VIRGINIA — Last month, the New York Times made an effort to help readers navigate some of the “selective truths,” largely economy-related, being told out on the campaign trail.
“To listen to Mitt Romney tell it,” began the Times, “President Obama is a job-killing, free-spending, big-government liberal who made the recession worse with his policies and endangered free-market capitalism.” Meanwhile, “As Mr. Obama travels the country, he offers the opposite self-portrait, that of a job-creating, tightfisted, government-shrinking pragmatist who saved the country from another Great Depression.”
Southwestern Virginians have heard some version of both first-hand in recent weeks: Mitt Romney’s during a campaign stop at Carter Machinery in Salem on June 26, and President Obama’s Friday night at a rally in Roanoke (next door to Salem).
How has the local paper, The Roanoke Times, covered these two high-profile visitors presenting two very different pitches?
The paper, which excels at using multiple platforms to tell a story, offered a wealth of same-day coverage of both campaign visits. For Obama’s Friday night rally, in addition to a main report on the president’s appearance (and a colorful, “scenes from” accompanying piece), the paper live-Tweeted the visit, Storified it, produced a photo gallery of striking images, and offered an open thread on its Blue Ridge Caucus political blog (which drew 110 comments). Romney’s June 26th visit received similar same-day multi-media treatment, which the paper touted—“Romney event coverage: a successful use of social media tools”—on its blog.
Specifically, per the Times’s blog:
Six staffers attended the Romney event at Carter Machinery, each armed with a smart phone and, thanks to recent training sessions … ready to use Twitter to post updates and photos from the scene. Editors behind the scenes in our downtown Roanoke newsroom worked efficiently to pull tweeted images into Storify and continuously posted updates on roanoke.com.
There were some 200 tweets about the event beginning in the minutes after Romney took the stage. There were many tweets before he appeared too.
Roanoke Times’ staffers snapped and tweeted about 20 photos that were added first to Storify and later to a photo gallery.
The paper, in other words, devoted some serious resources to “event coverage” of Romney’s visit—and devoted similarly serious resources to documenting Obama’s stop last week. Southwestern Virginians got a thorough, attractive, multi-media look at each of the two visits, below campaign-pleasing headlines (“Romney says US can restore greatness,” and, “Obama vows to fight for the middle class”).
It would be great to see the paper devote more of these same resources to examining and dissecting what the candidates are saying on the stump—saying about what they’ve done, what they’ll do, what their opponent has or has not done or will or won’t do. The stuff, in other words, of the New York Times piece I cited up top. As one small example, the Roanoke Times, in its reporting on Obama’s visit, passed along without question one of the Obama camp’s claims examined by the New York Times—that “4.4 million private sector jobs have been created during the president’s term so far” (in Roanoke, it was Obama surrogate/US Senate candidate Tim Kaine talking). True? Yes, as long as you start counting “in March 2010, after the money from [Obama’s] stimulus law was flowing and payrolls began growing again,” as the New York Times wrote. Just weeks earlier in Salem, Romney painted a much gloomier jobs picture—though “Mr. Romney counts” unemployment, as the New York Times explained, “from the month when Mr. Obama took office and inherited an economy that was hemorrhaging jobs at historic rates.”
This is maddening and sometimes inconclusive work, yes. But Southwestern Virginians, like voters everywhere, need help navigating and making judgments about these two versions and visions being presented to them.
"Yes, as long as you start counting “in March 2010, after the money from [Obama’s] stimulus law was flowing and payrolls began growing again,”
Oh dear, this is stupid. What was happening when Obama took over in 2009?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NaGuPdnffEI/T_bclZslf8I/AAAAAAAAODQ/P4I-fuSaOuY/s1600/EmployRecJune2012.jpg
Obama took over around the 12 month of that. Look at the slope and the shape of the curve.
Or if you prefer start from 20 seconds into here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwWGzQ_FUtQ
Obama put out a stimulus which was too small, put out policies designed to help the banks more than homeowners, put too much emphasis on tax cuts and not enough on employment, and a binch of other things I could complain about (and have over 3 long years)
But come on. If we aren't going to count from when Obama changed the trajectory of the economy when the "from the month when Mr. Obama took office and inherited an economy that was hemorrhaging jobs at historic rates," then when should we count? From the year before Obama became president when the trajectory started?
Did we do this with Bush? Because he was given a lot of credit over his first recession which began as Clinton left and Enron, Worldcom, and family blew up along with the WTC. Did we say "You are responsible for all the unemployment that took place on day one of your controversial inauguration"?
Come on. Give credit where it is due. If Obama is responsible for the jobs lost from day one of his presidency, you go on and say that, If he is not, then he is deserving of the credit for the jobs recovered since the point he owned the US economy.
(while dealing with unprecedented obstruction from the federal reserve, the republicans, blue dogs, state governors, idiots in three cornered hats, etc..)
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 18 Jul 2012 at 04:40 PM
Conservatives tried this trick with deficits before, and not even the commies at CATO could swallow it:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/dont-blame-obama-for-bushs-2009-deficit/
It's unfortunate that the press and Glen Beck had such an influence, defining Obama's moderate proposals as some sort of Obamapocalypse which the 'principled tea party' could address. It's unfortunate that Obama's centrism left his own supporters insulted and marginalized as Rahm Emmanuel's "retards" while Obama's people let the bankers get away with looting (it's not against the law when it's a white man in a suit who donates politically), let lobbyists eliminate the public option from Bachus's gang discussions, and sold labor down the river.
The cost of that?
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/07/the-economic-stakes-of-november.html
"Suppose that Obama's voters had turned out in 2010 to vote for down ballot offices in as large numbers as they turned out in 2008. Where would the US economy be now?
There would have been no tea party Republican Governors' slashing of state employment, with attendance multiplier effect putting downward pressure on there and neighboring economies. There would have been no debt ceiling crisis to add substantially to economic uncertainty and increase the flight to quality. There would have been Larry Summers infrastructure bank, which would now be pumping out $200 billion a year in badly needed infrastructure investment.
Add all those up, and you get on economy with between $300 billion and $600 billion more of annual spending, depending on the multiplier. That is an economy with unemployment rate in the low 7s or the 6 percents. That's an economy growing at 3 to 4% per year instead of 1 to 2% per year. That some economy with a lower projected deficits and debt to GDP ratio then the economy we have today.
The failure of marginal Obama 2008 voters to turn out for down ballot candidates in 2010 was a disaster for America."
Democrats are imperfect vessels of popular will, but at least they try to govern. Republicans are vandals. They don't drive the car into a ditch, they strip it, sell it, and then point at democrats for taking too long in putting the parts back together.
I know you journalism guys want to have a close political race, but based on the objective evidence, republicans are political food poisoning. If they do not pay a price for the last 20 years of outrageous political conduct (more if you include Iran/Contra and Central American Death Squads under Reagan) then they will have no incentive to change their country destroying habit.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 18 Jul 2012 at 05:02 PM
Tharon,
Thanks for the feedback. Your criticism about not qualifying the “4.4 million private sector jobs" figure from Tim Kaine is a valid one. I should have caught that when fact-checking my story that night, but in the rush to deadline on a live Friday night event it slipped under my radar.
For our live coverage of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama's events in the Roanoke Valley the last few weeks, I've tried largely to capture the essence of their speeches. My story on each candidate's speech was paired with a "scene" story by another reporter. In addition to the event stories, we also published advance stories (the Romney event here, and the Obama event here) that were an attempt both to capture what's made western Virginia important in terms of the national election and to take a deeper look at policy and the back-and-forth of the campaign than we did with the speech stories.
I certainly appreciate the "multi-platform" tip of the hat, too, as we strive on our Blue Ridge Caucus blog to capture more of the day-to-day politics of the presidential race (as well as Virginia's high-profile U.S. Senate race and the three congressional seats that fall within our coverage area). Over the last couple of years the blog has served as our primary forum for fact-checking claims and getting into more detail on policy issues and clashes. A recent example was our attempt to look more closely at the president's "If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that" line from Roanoke that's become a key talking point this week.
As with a campaign, our political coverage is a work in progress. I've learned much since 2008 -- when Obama visited the area three times and Sarah Palin once -- but I'd like to continue improving through this summer and fall, too.
Thanks again for the constructive criticism.
Mason Adams
The Roanoke Times
#3 Posted by Mason Adams, CJR on Wed 18 Jul 2012 at 08:14 PM