.)

In a campaign season overrun by cleverly constructed and often misleading campaign camp talking points, The Post‘s decision to spell out “for the record” Giuliani’s attempts to deceive the public is an encouraging sign. Next, may we suggest that the newspaper learn to perform that exercise in a little less than 36 hours.

Thirty-six minutes would be a good start.

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–Thomas Lang

Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.