BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
e-mail delivery, click
here. To send
an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click
here.
For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Saturday, August 28, 2004
PLYING THE MEDIA WITH LIES.
Media Log is still technically on vacation. But I've been catching up
on the news following a three-day backpacking trip last week, and I
continue to be astounded at what's happening to John Kerry's
presidential campaign.
The media have not necessarily done
a horrible job of covering the claims of Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth.
Indeed, if it weren't for news orgs such as the New York Times
and the Washington Post, it might not be as clear as it
already is that the vets' claims consist of nothing but ugly
lies.
Still, editors and news directors
should consider that the way they practice journalism allowed the
lies to circulate and propagate, putting John Kerry's presidential
campaign on the defensive and costing him a few points in the polls
heading into the Republican National Convention.
The outrageous claims of the
Swiftvets - that one of Kerry's Purple Heart wounds was
self-inflicted, that he and his crew weren't really under fire when
he rescued James Rassmann and won the Bronze Star, that he executed a Vietnamese
kid in a loincloth in winning the Silver Star (it was actually a Viet Cong soldier with a grenade-launcher) - should have been
treated as presumptively untrue from Day One.
You didn't have to do any
investigative reporting to know that the official military records
backed up Kerry's version of events (no, military records aren't
perfect, but they're not meaningless, either), and that Kerry's
hometown newspaper, the Boston Globe, had investigated his
military record extensively on at least two separate occasions, in
1996 and again in 2003. Right-wing conspiracy theories aside, there
is zero evidence that the Globe has ever tried to cut
Kerry any slack. Plus there is the fact that all but one of the men
with whom Kerry actually served support Kerry's version of events.
(How deep is the lying? The very fact that the Swiftvets say they
"served with Kerry" is itself a lie.)
The invaluable contribution that
the Times and the Post made was to show that in many
cases the Swiftvets had changed their stories over the years from
pro-Kerry to anti-Kerry, and that some of them claimed to have
witnessed events that they could not have.
But the Swiftvets and their shadowy
backers understood something about the media: if you make an
accusation, news orgs will cover it, get a response from the person
or persons being accused, and run with it. Truth isn't the issue, at
least not in day-to-day campaign coverage. Getting both sides is the
name of the game, even if there isn't a single reason to believe one
side and every reason to believe the other.
The only charge raised against
Kerry that seems to be sticking at all is that he falsely claimed to
have been in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968 - a charge that has
gained resonance because Kerry once mistakenly stated that Richard
Nixon was president at that time. But as the historian
Douglas
Brinkley has said, Kerry
was involved in extremely dangerous missions in and around the
Cambodian border during that time period. It is curious, to say the
least, that Kerry-haters are willing to overlook blatant lies by the
Swiftvets about where they were and what they saw while pillorying
Kerry for misremembering the timing of events that actually
occurred.
Yesterday brought a brief flurry of
new excitement in the form of a Robert
Novak column reporting that
retired rear admiral William Schachte - who's not a member of
the Swiftvets group - was continuing to claim that he was present
when Kerry "nicked" himself and therefore unjustly won his first
Purple Heart. Yet we already have the testimony of others who were
there that Schachte was not. As the Times recently
reported,
Patrick Runyon and Bill Zaladonis insist they were the only crew
members with Kerry when the incident occurred. "Me and Bill aren't
the smartest, but we can count to three," Runyon was quoted as
saying. But you know the game: Novak reports, you decide, even if you
don't have the background to make an informed analysis as to who's
telling the truth.
As always, Bob
Somerby has been invaluable
in dissecting the lies of the Swiftvets, and of the pathetically poor
preparation that cable-news hosts have brought to the table when they
have interviewed them - even those who suspect that the vets are lying, like MSNBC's Chris Matthews. (If he'd do his homework, he'd know they're lying.)
Kerry, I think, is making one
serious mistake. He has denounced the lies of the Swiftvets, as he
should. But by going after the ties between the Swiftvets and the
Bush-Cheney campaign - ties that became all too apparent with the
resignation
of Bush water-carrier Benjamin Ginsberg - Kerry is playing George W.
Bush's game.
Rather than denounce his
supporters' lies, Bush has attempted to turn the entire issue into
one of the 527s, the independent political organizations running
negative ads on both sides. Kerry won a victory with Ginsberg's
self-immolation. But if it turns out that there are similar ties
between the Kerry-Edwards campaign and some of the liberal 527s (a
development that would hardly be a surprise), then the media will be
able to pronounce this an "everyone does it" story and transform the
entire Swiftvets campaign into a matter of moral equivalence with the
anti-Bush ads being run by MoveOn.org
and others.
It's not. What the Swiftvets are
doing is as dirty and shocking and disgraceful as anything done in
modern political history - far worse than the infamous Willie Horton
ad that George H.W. Bush's supporters ran in going after Michael Dukakis. Kerry
cannot let the lies of the Swiftvets be held up as somehow the same
as entirely truthful ads questioning Bush's missing months in the
Texas Air National Guard.
posted at 10:45 AM |
7 comments
|
link
7 Comments:
Dan,
Brilliant and perfect takedown of the entire situation. Though, I think, that you give the Times and the Post too much credit. Granted that they did expose the swifties lies, EVENTUALLY, but they also published stories that tried to be equal-handed. And, we have a devasting quote from Downie...
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000617053
[...]
Downie said he believes the Swift Boat Veterans coverage had been fair and properly scrutinizing. "We have printed the facts and some of those facts have undermined Kerry's opponents," he said. "We are not judging the credibility of Kerry or the (Swift Boat) Veterans, we just print the facts."
He defended a lengthy Post story that ran Sunday which appeared to give equal credibility to both Kerry's version of the events in Vietnam (which is supported by his crewmates and largely backed up by a paper trail) and the Swift Boat Veterans, despite the fact that previous stories in the Post and the New York Times had debunked many of the group's accounts.
-------------------------------------
I also wanted to make a quick comment as to your critique of the Kerry response. I know nothing about running campaigns. But, I can't think of what these guys could have done to mitigate the damage the swift liars were doing other than what they eventually ended up doing, that is to connect the swift boat liars with bush, even though it's not that clear of a connection. They rebutted the charges right away, but the media just kept running with the 'story'. It is an unbelievable and amazing indication of how pathetic our media is.
Dan, one of things I've always loved about your blogging is that you're good about presenting the facts, and THEN giving people the nudge they need to interpret them. That is, in contrast to the usual conservative method of diluting information down to the "thin gruel" level and spoon feeding an ignorant public. Your method is honest, intelligent, thoughtful and classic "liberal".
Unfortunately, it's also the classic reason why liberals keep losing ground in American politics. Liberals seek to be balanced and learn from others; conservatives prefer to ram their opinions down others' throats because "they know they're right".
But after a year or so of reading the MediaLog, I see this whole Swift-Boat Veterans for Bullsh...err, for "truth"...seems to have to done something to you. It's made you mad. And by God I say it's about time.
I personally LOVE 527's. Why? Because it's biased, dishonest, mudraking SLANDER. And it's about goddamn time we saw that from BOTH sides. Sure as the Republicans are gonna do it - and HAVE been doing it for years. It's about time the Democrats did the same. Granted it contributes to the "gray fallacy" (one says black, one says white - so gray must be the truth) but it beats the hell out of the Republicans always winning and then wreaking havoc on this earth.
Guys, the problems here are that a) Kerry said that the Christmas in Cambodia memory was "seared -- seared" into his memory, even though he probably wasn't there, most certainly had not been ordered to go there, and Richard Nixon wasn't the president, and b)while his service in Vietnam was honorable (and I believe it was), it just isn't much to build a bid for president on. Did he launch D-Day? Left-hook the commies at Inchon? Capture New Orleans? Did he even storm a ridge?
Smearing and posturing aside, the simple truth is that Kerry brings almost nothing to the table. Combine that with his despicable Senate testimony in 1971 and one can understand why the rather scummy attacks on him work: A lot of people want to dislike him and they want him to fail.
Imagine a General Tommy Franks candidacy. Tons of more bad stuff could be tossed at him than at Kerry, but the two brilliant victories in Afghanistan and Iraq would speak for themselves: The man can organize, the man can lead, the man can win (I'm not saying he should run, just that a debate about his accomplishments wouldn't rotate around which side of a non-existing line he spent Christmas 35 years ago).
Kerry has managed to entangle himself in what should have been but a minor bullet point in his resume b/c there are so precious few other points in there.
And you all knew that from the get go.
One problem with the line "But the Swiftvets and their shadowy backers understood something about the media: if you make an accusation, news orgs will cover it..."
That only works if the accusation is against a Democrat. The lie is never, ever even acknowledged if it's against the republican filth. Hell, the media don't even look into the truth about those vile people.
Mark
Chicago
Dan,
The things that are hurting Kerry are items which should have been vetted by the Globe years ago. Such as, he hasn't released his military records, the Post article you mentioned said it cleaarly that they only receieved 6 pages out of 100 available in a Freedom of Information requests.
His own journal states that he receieved his first enemy fire 9 days after his first purple heart. Silver Stars are not awarded with combat V's for valor. His commanding officer refused his request for a purple heart. He was not in Cambodia on Christmas eve of 1968. None of these things are scurrilous lies. Although damaging none of this is going to hurt the senator as much as his own words in his congressional testimony. Neither the Post or the Globe or Chris Mathews are going to be able to help him epxlain it away.
Great article explaining it all. However, for those of us who know that these were all lies (and it's clear as day that they are no matter what media outlet is reporting) it's sort of like preaching to the choir. Personally I cannot even comprehend how it even got this far when Bush completely dodged his duty and Kerry enlisted and fought for our country. More than it being a question of the media and who covers what and how, it is very insightful into the way Americans think and what crap they'll eat up. It's very disheartening and I thought we knew better than that and to live in such ignorance, now I am not so sure. Now if we do lost the election to Bush, it will once again be due to the electoral college cause he'll never win the popular vote. My question is, are we going to sit back and take it (like the swift boat ads) or actually do something about it this time. Anyway, you blame the media, I blame the people because the truth is there if you really want to find it.
Post a Comment
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
