If there’s a theme to this campaign season, it has to be vicious, misleading spin, and the press corps’ collective refusal to promptly call politicians to account for it — not even when the spin that is spun has already been thoroughly debunked.
Last night, Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic Senator Zell Miller delivered prime time addresses recapitulating a number of selective mis-statements that have been debunked repeatedly — and, once again, like so many programmed robots, much of the press corps reported it all as if it were fact.
The Washington Post‘s John F. Harris noted that Cheney “ended with [Kerry’s] recent comment that he would be ‘more sensitive’ to the concerns of allies in the war against terrorism.” A few paragraphs later, he reported Cheney’s remark unchallenged: “‘He talks about leading a more sensitive war on terror, as though al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side,’ Cheney jeered, to laughter and boos in the convention hall.”
USA Today and the Los Angeles Times also printed the remark unchallenged. Problem is, what Kerry actually said on August 5 was, “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.”
The Post‘s Harris also let the GOP take another free shot at Kerry: “At his speech here, [Sen. Zell] Miller noted Kerry’s antiwar activities in the 1970s and various Senate votes against weapons systems, then crowed: ‘This is the man who wants to be commander in chief of our U.S. armed forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?'”
For the real story on those votes on weapons systems, Post readers would have to turn to page A25 for Dana Milbank’s news analysis piece, where he helpfully unspins his colleague. This is not the first time the Post has fed its readers spin on page one and an antidote to same on page 17 or 25 or 27; we’re waiting for the day that it occurs to the paper’s editors that they have that formula exactly backwards. Until then, we and thee will have to dig deep into the Post to find the right stuff. Like this, from Milbank:
Miller portrayed Kerry as “an auctioneer sealing off our national security.” He recited a long list of weapons systems he said Kerry opposed.
Miller’s list was mostly derived from a single Kerry vote against a spending bill in 1991, rather than individual votes against particular systems. The bill was also opposed by five Republican senators at the time, and Cheney, who was defense secretary at the time, was demanding even deeper cuts in defense spending by Congress.
As political reporters should know, these attacks aren’t new — and they’ve already been thoroughly debunked. FactCheck.org, for example, demonstrated back in February how misleading the weapons systems claim was. And Jon Stewart, among others, knocked down the “sensitive” talking point three weeks ago.
If Stewart and the self-described “fake news” team at “The Daily Show” can figure this stuff out, surely the nation’s leading real news outlets can do it.
Then again, maybe not.
–Bryan Keefer
Bryan Keefer was CJR Daily’s deputy managing editor.