They almost had to call the doctor, because I was eating carne asada here in San Diego and choked when I read THIS:
The media have started applying the horse race style of campaign coverage to daily reporting on government, leading to adversarial reporting that can obscure the truth just to create conflict, President Bush’s chief political strategist said Monday.
Speaking at a forum at Washington College, Karl Rove said the influx of media outlets and the shrinking shelf life of news in a 24-hour news cycle are to blame.
“We are substituting the shrill and rapid call of the track announcer for calm judgment, fact and substance,” Rove told the crowd of roughly 600 students and local residents.
Naming specific reporters and news organizations, Rove said the media unfairly created the impression that President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, introduced early in his first term, was stalled in Congress at every step before its passage.
But the legislation was passed by the House and Senate with wide margins and was signed by Bush less than a year after it was introduced, Rove said. He said the media have taken a similar approach to the current debate over Social Security.
“What really gets me is how short the time horizon is for many members of the media of coming to a conclusion of whether something will pass,” he said.
Another example is the “obsessive reliance” on polls to create news and political predictions, he said. He cited the media’s early reliance on ultimately misleading exit polls from Election Day 2004 that appeared to show Sen. John Kerry headed for a presidential win.
“It is as if they (reporters) believe that all polls are created equal,” he said. “But it ain’t so.”
Actually, if it wasn’t Karl Rove TMV would say BRAVO because TMV often warns against the “horse race” reporting that means many extra hours online looking for articles of substance. This subject came up at on a blogging-related panel TMV moderated at Stanford University several weeks ago.
But in reading Rove’s comments, we must say:
- We never realized that Karl was so averse to the creation of adversarial relationships and conflict. Has he become a Dr. Phil fan? Rove seemingly doesn’t mind horse race and shrill comments when done by journalists friendly to him and his own agenda. It’s only when it’s negative to his side. Or perhaps we’ve been mistaken: perhaps he has complained about the tone of some conservative-oriented newscasts and cable/radio talk shows. “Hello Sean? I’m asking you as a personal favor. It’s time to verbally hug the Democrats. Enough with the adversarial crap. Send Hillary some flowers — and don’t make it ragweed.”
- What “facts” he does mean? Would this possibly include the recent elimination of a more than decades old yearly report on terrorism because it showed an increase in terrorism this year?
- He’s right about polls after the atrocious performance of many polls in the 2004 Presidential election — but WHO DECIDES the criteria for a “good” poll? People on each side LOVE polls that benefit THEIR side and agenda and badmouth those that don’t. It’s always the same cliche ridden attack on a detrimental poll’s methodology. But for some STRANGE REASON each side will never ever attack a poll that’s helpful to them.
- We are CERTAIN that a spate of polls showing a decline in President Bush’s popularity does not have anything to do with Rove’s comments.
FOOTNOTE: One person on my panel at the Stanford University conference was student and blogger Aaron Swartz, a provocative hit with his presentation from a liberal perspective on how the media is failing at its job and how blogs are picking up the slack. The post should be read in full here, but he addressed the idea of the media horse race (but we suspect Rove wasn’t criticizing the same thing he was):
But the most important thing, and the thing that nobody really seems to talk about, was how completely empty the Times’s coverage was. It was entirely focused on who the candidates were giving stump speeches to or what ads they were buying this week.
The only time an actual policy proposal was mentioned was deep inside a discussion of how a candidate played with a certain group. You know, ‘Kerry has had problems with the Teamsters, even though they support his health care plan’ or something. That was basically it. And this is supposed to be the high point of journalism! If the Times won’t talk about policy then no one will.
And if nobody talks about policy then nobody votes on the basis of it. A September 2004 Gallup poll found that only 10% of registered voters said that they voted based on the candidates, quote, agenda/ideas/platforms/goals — 6% for Bush, 13% for Kerry.
And it’s at this point that you really have to ask yourself: “is this really a democracy?� It’s the most contested election of our time, coverage is lavished on the topic, the nation is closely divided, and yet the media completely ignores the issues. There’s no policy debate.
UPDATE: The Washington Post carries Rove’s dead-on comment about the news media that flies in the face of what Rush, Sean and countless talking points folks on the right (there are also talking points folks on the LEFT, by the way) say about the media being out to “get” GOPers simply because they are “liberal.”
“I’m not sure I’ve talked about the liberal media,” Rove said when a student inquired — a decision he said he made “consciously.” The press is generally liberal, he argued, but “I think it’s less liberal than it is oppositional.”
The argument — similar to the one that former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer made in his recent book — is nuanced, nonpartisan and, to the ears of many journalists, right on target. “Reporters now see their role less as discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth and more as being put on the earth to afflict the comfortable, to be a constant thorn of those in power, whether they are Republican or Democrat,” Rove said.
As someone who worked the media I’ll tell you: he’s right and people who try to tell you that the news media follow some kind of political list when they do stories are full of…themselves.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.