{"id":13643,"date":"2007-11-19T09:15:50","date_gmt":"2007-11-19T14:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13643.html"},"modified":"2007-11-19T09:15:50","modified_gmt":"2007-11-19T14:15:50","slug":"no-room-for-facts-theres-a-horserace-to-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/no-room-for-facts-theres-a-horserace-to-cover\/","title":{"rendered":"No room for facts; there’s a horserace to cover"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s surprisingly easy to turn on the TV and find countless examples of why most coverage of the presidential campaign is utterly useless, but Greg Sargent found<\/a> a particularly egregious example yesterday on Meet the Press.<\/p>\n

Yesterday’s show consisted of six media personalities discussing the presidential race. It was hardly gripping television — we, the humble audience, basically got to peek in on a discussion among six media insiders discussing the horserace. The discussion turned to Rudy Giuliani’s Bernie Kerik problem, and Tim Russert read the spin<\/a> the former mayor told the AP: “There were mistakes made with Bernie Kerik. But what’s the ultimate result for the people of New York City? The ultimate result for the people of New York City was a 74 percent reduction in shootings, a 60 percent reduction in crime, a correction program that went from being one of the worst in the country to one that was on ’60 Minutes’ as one of the best in the country, 90 percent reduction of violence in the jails.”<\/p>\n

Here’s the video<\/a> and the transcript<\/a>, but we heard several minutes of chatter about whether Giuliani’s spin “works.” Whether the issue would “go away” as the primaries unfolded. Ron Brownstein concluded that the Kerik story is a reminder that if Giuliani gets the GOP nomination, “We will begin to explore the New York record and debate it and discuss it in a way that we haven’t so far.”<\/p>\n

The underlying point of the discussion went unsaid, but it was obvious: Giuliani appointed a criminal to head the NYPD, but he got results. The real question, therefore, is whether the ends justify the means.<\/p>\n

But this is complete nonsense. Giuliani’s excuses for Kerik are factually wrong. Not a single person on the Meet the Press panel even paused to let the audience know that the claim they were discussing is demonstrably false. As Greg explained:<\/p>\n

Neither Russert nor his guests spent a second asking whether Rudy’s claims were true. Russert selected this quote beforehand, so he had plenty of time to entertain this question. But he didn’t — and neither did his guests. Instead, they only discussed whether it will work politically<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The point of the program wasn’t to inform the audience; the point of the show is to highlight horserace analysis from a variety of media personalities. It’s as if we, the unwashed masses, are lucky to have the chance to see six media insiders chat about who’s up or down this week, so NBC puts it on the air for an hour.
\n
\nGreg added:<\/p>\n

The point is, no matter how you interpret it, Rudy’s push-back demands aggressive factual scrutiny<\/i>. Yet here you have a group at the top of the punditry game — Russert, Chuck Todd, Ronald Brownstein, Gwenn Ifil, etc. — and none of them even took a tentative step down that path. These folks are so preoccupied with whether Rudy’s pushback will work that there’s no mental space left to question whether it’s true. The irony, of course, is that this wrongheaded focus makes it more likely that Rudy’s pushback will<\/i> work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which leaves it to the blogs to do the work<\/a> media personalities don’t want to do anymore.<\/p>\n

* Giuliani claimed that Kerik reduced “shootings” by 74% — Greg found that there are no statistics that measure the amorphous category of “shootings,” but there is data that showed shooting victims in New York City fell by just 7% between 1999 and 2002. So, Giuliani was only off by a factor of ten<\/i>.<\/p>\n

* Giuliani claimed that Kerik reduced crime by 60% — Wrong again. Greg explained, “According to FBI crime stats, in 2000 there were 288,368 police-recorded crimes. In 2001, there were 263,764. Comparing these is actually overly<\/i> fair to Kerik, since he started half way into 2000. So here we see a drop of roughly 8.5% percent — hardly the 60 percent Rudy claimed.”<\/p>\n

* Giuliani said Kerik’s success in turning around NYC’s correction program was touted on 60 Minutes — Actually, 60 Minutes featured Kerik’s role overseeing one specific jail, not the city’s entire corrections program.<\/p>\n

Matthew Yglesias added<\/a> the one thing Russert might have been tempted to air.<\/p>\n

Greg Sargent is obviously confused. “Tough” questioning isn’t when you examine a public figure’s claims for factual accuracy<\/i>, it’s when you examine them for consistency<\/i>. So if Rudy Giuliani says Bernard Kerik was a good choice to lead the NYPD, it’d be “tough” to toss up on the screen some years-old statement in which Rudy said something that was different. Asking whether or not the things he’s saying are true isn’t what toughness is about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I actually think the media’s coverage of presidential campaigns is getting worse. After 2000 and 2004, I foolishly thought this was impossible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s surprisingly easy to turn on the TV and find countless examples of why most coverage of the presidential campaign is utterly useless, but Greg Sargent found a particularly egregious example yesterday on Meet the Press. Yesterday’s show consisted of six media personalities discussing the presidential race. It was hardly gripping television — we, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}