Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review Oct. 30, 2000 / 1 Mar-Cheshvan 5761

John Leo

John Leo
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Debbie Schlussel
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


How yesterday's hero becomes tomorrow's heel


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- MEDIA-WATCHERS know that there are two main theories about press coverage of presidential campaigns. The cyclical theory holds that reporters tend to blow hot and cold on both candidates, always gang-tackling the one who is ahead and propping up the one behind, thus adding excitement to the race. In contrast, the liberal-bias theory holds that reporters "perhaps without even realizing it, tend to have worldviews that favor Democrats–and this shows, sometimes not so subtly, in their coverage." This mild description of the bias theory comes from Mickey Kaus, the Internet commentator. The line "tend to have worldviews that favor Democrats" is polite understatement. A 1992 Roper poll of Washington reporters and bureau chiefs showed that 89 percent voted for Bill Clinton, 7 percent voted for George Bush. This is the kind of voting pattern we might expect among political reporters in Poland under the Communists or in Iraq today.

Here's how the cyclical theory would apply. During the primaries, Al Gore and George Bush both got unfavorable treatment from a press corps that much preferred Bill Bradley and John McCain. The monthlong drubbing that Bush took over the Confederate flag and Bob Jones University was naturally followed by a compensatory burst of good coverage. This rose to a glorifying peak in summer when polls had him way ahead. With no place to go but down, Bush had a predictably miserable September, ushered in by his crude remark about a reporter, the "RATS" commercial, and several unsuccessful bouts with English syntax. Gore therefore entered his golden era, which lasted about six weeks–from the convention kiss to the first debate. Then the wheel turned again in Bush's direction.

Dead in the water. Remember, by mid-September the Bush campaign looked dead in the water. Several pundits announced that Bush was toast. But cyclical theorists knew what was coming. In the Washington Post of September 21, staff reporter Dana Milbank wrote: "This just in. The Bush campaign is rebounding. . . . Remember the stiff and programmed Gore, the earth-toned, faux-farm-working, pot-smoking, Fairfax-Hotel-living, slumlord Gore? Don't worry–he'll be back when the cycle turns again. We're due for a Bush recovery any day now."

Sure enough, the recovery was only a week or so away. The new cycle may have started with the snorting, smirking, eyeball-rolling Gore performance in the first debate. Or it may have begun because anti-Bush media bias suddenly became an issue in Washington, causing reporters to think twice about the tone of coverage. Charles Cook, publisher of the Cook Political Report, said pro-Democratic reporters were "larding their stories with their own ideological biases" because it suddenly looked possible for Gore to win. Howard Kurtz, media reporter for the Washington Post, discussed this possibility seriously under the headline "Are the Media Tilting to Gore?" And columnist Charles Krauthammer attracted a lot of attention with a September 29 column listing the September Page 1 headlines on Gore and Bush in the New York Times. Most of them were so heavily skewed against Bush, he wrote, that "it would take a mollusk to miss the pattern."

The irony here is that believers in the liberal-bias theory seem to have made the competing cyclical theory look more accurate. In September, Republicans complained loudly, with some justification, that the media had ignored Gore's tall tales, specifically the one about arthritis medicine for his mother-in-law's dog, while vastly overplaying the RATS issue.

By mid-October, Democrats and liberal commentators were doing the complaining, again with some justification. Margaret Carlson, Jonathan Alter, E. J. Dionne, and others were asking why Gore's embellishments were endlessly kicked around in the media while Bush's inaccuracies and off-the-cuff fibs were being ignored. Here we have history's first great wave of liberal whining about conservative bias in Washington political coverage.

Gore had some legitimate beefs. He was, in part, the inspiration for the hero of Love Story. He never said he discovered Love Canal. He did in fact play a large role in developing the Internet. But there were so many embellishments that reporters kept running with the story. Bush's inaccuracies were duller and harder to explain. Gore's claim that he had accompanied James Lee Witt to Texas was the last straw to many reporters, who began to see the embellishments as a character flaw of some importance. An anti-Gore bias may have come into play. The flood of embellishments crystallized what so many reporters think about Gore–that he is inauthentic and not very principled. So they never let go of the issue.

Many people predicted the media's pro-Bush turn of early and mid-October, but nobody seems to have predicted that it would be the final cycle. There was plenty of time for the second great Gore comeback, but it never materialized (unless the timely revelation of Bush's drunk driving in 1976 is setting off a whirlwind four-day Gore cycle). Nobody knows why. But on the basis of the media performance in October, the liberal-bias theory seems to be in some trouble.

JWR contributor John Leo's latest book is Two Steps Ahead of the Thought Police. Send your comments by clicking here.

Up

10/30/00: Would Bush's Supreme Court picks make a difference?
10/24/00: Yankees, go home!
10/17/00: Un-American activity?
10/10/00: A tempest in an ink pot
10/03/00: The Al Gore quiz
09/26/00: The sleeper effect
09/19/00: Baby-saving made easy
09/12/00: Line between reporting and editorializing continues to blur
09/05/00: In the key of F
08/29/00: Hollywood connection
08/22/00: Some friendly advice to the GOP
08/15/00: You can't make this up
08/08/00: The niceness strategy
08/01/00: When rules don't count
07/25/00: Anti-male bias increasingly pervades our culture
07/18/00: Banned in Boston
07/12/00: What Jacoby had to deal with!
07/11/00: Will boys be boys?
07/05/00: Partial-sense decision
06/27/00: Attitude toward death penalty gets in the way of facts
06/20/00: Double troubles
06/13/00: Fools paradise
06/06/00: Accidental conspirator
05/30/00: Faking the hate
05/23/00: Was it law or poetry?
05/16/00: Here, there and everywhere, people have gone bonkers
05/09/00: Tufts evangelicals are punished for acting on their beliefs
05/02/00: Elian's opera isn't over until nearly everyone sings
04/25/00: All the news that fits: The media serve up many stories from a standard script
04/19/00: Those darned readers: The gap between reporters and the general public is huge
04/05/00: Census sense and nonsense
03/29/00: Hollywood message films leave no room for other views
03/22/00: The Vatican confesses, but is it enough?
03/14/00: Watch what you say: The left can no longer be counted on to defend free speech
03/07/00: McCain's malleable messages
03/01/00: Bush's appearance at Bob Jones U. will dog him all the way
02/23/00: 'Multi-millionaire' show is new evidence we're insane

© 2000, John Leo