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Times Watch for
March 10, 2004
When Bushies Attack
News Flash: Bush Criticizes Kerry--Times Campaign Reporter Goes Into Shock.
Adam Nagourney's story on the emerging Bush drive for reelection is the written equivalent of a brush-back pitch hurled early in a baseball game, questioning Bush's apparently unseemly strategy of actually criticizing his likely Democratic opponent.
Nagourney opens his Wednesday dispatch: "With a fierce campaign of attacks led by President Bush, an orchestrated barrage of criticism by Republican elected officials and an imminent sweep of hard-hitting television advertisements, the White House is moving with unusual speed and force to try to discredit John Kerry, the president's likely Democratic challenger."
All Nagourney can come up with on the issue of fierce attacks, however, are two instances: "Mr. Bush went on the attack. Last week, he said Mr. Kerry had 'been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue.' On Monday, Mr. Bush reached back nine years to single out for criticism a proposal by Mr. Kerry to cut spending on intelligence, the kind of very directed attack that is unusual to hear from a president eight months before Election Day."
The first example is more of Bush poking fun at Kerry than part of a "fierce campaign of attack." As for the second charge, here are Bush's words, which Nagourney doesn't quote: "In 1995, two years after the [first] attack on the World Trade Center, my opponent introduced a bill to cut the overall intelligence budget by $1.5 billion. His bill was so deeply irresponsible that he didn't have a single co-sponsor in the United States Senate. Once again, Senator Kerry is trying to have it both ways. He's for good intelligence, and yet he was willing to gut the intelligence services. And that is no way to lead a nation in a time of war."
Nagourney, apparently shocked at the fact Bush is actually campaigning, warns that the president's strategy "risks putting off independent voters who have historically been alienated by negative campaigning." Nagourney refers eight times to Bush "attacks" and concludes his story: "As much as Mr. Bush appears to be enjoying going on the attack, he will stop soon, aides said, and leave the whacking and attacking to surrogates and his television advertisements."
Yet while Nagourney ponders the wisdom of Bush's "fierce campaign of attacks" on Kerry, Jodi Wilgoren's same-day story on Kerry simply and uncritically repeats the senator's own attack lines against Bush.
Wilgoren's story opens: "As he scooped up scores more delegates in four Southern primaries on Tuesday on his march to the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator John Kerry turned one of President Bush's campaign slogans against him, saying his rival had provided 'stubborn,' not steady, leadership. 'He stubbornly insists on tax cuts as he steadily loses jobs in this country,' Mr. Kerry, playing off the Bush campaign theme 'steady leadership in a time of change,' told a small audience at a center for the elderly in suburban Evanston. 'He stubbornly refuses to allow the importation of drugs from Canada, while steadily the prices are going up.'…."'I think his stubborn leadership has led America steadily in the wrong direction,' Mr. Kerry, who is from Massachusetts, added, 'and that's why we're going to vote for change in November.'"
While Nagourney poses Bush's comments as a "fierce campaign of attacks" (without actually quoting Bush and enabling readers to decide for themselves), Wilgoren reprints Democrat Kerry's attacks on Bush and treats them as clever turnabout, of Kerry having "turned one of President Bush's campaign slogans against him." In contrast with Nagourney's constant "attacks," the word doesn't appear a single time in Wilgoren's story on Kerry.
For the rest of Wilgoren on Kerry, click here.
For the rest of Nagourney on Bush, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Sen. John Kerry | Jodi Wilgoren
Twisted Terror Priorities at the
Times
Wednesday's lead story by Douglas Jehl is a revealing look into the priorities at the Times regarding the war on terror: Possible miscalculations by the Bush administration get top-shelf treatment, while potential terrorist threats are either played down or (in the case of Jehl's story) not mentioned at all.
Jehl leads off his story, "C.I.A. Chief Says He's Corrected Cheney Privately," with this negative, headline-making bit: "George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that he had privately intervened on several occasions to correct what he regarded as public misstatements on intelligence by Vice President Dick Cheney and others, and that he would do so again." Jehl devotes the next several paragraphs to criticism from Senate Democrats and to some of Cheney's alleged "misstatements."
Of course, as journalism professor Cori Dauber points out, Tenet was on Capitol Hill not to correct Cheney but to talk about terror threats facing the U.S. The lead in the Washington Times, at least, made that clear: "CIA Director George J. Tenet warned Congress yesterday that the threat of al Qaeda terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction is growing and the group continues planning 'spectacular attacks' against the United States and its allies."
It's worth noting that the Washington Times, lambasted by liberals for being a conservative organ, manages to deliver a balanced story, hitting on both Tenet's al Qaeda fears and Democratic criticism of the administration. Meanwhile, the "objective" New York Times completely ignores Tenet's testimony regarding al Qaeda--the rationale for his testimony in the first place.
For the rest of Jehl's story on Tenet, click here.
• Al Qaeda | Iraq War | Douglas Jehl | George Tenet | Terrorism
A Laudatory Look At a Gay Lawmaker
The Times churns out another soft-focus profile of a gay politician. Reporter Andrew Jacobs' Tuesday story on Karla Drenner, a state representative and gay activist in Georgia, opens: "In contrast to the mundane mementos that dress the offices of most politicians, State Representative Karla Drenner has chosen to hang a startling array of images that show her crossing the finish line of a half-dozen recent marathons, sweat-soaked and jelly-legged, her face contorted in pain. The photos are a source of strength to Ms. Drenner, Georgia's only openly gay legislator, who has become the most visible--and derided--opponent of an effort to enact a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The emotional turmoil she feels is often reflected in the agonizing expressions of those finish-line portraits."
It strains the brain to imagine the Times running a similarly sympathetic paragraph on the struggles of a conservative politico fighting for traditional marriage.
Jacobs makes Drenner out into a kind of secular priestess, bestowing or refusing forgiveness on a whim: "Ms. Drenner says many legislators have privately apologized to her for their stance and asked forgiveness, saying they fear that a no vote will doom them in November, when the whole legislature is up for re-election. Ms. Drenner, who has become respected by many colleagues since her election four years ago, refuses to grant forgiveness, relating those conversations this way: 'They say, 'It's not about you,' and I respond, 'How can it not be about me?' I try hard to make them see that it's just as personal as can be when they're looking at me.'"
For the rest of Jacobs' laudatory look at the gay Georgia lawmaker, click here.
• Gay Issues | Georgia | Andrew Jacobs
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org