Just to add to the last post, I found it interesting to see how the press played this story differently. It’s a classic case study.
One of my biggest difficulties with contemporary journalism is the fear of drawing conclusions. Reporters and editors are afraid, somewhat understandably, of appearing biased. As a result, stories/articles strive for “balance,” even when one side of a story is demonstrably correct and the other side isn’t.
“Dick Cheney delivered a speech today at the Heritage Foundation in which he said two plus two equals five and he believes the sun will rise, from now on, in the South. Democrats, meanwhile, said they disagree and cited experts who discounted Cheney’s claims.”
This is just an apocryphal paragraph, of course, but it shows what irritates me. The Republicans said this, the Democrats said that. An uninformed reader who wants to know the truth doesn’t know which side is right. I understand the need for objectivity in the media, but there are such things as objective truths. If one side makes a claim that just isn’t true, there’s nothing wrong with a newspaper or other media outlet saying so.
Take yesterday’s Drudge example. Drudge ran a report that took Clark quotes out of context and changed the meaning of Clark’s original comments. The GOP and Lieberman’s campaign tried to make a big thing about it, while Clark’s campaign explained that this was ridiculous.
The report generated plenty of attention in the press — some got it right, some didn’t.
The LA Times, for example, got it wrong.
“Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie on Thursday attacked Democratic presidential hopeful Wesley K. Clark in Clark’s hometown of Little Rock, Ark., saying testimony Clark gave to a Congressional committee in 2002 contradicts his current position opposing the war in Iraq. Clark, clearly fired up about what he viewed as a twisting of his comments, said his testimony was consistent with his current stand against the war.”
Well, which is it? Do the comments contradict Clark’s current position or don’t they? Were his words twisted or not? The Times doesn’t say, so its readers are left to try and guess who was telling the truth. That’s not helpful, especially when there’s a impartial correct answer that the Times ignores.
The Washington Post and New York Times were better. The Post, for example, noted a plain fact: “The full transcript…showed that the RNC was selective in its choice of excerpts.” The Times said something similar, noting that the “full transcript reveals positions far more nuanced than the excerpts released by the Republicans.” That’s an exceedingly polite way of saying the GOP lied, but it gets the point across.
The single best story came from the Knight Ridder news service, which ran the most accurate report of the incident. This was the lede:
Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, charged Thursday that retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark endorsed President Bush’s policy toward Iraq two weeks before Congress voted to authorize Bush to go to war. If true, that would contradict the core message of Clark’s presidential campaign. The complete transcript of Clark’s Sept. 26, 2002, testimony, however, reveals that Clark didn’t endorse Bush’s policy during the congressional hearing, and that the Republican charge is based on selected excerpts of his remarks.
Hallelujah, someone got this completely right. Is the Knight Ridder report biased? Absolutely not. It’s simply a factual matter: the GOP made a charge, Clark denied it, the transcript shows Clark was right and the GOP wasn’t. This tells readers what they need to know. Indeed, the rest of the Knight Ridder story details exactly how the transcript was selectively edited to make a misleading point.
And while Knight Ridder got it right, CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who’s had a problem with accuracy and conservative bias for years, got it terribly wrong.
As Media Whores Online discovered, Dobbs, on his CNN program yesterday, cited Drudge’s false report and left it completely unchallenged.
“General Wesley Clark today said Congress should determine whether [Bush] was criminal by advocating a war against Saddam Hussein,” Dobbs said. “He said [Bush] misled the American public on the issue of Iraq. General Clark likes to say he has been a consistent opponent of the war in Iraq. But the reality appears to be much less clear. In testimony to congress in September 2002, as reported by the Drudge Report, General Clark said that if peaceful efforts to resolve the Iraq issue fail, the U.S. should form a coalition to bring force to bear.”
This passes for journalism at CNN? I might expect this kind of nonsense on Fox News, but CNN is supposed to be the real news network. Dobbs owes Clark an apology and he owes his viewers an on-air correction. (And Dobbs should stop considering Matt Drudge a reliable source for information)
If, by chance, you wanted to remind Dobbs and CNN of this fact, you should feel free to send Dobbs an email. And if you were so inclined, you could also share your concerns about this with Dobbs’ boss, Jim Turner, president of CNN.