More Anti-Swift Bias from a Paper "Calling Itself" Objective -- August 24, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for August 24, 2004

More Anti-Swift Bias from a Paper
"Calling Itself" Objective

Elisabeth Bumiller and Kate Zernike's front-page story Tuesday on Bush's press conference denouncing outside political ads ("President Urges Outside Groups To Halt All Ads--But Doesn't Single Out Swift Boat Claims") includes this dismissive description of the group questioning Kerry's Vietnam record: "Mr. Bush spoke to reporters at his Texas ranch after a weekend in which veterans supporting and opposing Mr. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, furiously debated mostly unsubstantiated accusations against him by a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."

The Times used the same formulation in Sunday's story by Jim Rutenberg and Zernike ("…a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"). Reporter David Halbfinger used it on July 27 ("…Mr. Kerry's crewmates have been responding to attacks on Mr. Kerry's war record, this time mainly from a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.")

Not that the Swift Boats were the only victims of this formulation, an apparent attempt (perhaps even an unconscious one) on the part of reporters to denigrate the legitimacy of groups of which the Times disapproves. The Times also uses it to mark violent groups in Iraq like the Martyrs Brigade, which kidnapped an American journalist in Najaf, and the charmingly named Death Squad of the Iraqi Resistance. An American anti-abortion group earned a similar appellation from reporter Christopher Marquis on June 21.

Bumiller and Zernike go on to note: "The president spoke on a day when Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, in another indication of its web of ties to the Republican Party, acknowledged that a woman who helped set it up and works for it is an officer of the Majority Leader's Fund, a political action committee affiliated with the former House majority leader Dick Armey of Texas."

Is there no "web" of connections between the left-wing Moveon.org and the Kerry campaign? A Nexis search indicates the Times has yet to report on MoveOn political action committee director Zack Exley becoming internet director of the Kerry campaign back in April.

For more on Bush's denunciation of outside ads, click here.

Jason DeParle's Second Thoughts on Welfare Reform

Senior writer Jason DeParle pens a gritty cover story for the Times Sunday magazine, "Raising Kevion," excerpted from DeParle's upcoming book on welfare reform, ''American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare." The cover line to DeParle's story: "To Have and to Hold--Welfare reform has transformed the lives of inner-city women. What will it take to turn more of their men into committed fathers and mothers?"

He writes: "In cutting the rolls and increasing work, the 1996 welfare law, and a related expansion of services, has been celebrated as a rare, even unique, triumph, and on one level it is. But with about 90 percent of welfare families headed by single mothers, it is also a lesson in the limits of a policy that is focused on one sex. Whatever it has done to put women to work, it won't really change the arc of inner-city life until it--or something --reaches the men."
DeParle writes about Bush's marriage initiative: "The truth is that no one really knows how to help poor men become better fathers and husbands. The debate is in its embryonic stage, as the debate about poor women was 20 years ago. It took a succession of efforts, most of them failures, before welfare-to-work programs started to work."

What a difference eight years makes. Today DeParle seems reconciled to welfare reform, even seeing positive results. But as reporter for the Times during the 1996 welfare reform debate, he lambasted the very idea.

From DeParle's piece in the July 28, 1996 Times Week in Review: "The risk is that it may also end poverty as we know it. By making it even worse….But the weight of the evidence suggests that most either cannot or will not lift themselves from poverty in an economy where, for more than two decades, the bottom has been dropping out for low-skilled workers. In a nation that already has the highest child poverty rates in the industrialized world the poor may indeed get poorer. And more numerous and desperate as well…If he signs the measure as it is, President Clinton will appear to have fulfilled his famous pledge about ending welfare. In truth, he will have abandoned the vision that animated the slogan. Having sought office with the aim of a redefined social contract--health care for every American--he will be seeking re-election with a bill that begrudges poor infants their Pampers."

For the full DeParle story on the struggles of a poor family, click here.

• Jason DeParle | Magazine | Marriage | Welfare Reform

Celebrating CBO's Chief for Making the Democrats' Day

At first glance, Edmund Andrews' story, "As Congressional Budget Chief, Former Bush Economic Aide Isn't Keeping to Script," seems out of place. Why is the Times celebrating the head of the Congressional Budget Office?

The reason is soon made clear--because of the anti-Bush effect of a report the CBO prepared for the Kerry campaign on Bush's tax cuts, one that reporter Andrews misleadingly cited as skewed to the rich.

"Today, Mr. Holtz-Eakin wins praise from Democrats and is a frequent source of heartburn to Republicans….Robert Novak, the conservative newspaper columnist, bitterly accused Mr. Holtz-Eakin of being a pawn for Democrats. 'Thanks to the C.B.O., Kerry can now accuse Bush of trying to destroy the middle class based on a nonpartisan report authored by a former Bush aide,' Mr. Novak fumed, in a column published on Thursday."

The Monday story features not one but two cut-out lines, both selling hard the idea of Congressional Budget Office chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin as a thorn in the side of the Bush administration: "The White House tax cuts are skewed to the wealthiest. Spoken like a…Republican?" and "Raising doubts about Bush economic policies, and making Republicans wince."

Andrews does go on to say, far into the piece: "In absolute dollar terms, the tax cuts for the wealthy were far higher than for everybody else. But the study also confirmed what tax analysts have long known: the top 10 percent of income earners still pay about two-thirds of all federal income taxes, and more than 30 million people at the lower end pay nothing except Social Security and Medicare."

For the rest of Andrews' profile of the CBO head, click here.

• Edmund Andrews | Campaign 2004 | CBO | Economy | Taxes

"Correcting" Fred Barnes

Alessandra Stanley tackles TV coverage of the Swift Boat Vets in "On Cable, a Fog of Words About Kerry's War Record."

Stanley doesn't blatantly take Kerry's side in her Tuesday story, but does make an odd "correction" of conservative magazine editor Fred Barnes: "Fred Barnes, the executive editor of The Weekly Standard and a regular Fox commentator, ardently defended the Swift boat critics of Mr. Kerry, saying on Fox that a majority of the senator's Vietnam brethren believed that Mr. Kerry 'fabricated or exaggerated his record.' Mr. Barnes added that 'the entire chain of command above Kerry have said the same thing.' He did not mention any notable exceptions in that chain of command, including Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, a former secretary of the Navy who said Mr. Kerry fully merited the Silver Star. Mr. Barnes's hyperbole went unchecked."

Actually, Sen. Warner served as Secretary of the Navy from 1972-1974. Given that Kerry was out of Vietnam in April 1969, Warner wasn't in the chain of command above Kerry during Kerry's Vietnam service. Sen. John Chafee was Secretary of the Navy during the relevant period.

For the rest of Stanley on the Swift Boat vets coverage, click here.

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org