Earlier today Campaign Desk reported on the failure of some big-time national reporters to address the various factual errors delivered by Vice President Cheney and Sen. Zell Miller last night at the Republican National Convention. While these papers have the largest circulations, they don’t necessarily reach the voters living in the swing states that will decide this election. So we also took a look at our favorite papers from the most pivotal states — and found, alas, that the country boys, too, had been swindled in the big city.
Like their national counterparts, many of the local papers fell prey to Cheney’s stalest and most discredited distortion of John Kerry’s words. That would be the moment when he repeated, “[Kerry] talks about leading a more sensitive war on terror, as though al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side.” As we (and others) have pointed out about 157 times now, on August 5 Kerry actually said, “I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side.” Michigan’s Detroit Free Press, Ohio’s Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Missouri’s St. Louis Dispatch all quoted or paraphrased Cheney’s distortion of Kerry’s words unchallenged.
As for Sen. Zell Miller’s speech, Minnesota’s Star-Tribune set itself apart from the pack — in a bad way — by reprinting the 117 words of Miller’s speech listing weapons systems that Kerry voted against. Apparently, the Star-Tribune thought this was more important than comparing Miller’s charges to the record, which the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank did in 54 words.
Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh Post Gazette did the same damage by reprinting Miller’s quip that, “Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security … This is the man who wants to be the commander in chief of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?” without reminding readers that Miller’s “list” derived from a vote against one appropriations bill.
Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel caught our eye for including a “What he said, what he didn’t” section at the end of its coverage, pointing out relevant facts that Cheney conveniently left out of his speech. Unfortunately, this fact-checking did not extend to what Cheney inserted into his speech. The Journal-Sentinel paraphrased Cheney’s charge that “Kerry voted against body armor, ammunition, fuel, spare parts, armored vehicles, and extra pay for hardship duty for the military,” without noting that these were all part of the same $87 billion appropriations bill that Kerry voted against because he objected to the way in which it was to be funded.
Given the number of press outlets, candidates know that if they lob a volley of frivolous assertions, some or most of them are sure to show up in any number of papers beyond the reach of the bright lights and the big cities. But in a race that will almost surely be decided by votes in the aforementioned states, it’s even more imperative that the local papers defend against this strategy by systematically holding claim up to the facts and checking to see that they match.
–Thomas Lang
Correction: This post incorrectly stated that the Albuquerque Journal failed to cover Vice President Cheney’s speech. In fact, the paper ran an AP story.
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.