As tends to happen on a blog, this post about one subject rapidly degenerated into a spitting match about something else altogether. This time, the digression was led by two of our resident cynics, "bud" and Doug.
bud mentions a tale about something unsavory John McCain once said (at least, I guess he said it) at some obscure, non-televised event. Weldon expressed incredulity that it had ever happened, and Doug provided a link to a 1998 piece on Salon.com that says it did happen, and what’s more, the MSM is wicked for not having repeated the horrible thing Sen. McCain is supposed to have said.
To which I can only say yeah, Doug, I found the same story when I went looking to see if Weldon was right — and I practically laughed out loud at its premise.
Since I don’t know this David Corn guy, I’ll ask bud — What’s it like to feel so put-upon by the world that you will believe the most implausible explanations, as long as they involve deviousness and conspiracy?
I was never in a position to make the decision about the Chelsea "joke" — I had been out of newsrooms for years then, and I don’t recall it coming up in handling op-ed stuff — but from years and years of making such decisions and working with others who made the same decisions, I suspect I understand why those two lines were not repeated.
One reason I do what I do — writing columns, doing this blog, doing pretty much anything and everything I can think of to be transparent short of walking down Gervais Street naked (and believe me; you don’t want to see that) — is to help people understand what we (newspaper editors) do and why we do it. I think that’s important for a number of reasons, not least the fact that people seem to go out of their way to ascribe devious motives to newspaper people (I refer you to this distraught lady). They’ll believe anything other than that we do what we do for the reasons we say we do them. That’s just beyond possibility to them.
bud responds to all this introspection by doing his best to seize upon the unlikeliest explanation — and preferably, the one that would insult me the most. After a year or two of blogging, I had succeeded in communicating to bud that the polarization of our society into left and right, Democrat and Republican, was repugnant in the extreme (the very post of which we speak was related to this concern). So what was his response? It was as follows: "You’re a partisan, Brad! A big, fat partisan! You’re the worst of them all, you lousy hypocrite! Hey, everybody, look over here! Check out the partisan!," etc.
And now this. For the record, here’s what I think about the Chelsea "joke" story:
- When bud mentioned it, I assumed it was true. It even sounded vaguely familiar, like maybe I heard it second-hand somewhere.
- I believed it because one of McCain’s character flaws — big shock, folks, he’s got ’em like everybody else — is a disturbing taste for the really inappropriate joke. Remember "Bomb, Bomb Iran?" I don’t know if it’s an old sailor’s thing, or what. I do know that he has a rather twisted bemusement, arising from his personal experience, that causes him to smile at what some people think is "horrible." You can see him thinking, "You call THAT horrible? You don’t know anything." But whatever the explanation, there’s no excuse for it. Not for a joke like this.
- I wondered whether the Republicans he told it to laughed. They probably did. There’s something about the mob mentality, when they gather for these partisan functions, that makes Democrats and Republicans laugh at pretty much anything that’s cruel or demeaning to someone on the "other side."
- Of course no reputable news source printed it. You know why? Because I can’t think of a single legitimate journalistic reason to repeat something that cruel about a kid who is in the public eye through no fault of her own. If it were just a grossly inappropriate joke about Janet Reno, that’s one thing. But Janet’s a big girl (no joke intended), and someone who has agreed to be a public figure. No, Janet Reno shouldn’t have to take that, either. But she’s not the one editors would worry about. Note that the fact that he’d said something awful was reported, and enough about it was said to make any sensible person not want to hear more. All the wicked MSM did was fail to repeat the joke itself.
- Yes, the press has always liked McCain. You know why? He’s so accessible. He puts up no barriers. He makes himself completely, absurdly accessible to us. (If anything, telling a joke like this, making a jerk of himself, is a twisted manifestation of this.) You just can’t imagine how sick we get of the ramparts most public figures erect. When we run into a guy like McCain — and it’s a rare thing, especially at this level of politics — there’s a natural tendency to like the guy. It’s a basic reflex on our part, sort of like a man automatically liking a good-looking woman who takes her clothes off. You may not agree with her politics, but you can’t help but take it kindly.
- People who think that liking McCain equates to covering up his flaws are totally out to lunch. Remember, what is it we like about the guy (and I’m using "we" in a broad sense to include the press at large; I have additional reasons why I like him as a candidate)? His openness. The fact that we get to show him with all his scars and warts and wrinkles and bad skin and mean temper and horrible, horrible, and even dangerous jokes. But that’s still no reason to join him in being mean to a poor kid.
- What do people think it means for the press to "like" McCain? I’ll tell you what it means to me — they like having the guy around. That does not necessarily translate into wanting to see him achieve his goals. How many reporters or editors (besides me) do you think actually voted for McCain when given a chance, or will vote for him this time around? I’d be surprised if the number was large. And if they wouldn’t even vote for him (again, just my supposition here), how stupid would they have to be to compromise their integrity and self-respect (we do have such qualities, you know, despite what you seem to think) to help him succeed?
- What is wrong with people who get all huffy and make accusations of malfeasance when someone uses good judgment and doesn’t repeat something that would do no good for anyone, and would harm innocents? Has their value system been so distorted by the partisan, tit-for-tat madness we see on 24/7 TV "news" that they would do anything, no matter who gets splashed, to reflect discredit upon someone of whom they disapprove? How sick is that?
I probably thought some other stuff, too, but I’d forgotten it by the time I got to the bottom of that list. That’s one reason I blog — a desperate attempt to keep up with stream of consciousness. My stream may not be deep, but it’s pretty wide.
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Why don’t we trust the press? Maybe bacause 95% of it is actually a wing of the Liberal Democrats campaign machine!
I will cite an example. All the top democrats running for President said that we would be in Iraq till at least 2013. If a Republican said that it would have been on the front page of every newspaper. A Democrat says it and it goes where?
Well, I’ll tell you where it goes on this blog. It goes here and here.
But it was no huge deal. Only people who are detached from reality think we can abandon Iraq at this juncture. The Democrats you’re talking about are pretty smart people. Only marginal candidates are desperate enough and deluded enough to say otherwise.
What does Heather think that has to do with the leanings of people in the press, anyway?
If editors play news according to their predilections — and it’s no secret that they are overwhelmingly Democratic, when they bother to check (as I noted with a link above, before Heather’s outburst) — would they bury that story?
I don’t know. If they are a wing of the liberal wing of the party — as Heather asserts — wouldn’t they want to ballyhoo it, to express their shock and disapproval, to shame these candidates back into line?
Oh, I know — you’re going to say it’s a carefully thought-out strategy, whereby these candidates, being frontrunners and all, must NOT be damaged, therefore it must be hushed up, because the press would rather a Democrat win, whether that person believes or would do the “right” things or not…
Now THAT is delusional. Most people in the press have vestigial political consciousnesses. They’re barely aware of their own attitudes, however strongly embedded they may be. To suggest that they’d be clever enough to cloak their own motives and suppress their impulses for a long-term goal — now that’s a hoot. You need to spend some time with these people. Such subtlety combined with self-awareness is alien to them. We’re talking about people who can’t think past a 24-hour news cycle…
I used to work with Brad a long time ago at The State. It was was my third of four SC newpaper jobs. I don’t practice journalism anymore, but I like to watch. Once you’ve seen how the sausage is made, you understand that journalists can’t even agree amongst themselves on “the issues,” much less conspire to attain any specific goal. As for companies they work for, the media biz is all about ad revenues and meeting shareholder expectations of earnings. News is just the “content” that compels audiences to suffer ad exposure.
Part of my job at The State was to make final, deadline decisions about what to report or print, what not to report or print, and prominence of story placement in the paper, three editions a day. As a result, I spent much of the next morning answering to readers who phoned to accuse “us” (me?) of bias, poor judgment, or just plain stupidity. I can’t remember anybody ever calling to say, “Good job,” although there were those rare letters to the editor to that effect, mostly from partisan types whose compliments made us cringe.
After all, the practice of good journalism is supposed to be an “objective” and “fair” process, free from personal prejudices and the influence of those who would try to sway “the media.”
In reality, everything about the editorial process involves subjective decision-making, governed by experience and notions of fairness and objectivity, as best we can apply them as human beings on a daily basis. What’s interesting or important to me may not be to you. Multiply that fundamental disconnect in all people and their belief systems, and you’re wrong most of the time by a lot of other people’s standards. You get used to it, but (good) editors never stop listening to complaints from the gallery, because that’s how we learn to respect other points of view — and that’s how readers got our attention. If you cared enough to call, we’d listen. It’s a lot like government and, yes, the squeaky wheel oftens gets the grease.
The same was true of the newsroom and its people. For example, much of what Brad considered crucial, I did not, but I respected his passion and diligence. We discussed, argued, debated, all day long sometimes. Ditto for just about everybody else on staff. We disagreed amongst ourselves as much as any other group of individuals. As a result, by the end of each day, we were more informed than when we started. Everybody had their say, time ran out, and we made a decision about what to publish, and where to “play it.”
Of the McCain story at issue here, I have no recollection, but I can imagine how the newsroom debate might have gone. There are political implications, fairness issues, insights into McCain’s character, all worthy of consideration. But in my opinion, it’s a mean little story at the expense of an intensely private little girl whose parents were, ummm, distracted by “other matters.” Personally, I remember feeling compassion for Chelsea. She seemed quite frightened by it all, a sitting duck for for the commentators on all things Clintonian.
Adolescence is tough enough without having the Washington Press Corps at your birthday party. Is that “objective” on my part? Fair? Nope. But it still seems “right.” So, in the end, I probably would have agreed with The Washington Post that the story was “too vicious to print.”
If McCain benefitted as a result, so be it. I could handle your call the next morning with a clear conscience. As far as I know, that’s still allowed in newspapers today.
My great awakening to the bias / sensationalism of the media occurred with the 1986 60 Minutes “report” on the unintended acceleration of the Audi 5000.
As a Chicago native I understood political bias because we got the four dailies from the two publishers, and the Sun-Times and Tribune represented the two political poles at the time. But the Audi report to me was something beyond Nader’s Corvair jeremiad simply because it was an unsupported attack by the mainstream media, folks with unlimited resources and the analytic capability — judgment — to separate fact from opinion. Any engineer could dispute Nader’s claims, but he was just one guy doing his own biased thing. 60 Minutes, on the other hand, was a prominent news organization that replaced independent investigation of a reported phenomenon with a manufactured replication of the phenomenon. They were wrong, they cost companies and consumers million$, and never paid a price for their foul deed.
Some folks who have nothing better to fill their waking hours do keep track of the media’s transgressions. Here’s a list of 101 transgression for your consideration.
Brad, you completely distorted my point. Perhaps I’m not very articulate but I thought it was pretty clear. I wasn’t attacking John McCain’s character. I simply used the joke incident to set the stage for what I thought was a far more important point. That is, Hillary Clinton is perceived by a huge number of people to be unethical. That’s why her negative numbers are so high. John McCain, on the other hand, is generally regarded as almost a saint. Yet if you examine the record of both people in their entirety it’s impossible to reach those conclusions based on the evidence. It goes back to the way the press, and yes, the vast right-wing conspiracy portrays the two individuals. Weldon pretty much confirmed that view with his suggestion that McCain could not possibly have said what he said.
The fact that Brad wrote his “devisive” post illuminates the public perception that Hillary would not serve all the people. Frankly, I’d much rather see more discussions about issues than this constant drumbeat of partisanship. And it irritates me to no end to see it becoming so one-sided. So far Brad has slammed two of the top democrats while completely ignoring the horror of Rudy Guiliani. Now there is someone who is a complete slimball, a trully disgusting excuse for a human being.
So in closing let me reiterate my main point. Hillary Clinton is a very experienced, intelligence and dedicated woman who will work tirelessly to make our country safe and prosperous. She has been thouroughly investigated and nothing, I repeat, nothing has been proven that would suggest her character is anything but pristine. I’m sure there may be some nitpicking something somewhere that would look bad, but the odds of something serious showing up are far smaller than for any other candidate. The disgusting joke by John McCain should not eliminate him from consideration as a candidate. And neither should all the unfounded inuendo that constantly crops up about Senator Clinton.
We’ll see how The State responds the next time Andre Bauer gets a parking ticket… that’ll probably be good for at least three days of in depth coverage.
I’d rather be a happy cynic who bases his opinions on facts and real life observations than a lofty idealist who ignores reality in pursuit of the unattainable.
Well said, bud. I didn’t know I had said anything so awful about Mrs. Clinton — just that she seems to be the choice of Democrats who have a zest for partisan warfare (and feel they have a score to settle), while Obama tends to be the choice of people who are fed up with that stuff, and want something fresh. That seems to be a widely held characterization of the two, and all I did was call attention to it.
But I appreciate your perspective on it. And I’ll add that there is evidence — and I’ve cited it on this blog — that Sen. Clinton appeals to some people who are NOT Democratic partisans. Everybody is much more complex than a bumper-sticker can describe, and she is at least as complex as most.
That said, forgive me if I seize upon a typo in your comment — just because I dig words, and I thought it was a felicitous one. You characterized Giuliani as a "slimball." I like that. There are so many cruel insults out there for fat people, it’s past time somebody came up with one for us skinny types. (Oliver Hardy to Stan Laurel: "This is another fine mess you got me into, you slimball!")
Come on Mike. This list is pure BS. Not one mention of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Orielly or Ann Coulter? All four of these have thousands of proven misstatements. I’m afraid this list has zero credibilty. It’s just a biased slander against liberals.
Mike … do you really believe that “the media” is one monolithic entity??? That every newspaper, broadcaster, publisher, web commentator, etc., is part of a grand conspiracy with a common agenda? Or even multiple left-right conspiracies? The beauty of our First Amendment is that ANYBODY can join the fray, no matter their competency, leanings or agenda. There is no one journalistic club, no entrance exam or license to acquire. Obviously, that implies massive diversity of output and opinion, the very essence of free speech. Given that diversity, and access to Google, I can compile 101 reasons to support almost anything, were I so simple as to think that anybody would buy it. It’s the discourse that counts, and our right to disagree.
> We’ll see how The State responds the next time Andre Bauer gets a parking ticket… that’ll probably be good for at least three days of in depth coverage.
Absolutely. News is often based on what happens to or near a journalist. Life experience is a constant source of ideas in any newsroom. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad or wrong.
Nixon must be rolling in his grave.President in 2007? No investigation.
No resignation.
Watergate?
That’s a salad.
Each of us has a “POV” and each of our personal perspectives effect the conclusions we sublimate from the fact-sets we absorb.
Left, right or center, to believe the content from any media source based on anything except their ability to be objective and present facts weakens all of the sources.
There are extremes on both side and most times it is the loudest voice that is heard over the din of more reasoned exchanges – that doesn’t make anybody right or convincing.
I didn’t know I had said anything so awful about Mrs. Clinton — just that she seems to be the choice of Democrats who have a zest for partisan warfare (and feel they have a score to settle)
What makes you think the people polled didn’t pick HC because they think her policies, overall, are better for the country? How exactly do you know the people polled have a “zest for partisan warfare” and “feel they have a score to settle?”
Do you actually know these things to be true – is there ANY OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER to support your assertions – or do you just FEEL them to be true?
In other words, is what you say true, or is it . . . “truthy?”
I suspect the latter, which means you are really the ideal Colbert supporter. You just don’t know it yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness
Nah, I’m way truthier than that guy.
“They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness.”
~ Louise Erdrich
Bud,
You wrote “Weldon pretty much confirmed that view with his suggestion that McCain could not possibly have said what he said.”
Apparently, I started a controversy and then missed it. But what I remember writing was that I wanted you to “document” the Chelsea joke by McCain because it didn’t “sound like him.”
That’s a long way from “McCain could not possible have said what he said.”
If you’re going to paraphrase me, paraphrase me accurately, or else quote me directly.
Gordon and bud –
Er, I do know that “media” is a plural form, so that means that there is more than one. I did not mean to infer “monolithic,” just that idiocy is evenly distributed. Nor did I mean to demonstrate political bias, just the kind of stuff that has to do with journalistic ethics or common sense — I admit that the latter is all too uncommon — so I found the list interesting for its focus on newsgathering transgressions, not political orientation.
The Food Lion story failed not because of political bias, but because of ethics. Ditto for the accounts of plagiarism, or making things up on the news side — staging recreations of actual events without disclosing them as such — not the opinion side. Even the Mike Barnacle episode (#11) is not a problem of politics, but of ethics, making things up or using the words of others as one’s own without attribution.
A Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or Keith Olberman or (fill in the blank talk-show host) mixes commentary (opinion) with news without making any claim to original reporting. That’s fine and fair.
But a practitioner of journalism has ethical obligations: objectivity, fidelity, and the rest.
In fact, I’m most distracted by idiocy. For example, the September issue of Consumer Reports described the EPA’s new method for computing average fuel economy to better reflect real-world driving conditions with the phrase (from memory) “the bad news is that this method results in lower MPG ratings.” Huh? The vehicles are the same, nothing has change in terms of performance or economy, it’s just that the method (actually the simulated driving cycle) of measuring fuel economy has changed. The Nissan Skateboard is now rated at 42 mpg instead of the previous 58 mpg. If anything the new method produces numbers that consumers are more likely to see.
Mike, thanks for the link.
Bud, please furnish me with a list of Limbaugh’s transgressions, and those of Fox News, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly and anyone else you consider a conservative. Armstrong Williams was included on the link Mike posted. I hope you don’t think he’s a liberal.
Furthermore, you wrote
Oops, well, continuing where I errantly left off,
Furthermore, you wrote, “Hillary Clinton is a very experienced, intelligence and dedicated woman who will work tirelessly to make our country safe and prosperous. She has been thouroughly investigated and nothing, I repeat, nothing has been proven that would suggest her character is anything but pristine.”
Gosh, Bud, she married Bill Clinton, and she’s still married to him. That speaks volumes about her character to me.
As far as her experience is concerned, she has been a transplant senator from New York for a few years. Before that, to my knowledge, she held no political office whatsoever, other than being married to a philandering governor who continued his philandery as president.
Bill Oreilly claimed he had won 2 Peabody awards. Al Franken proved that statement was a total falsehood. Here’s a nice summary of that exchange:
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001053
Ann Coulter said the 9-11 widows “enjoyed the deaths of their husbands”. That speaks for her integrity. She also claimed that Max Cleland suffered his injuries “while making a beer run”. That was a flat-out lie.
Rush Limbaugh has claimed, among many other things, that Michael J. Fox intentionally did not take his medication before filming a commercial. That slander, caught on tape, was a flat out falsehood. But MJF had the last laugh when Limbaughs smear cost lost the GOP the MO senate. And that in turn cost them control of the senate.
He’s also made claims that: There are more acres of forest land in America today than in 1492. Total nonsense of course. There have been many books written about Limbaugh’s lies. I would suggest this for further reading: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1895
Of course we have the “phony” soldiers smear that he tried to explain away. He even doctored the taping of his show to make it seem like he said something that he actually didn’t. Here’s a scathing rebuttal of Limbaugh’s disgusting comments.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-soltz/so-im-a-phony-soldier_b_66175.html
As for Fox News, they present everything from a slanted point of view. Just the other night on Brett Hume’s show they had a panel discussion about the impact of the National Guard soldiers deployment to Iraq in fighting the California fires. All 3 panelists, along with the host, agreed that Barbara Boxer and the California Lt. Governor were simply making their statements for partisan reasons. Since their own slogan claims they are “fair and balanced” I would have to conclude that the entire Fox News network is a big fat lie. Besides, the afforementioned Oreilly is a regular host of the show and Ann Coulter is a frequent guest, “expert”. That speaks for itself in their ongoing assault on the truth.
As for Hillary. You are absolutely correct when you say: “…she’s still married to him. That speaks volumes about her character …” She’s been married to the same man for decades now. That shows just how dedicated she is to the sanctity of marriage. She’s also willing to work hard to succeed at something important regardless of the difficulties involved? Or would you rather have someone who’s failed in their marriage(s)? If so you have a nice group to choose from in the GOP camp.
As the wife of a highly successful 2 term president Hillary has learned a great deal about the difficulties of running a government. She was correct in her support of a comprehensive health care system. Her implementation strategy was poor, however. She’s learned from that debacle. And the nation is paying the price for her failure to overturn the disaster of Republican health care. As president she’ll work with congress to implement the needed reforms.
And she now has 7 years working in the senate. So she knows congress well. Hillary is without a doubt the most qualified individual for the presidency ever. And those qualifications will ensure a reversal of the calamity we’ve had to endure for 8 years. If only the press will present her fairly she’ll be ok. If only.
Without a doubt the most qualified individual for the presidency ever?
Moreso than Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, JFK, Reagan and even her own husband?
That’s a whopping claim.
With regard to the rest of your post, thanks for confirming I did the right thing when I stopped paying any attention to all of those conservative talking heads a long time ago.
But as a fellow who owns some forest land, I might be willing to argue that there are indeed more trees in America now, though not more acres of forest, than in 1492.
Some people actually farm trees. Lots of people, in fact. Big companies, too. Lots of trees.
And, lo and behold, the government actually pays some of us to do that, thus stabilizing erodible land and actually making housing more affordable.
We also get paid a few farthings not to plant the row crops that could best be grown on the land we plant in trees.
It’s a government program that makes sense to me: creative conservation.
Thanks for guiding me through this.your blog is interesting huh! i like the you of writing, it gives me a lot of sense! and i learn a lot, there! nice post!
-altheya-