Hillary the Moderate, Page 1; Hillary’s Sleazy Fundraiser, Page 21
 

     Friday’s front page heralded the oddball political partnership of liberal Hillary Clinton and conservative Newt Gingrich, except reporter Raymond Hernandez wouldn’t use any troublesome L-words for the former First Lady. Here’s how the writing gets crafty: “In the 1990s, these two rivals stood on nearly opposite ends of the political spectrum; he led the assault on the Clinton presidency and helped derail the ambitious health care plan she championed.” He was an assailant and a derailer, while she was an ambitious champion. In that shorthand, you can see what to expect in the rest of the article, in which Newt praises Hillary, and then the Times suspects that’s not a very good move for Newt.

     Hernandez reported Gingrich is praising Hillary “to the chagrin of conservative loyalists who once regarded him as a heroic figure.” Twice in the article, Hernandez plays up quotes where Newt says “any Republican who thinks she’s going to be easy to beat has a total amnesia about the history of the Clintons.” Hillary is not quoted praising Gingrich (no need to upset liberal Times readers here), only that she finds they “have a lot in common” on health care and national security. By contrast, Gingrich is quoted saying she’s “very practical” and “very smart and very hard working.”

     Hernandez did not wonder if standing next to Gingrich will cause any “chagrin” about Hillary among Newt-haters. It’s sold as smart, for it “gives her the chance to burnish her credentials among the moderates she has been courting during her time in the Senate…the Clinton-Gingrich connection comes as Mrs. Clinton has increasingly staked out moderate positions in several areas.” Like what? “She has recently promoted a more gradual approach to guaranteeing health care for more Americans, a departure from her efforts in the 1990s, when Republican critics like Mr. Gingrich accused her of advocating a big-government takeover of the health-care system.” The Times is telegraphing she’s a liberal, because she’s not a moderate, but “burnishing” her image with moderates and “staking out” moderate poses. It’s doubtful that if Mr. Gingrich had proposed a “less gradual” way to privatize Medicare or Social Security, he’d be cast by the Times as a blooming moderate.

     Hernandez then performs another act of avoiding a direct liberal label for Hillary: this odd couple has more in common than in the last decade, when “she was a symbol of the liberal excesses of the Clinton White House and he was a fiery spokesman for a resurgent conservative movement in Washington.” Imagine how silly this would sound in reverse: Newt was merely a “symbol” of conservative resurgence, while Hillary was a fiery spokesman for liberalism. People would grimace at the attempt to paint one as authentic, and one as a caricature, and they would be right. Why can’t the Times just say one’s left, one’s right?

     At the end, Hernandez quoted Hank Sheinkopf, Democratic strategist, who matched the Times spin perfectly: “He gets to appear to be a mainstream figure and gets to appear as someone who is willing to work with everyone, no matter what their ideology.” Hernandez concluded with New York Conservative Party chief Michael Long calling Gingrich’s move a “major mistake.” But Hernandez uses religious terminology for more of a vast-right-wing-theocracy effect: “Mr. Gingrich may end up paying a price politically for engaging in what many conservatives regard as heresy.”

     But while Hillary the Moderate (or Stalker of Moderates) is Page One material, the ongoing trial of Hillary’s fundraiser David Rosen is against tucked deeply inside the paper on page A-21. The headline was “Clinton Friend With Legal Troubles Testifies on Fund-Raising.” Reporter Leslie Eaton began: “Add one to the odd cast of criminal characters haunting the trial of David F. Rosen…the new cast member is James Levin.” But what Levin actually told prosecutors about Rosen is put off for eleven paragraphs while Eaton repeated the shady backgrounds of Levin, and other gala organizers, including Aaron Tonken and Peter Paul. (Eaton failed again to notice how this “cast of characters” all have in common that the Clintons brought them in to help raise dough without screening or worrying about their sleazy backgrounds.) Levin claimed “he and Mr. Rosen both knew the costs of the gala were out of control, and that on the night of the rehearsal, Mr. Rosen had told him that ‘The cost of this event will never be the cost of this event – meaning we will never admit how much we had spent.”

It’s a journalism-textbook case of burying the lede at the very end of the story. To see the full Eaton trial report, click here.

For the full Hernandez report on Newt and Hillary’s buddy-buddy act, click here. 

Don’t Cry for Me, Sheryl Stolberg
 

     The front page of Friday’s Washington edition is all about putting the focus on moderate Republicans that break with party loyalty. A picture of Sen. George Voinovich, who pleased liberals as he lambasted UN Ambassador designate John Bolton, captured him literally in the media spotlight, surrounded by fascinated reporters. You could “analyze” the picture as a subliminal Times message to moderates: break with the party, be a star.

     In her front page “news analysis,” reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg made assertions that she didn’t seriously try to prove. The Bolton nomination, she wrote, “exposed, in a very raw and public way, the extreme pressures facing Republican moderates in a Senate that is increasingly dominated by conservatives.” Then she added that on issues from Bolton to judges to Social Security, “Republican moderates are caught in the middle as never before.”

     Compared to when? When Reagan wanted tax cuts or faced Iran-Contra? When Clinton wanted socialized medicine or faced impeachment? Stolberg made no attempt to quantify the pressure amount. Are moderates complaining that they get all the media attention? Are they complaining that they get portrayed as the crucial swing votes with the emphasis on their refreshing open-mindedness? Does everyone forget that the conservative base of the GOP (or the liberal base of the Democrats) sometimes have to be strong-armed, pressured, bullied, into staying loyal to the party when it’s dancing centrist steps?

     Stolberg wanted to argue that the gains the Senate made in building a GOP majority are bad news for moderates, that there is a “vanishing center,” that “here in the Capitol, their numbers are so few, that they quit having their weekly lunches about a year ago.” She’s good at feeling the pain of moderate Republicans. But when it comes to Democratic “mavericks,” the tone is different.

     Last year, she began a story on Sen. Zell Miller with a big emphasis on disloyalty, rehashing name-calling directed at Miller from fellow Democrats: "Zig Zag Zell, his critics call him. Zellout. A traitor. An elephant in donkey's clothing.”

For the Stolberg “news analysis,” click here.

A Pinch of Opinion Journal.com
 

     With the help of graphic designers Helene Silverman and Norman Hathaway, Australian blogger Arthur Chrenkoff constructed a chart of April’s daily doses of good news from Iraq. Chrenkoff’s good-news collections are a regular feature on OpinionJournal.com, the website of the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page. The introductory paragraph explained the chart’s publication:

     In fact, some of the items promoted by Chrenkoff did appear in the Times, but were buried inside other stories with grimmer headlines. Chrenkoff’s chart mentioned that on April 10, Iraqi security forces announced the pcapture of Ibrahim Sabawi, a nephew of Saddam Hussein, suspected as a major player in financing the violence of insurgents. On April 11, the Times featured this news within an article headlined “Pakistani Diplomat, Missing in Iraq, Tells Embassy He Is Captive.”

     On April 11, Chrenkoff noted, sixty-five suspected insurgents were arrested in Baghdad in the biggest joint American-Iraqi raids to date. That was mentioned in an April 13 Times story headlined “Car Bomb Near Convoy in Mosul Kills 4 Iraqis.” Just a few paragraphs into the story, Robert Worth reported: “The attack came as the Iraqi government announced the capture of Fadhil Ibrahim Mahmoud al-Mashadani, a former official in Saddam Hussein's government who is accused of playing a major role in coordinating and financing insurgent attacks….Mr. Mashadani's capture came a day after a huge raid in which 65 suspected insurgents were captured. On Tuesday, the Defense Ministry said that among those captured were three high-level insurgents belonging to a network called the Islamic Secret Army.”

     Some days, the Times might contain “all the news fit to print,” but you might have to look really hard for it.

For the Chrenkoff chart, click here.

-- Tim Graham, substituting for Clay Waters