Media

Al Gore, silent angel of death

by Dan Kennedy

GORE: just wants to use the death penalty in appropriate homicide cases.

Will media bias turn Al Gore into the de facto anti-death-penalty candidate of 2000? Given Gore's long-standing enthusiasm for fatal justice, that might seem an unlikely scenario. But given the blatantly unbalanced approach the media have taken in covering the way Texas governor George W. Bush administers capital punishment, it can't be ruled out, either.

Take the evening of Thursday, June 22, the final hours of Gary Graham's life. Graham, convicted of a 1981 murder, had finally run out of appeals. His case, marred by a booze-addled defense lawyer and a shaky eyewitness identification, was troubling, but no more so than scores of others. Yet the all-news channels CNN and MSNBC, and the repulsive Rivera Live show on CNBC, covered the death watch, er, live in hushed, dramatic tones.

The subliminal message: Bush is an uncaring jerk who would rather kill a man who might be innocent than risk looking like a wimp. And it's true, of course. Yet not once during the evening did I catch anyone talking about Gore's support for the death penalty. Nor did the Friday papers make much mention of the vice-president's position.

The omission is hardly unexpected. As a senator and vice-president, Gore has had the luxury of restricting his pro-death stand to the realm of rhetoric. Yet there should be no mistaking Gore's position. His Web site boasts that Gore "helped win enactment of the first federal death penalty in 30 years." That would be the 1994 law that, among other things, prescribes capital punishment for anyone who kills a federal poultry inspector. Gore also promises, as president, to seek the death penalty "in appropriate homicide cases -- especially where the death of a law enforcement officer or public safety officer occurs."

Bush, on the other hand, has to make real life-and-death decisions in the present tense. His flippancy doesn't help. Witness last fall, when, in an interview with Talk magazine's Tucker Carlson, he made fun of born-again Christian (and ax murderer) Karla Faye Tucker's bid to stay out of the death chamber.

But much of Bush's problem is the direct result of media bias, plain and simple. In two recent pieces, Slate's William Saletan properly chastised the media for pretending the story is being driven by anything other than their own anti-death-penalty agenda. What Saletan failed to address is the differing treatment for Gore and Bush. Though plumbing the depths of the media's collective unconscious is dangerous, here's a guess. When a Democrat supports the death penalty, liberals -- and elite journalists are overwhelmingly liberal on social issues, if not on economics -- tend to see that support as an unfortunate but necessary step to court the yahoo vote. That's why Bill Clinton took little heat for presiding over the execution of a brain-damaged inmate during the 1992 primary campaign. A pro-death Republican, on the other hand, gets no such benefit of the doubt, as he tends to be seen as merely giving voice to his natural blood lust.

Here's a radical idea: take the candidates at their word. The truth is that Ralph Nader is the lone anti-death-penalty candidate running for president this year. When it comes to pulling the switch, the only thing that separates Gore from Bush is opportunity.