June 23, 2004
Bush: Win or Lose on News - Not Media
There are many who still blame the media for news content critical of President Bush’s administration, claiming liberal bias. To the extent that bad news sells and good news doesn’t (so well), there is a bias against Bush’s candidacy. But the factual basis for stories prominent in the news today have little to do with media bias one way or another. Abu Ghraib torture, workers living on less, a 50% increase in deaths from terrorism since the Iraq invasion, environmental criticism, the Medicare Rx drug card revolt among seniors, and many more stories are not a result of bias. They are real events which capture public interest in news.
The President and his administration are no doubt extremely busy these days trying to contain media fires which threaten reelection in November. This week alone has seen a mind boggling number of stories that potentially could cost Bush the election. While there is good news coming out of Iraq in areas not being targeted by insurgents and terrorists in terms of schools, medical facilities, utilities, and revenues from oil production, these are stories which are not even bolstering Iraqi opinion of U.S. occupation, let alone American voters.
The GOP has not yet found a way to get the good news that makes Iraqis happy supercede the bad news coming out of Iraq which is unsettling American voters. Paul Wolfowitz testified this week that the U.S. military will be needed in Iraq for years to secure the new government. While the public in general does not follow the hearings on C-Span and therefore missed Wolfowitz’s testimony, a cognitive discomfort will be felt by them when they realize in the months after July that turning the reins of government over to the Iraqi’s, frequently touted by President Bush in his appearances on the campaign trail, will in no way reduce the amount of danger, troops, or money that the U.S. will have to spend for years to come. Wolfowitz testified this week that we are spending 4 billion dollars a month to keep our troops in Iraq. This disconnect between the hope of President Bush’s message and the reality of Wolfowitz’s testimony, is likely to prove costly to Bush on election day, especially with Independents and swing voters.
In this same week, President Bush adamantly stated he did not order anyone to apply torture to prisoners anywhere, and his aides "disavowed an internal Justice Department opinion”. Yet the media is also carrying stories which evidence the administration as part of the cause of the tortures. An AP story just this morning reveals
… a 2002 order signed by Bush says the president reserves the right to suspend the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war at any time.This kind of disconnect between what the administration says, and what documents and evidence demonstrate will not be lost on Independents and swing voters who become aware of the stories before November.
An argument oft used by Bush and Patriot Act supporters is, if you have done nothing wrong, why should you fear a law aimed at the suspected guilty. This argument is now coming back on the administration as it seeks exemption, or even a compromise on exemption of U.S. troops from prosecution for war crimes. Thus the argument is begged, if the U.S. has not committed war crimes, why is the Bush administration seeking exemption from prosecution from such acts? The truth about the administration’s relationship with torture by American troops is probably most accurately reflected in a NY Times story entitled, Rules on Prisoners Seen as Sending Mixed Messages to G.I.'s. Such confusion over treatment of prisoners would likely never have occured had the administration not publicly stated that the Geneva Convention rules may not apply to our pursuit of the war on terrorists.
The administration's declarations that the economy is strong and getting stronger is causing voter headaches due to stories to the contrary. Contradictory news stories include citing the U.S. government outsourcing military equipment production to overseas workers, our federal government contracting overseas for U.S. domestic security, and a host of media stories such as those carried almost nightly by Lou Dobbs on the outsourcing of American jobs which until recently, the administration had claimed was good for the economy. Bush says we have created some 1.4 million new jobs, while Kerry campaigns on 1.2 million Americans still unemployed. Who is telling the truth? They both are. The question and debate of ultimate importance to voters is, are the jobs available to them going to be equal to the jobs they have lost in pay and benefits? Also, are my wage increases keeping pace with inflation? It is safe to say at this point that millions of voters will not vote to support the administration's implication that we are better off today than we were under Clinton's administration.
Homeland security issues are also not playing into Bush's reelection for a large number of voters. Recent stories indicate the U.S. is not prepared to defend our borders from terrorist incursions. A frightening headline was released by USA Today this last week which read Experts say 'dirty bomb' attack in U.S. likely. Also last week the news contained a story about Congress failing to pursue a measure to screen baggage on airlines for another year citing costs to airlines as being prohibitive at this time. If our President and Congress had not run up a pork filled half trillion dollar deficit, perhaps funds would have been available to assist the airlines in protecting American citizens from a dirty bomb going off in a cargo hold of an airliner making final approach to a metropolitan airport.
One simply cannot discuss homeland security intelligently without touching upon the increasingly third rail issue of illegal immigration. The Center for Immigration Studies reports
Thus, the illegal-alien population in 2003 stands at at least 8 million. Included in this estimate are approximately 78,000 illegal aliens from countries who are of special concern in the war on terror. It is important to note that the 500,000 annual increase is the net growth in the illegal-alien population (new illegal immigration minus deaths, legalizations, and out-migration).
It was learned in committee hearings last week, that there is a huge discrepancy between the administration's estimate of illegal immigration set at 1.2 million per year, and official estimates for Arizona alone set at 300,000 per month. If one does the math, illegal immigration in Arizona alone in one year exceeds the administration's estimates for the entire nation. In January of this year, President Bush proposed a non-amnesty amnesty, in which illegal aliens currently in the country could earn citizenship and the right to keep their jobs by coming forth and registering with the government. While the Wall Street sees profits in such low wage labor influx, American voters consider illegal immigration one of the most serious problems we currently face and are unsettled by Bush's proposal.
While media bias exists, printed news with a liberal tilt, radio news with a conservative tilt, the biggest obstacle President Bush faces is not the media bias, but, the evidence, data, and hard news stories produced by government agencies, investigative committees, research journalists, and even the Administration's own recorded words. The problem for the voting public is assimilating the sheer volume of disinformation, spin, and distraction coming from both the left and the right, in order to connect the dots between hard news stories that create an overall accurate picture of how well the current administration is doing. If the past is any indication, however, the voting public has an instinct about news, and whether it follows stories day to day or not, the American public, seemingly by osmosis, absorbs the truth from amidst all the spin and spun, and historically has a very good record of selecting capable political administrators. Let us hope that November 2, 2004 is no exception.
Posted by David R. Remer at June 23, 2004 09:34 AMDavid:
There are many issues that deserve discussing. What troubles me is the manner in which they are handled by the media, which in my eyes is an obvious display of their bias.
For instance, the media has splashed headlines for months about the lack of jobs. I spoke to an AP reporter who complained about the dearth of jobs. He seemed confused when I cited the 9 consecutive months of job growth totalling over 1.2 million new jobs. It made me wonder where the headlines were that told of the surge in the economy. And now I see new headlines…..that talk about how the jobs that are being created are only low-income jobs.
So lets summarize this issue. Jobs declining—-MAJOR headlines. Jobs increasing———no headlines. New angle:—- admit job have increased but cast a negative light on the type of jobs….MAJOR headlines.
I also note the amazing lack of information regarding the UN bribery allegations. This has the potential to be one of the larger stories of the year, but it is not to be found. It may or may not be true, but it certainly deserves some level of attention.
David, As we get closer to the election, I think you will see that the Democrat strategy of simply insisting on the pessimistic viewpoint on nearly every issue is not going to work. This is my opinion. Americans will see the truth about jobs and the economy. They will see the truth about how far Iraq has come, as well as how far it has to go. Americans will see issues like gas prices for what they are—-cyclical surges rather than the pessimistic (an opportunistic) catastrophes the Democrats want them to be perceived as.
For 2 years, I have predicted that if the economy stayed the same or improved, and there was no disastrous failure in Iraq, Bush wins. I stand by that assessment.
We know that Abu Ghraib has gotten all kinds of attention, with speculation about how high the scandal goes, and we know that the UN is now alleging possible problems with US companies in managing oil in Iraq. These stories apparently are worth speculating and reporting on, so why not the other. Could it be that stories that are NOT negative towards the Bush administration simply do not rise to the level of reporting?
Posted by: joebagodonuts at June 23, 2004 10:11 AMjoe, as I said in the article “To the extent that bad news sells and good news doesn’t (so well), there is a bias against Bush’s candidacy.” which applied equally to Clinton as it does now to Nader and Kerry and Badnarik.
It is not so much media bias as it is public bias toward spectacular, unusual. The news reminds me of a freeway, when there are no accidents, everyone talks on their cell phone, eats their snack, or taps out a beat on their steering wheel going over the speed limit merrily to their destination. But, put a few flashing lights in view, a little blood and a body in the right lane, and all lanes 12 wide, slow to a crawl so gawkers can view the tragedy, the drama, the unusual, regardless of how late they will be at their destination.
That is the primary bias, and it is non-partisan, or should I say omni-partisan. As the title indicates, it is not media bias Bush needs to be concerned with as much as the real life content and hard data of the content, which by definition of human behavior, is going to biased toward what is wrong, what ain’t working, and what is unusual. If the government was performing according to the needs and expectations of all voters, political journalists would be Wal-mart sales people since ad sales would not justify the salaries of political reporters.
Posted by: David R. Remer at June 23, 2004 10:58 AMSitting administrations can either try to spin the news (as Clinton’s teams did in the so-called “War Room”), or they can passively sit back and wait for reporters to put their own spin on stories and complain about “bias”, as Bush’s non-teams have been non-doing, as far as that goes.
What Clinton’s media advisors achieved with their spin control wasn’t so much an avoidance of bad news being reported (e.g., the Lewinsky Scandal or Whitewater or Filegate or Travelgate), but they were able to brow-beat editors into putting the stories “in context”. They were able to achieve news editorials slamming Ken Starr for “wasting money” on the investigations, and so forth.
Republicans have a particularly difficult time of this sort of spin control, mainly because it’s difficult for them to get their foot in the door with print and TV news editorial offices to schmooze them and put stories “in context”. At some key points the roadblocks are ideological as the Republicans claim, but probably about 80% of the time it’s either lack of effort or very misguided efforts in that arena.
Liberal activists have the knack for assigning near-pavlovian sets of rewards or punishments to career journalists and media editors by way of trendy cocktail parties, macchiavellian social gamesmanship, setting the paradigm for what outlets are “credible” and what outlets are “non-credible” (based, of course, on the bias or lack thereof), and INTEGRATING the ideological agenda with what can sell to the public and increase ratings.
It isn’t that Republicans don’t try to mimick the technique, but whenever they do it falls flat for lack of social grace, interpersonal strategic acumen, or adherence to the “marketability” of ideas, which you’d think they’d understand—but they often don’t.
Ciggy, while your explanation appears to be quite sophisticated, it boils down to the implication that Republicans are dumb and the Democrats are smart as regards the handling of the media. The Republican spin machine during the Gingrich years appeared quite adept. Karl Rove appears to be no slouch where media spin is concerned - I don’t seem to quite understand the basis for your assessment.
Joe:
Iraq is a disaster. Not just because of torture and corruption in the name of freedom and Democracy. In one year, the Iraq invasion has cost 15 times as much as a decade of the UN’s oil for food program. Bush spent $200 billion allegedly chasing a gang of up to 10,000 terrorist, but terrorism is at all time record levels. (WWII cost $304 billion against two superpowers). Just unraveling corruption with $1000/day mercenaries, vendors and contractors may cost more than the UN program. Cheney got his pre-election wish for higher oil prices. The economy is a disaster because all our job gains are in construction and domestic services, while trade deficits skyrocket. Are you taking any bets on your predictions or upcoming election? I would love to take you up on that, but fear that underreported voting scandals could work twice.
Posted by: bayviking at June 23, 2004 07:16 PMDavid, the gap isn’t so much raw intelligence as the broader psychology of the game. Generally those on the right tend to be more ideological and less prone to the pragmatic concessioneering and glad-handing that must go on in schmoozing the media to get what you want out of them. The very thing seen as a “weakness” in liberals for policies regarding “evil empires”, (appeasement by one spin description, and containment by the other), also plays out better when dealing with the gigantic fat egoes of the likes of Dan Rather or Ted Koppel. You can’t just go up to Peter Jennings and call him a Communist and expect him to “do right by the party” as a result. It’s a slow game, a patient game, a swallow-your-own-pride game, and it takes decades to foster a climate in which you can really hold sway. When you’re Republican and seeing the world in “us versus them” and “evil lurking in every closet”, there is no attending cocktail parties and holding forth with great erudition to charm the rich old widows into, for example, witholding advertising dollars for certain news broadcasts because of a disliked editorial direction they’ve taken lately.
Media manipulation takes subtlety, and it isn’t about the front-spinners like Karl Rove on the right or James Carville on the left, but rather the grey emminences of social juice in the circles where you have to BE somebody just to get invited to the party. You have to be Oscar Wilde in entertaining banter, Gari Kasparov in strategy, Bill Clinton in charisma, and Martin Luther King in an ability to tug on the moral strings in the underlayments of people’s psyches. It’s more than just a matter of being “smart”. But of course, having George Soros’ money to throw around helps too, LOL.
With all that being said, talk radio is a simpler “game”, and a simpler audience, and the “moral clarity” of the right resonates in that arena, to greater degrees than what can be managed by an Al Franken or a George Schultz.
BV, I honestly believe that certain cliques with great influence on the direction of the U.S. have already decided that Bush has had his fifteen minutes of presidential fame, and now it’s time for him to bow out gracefully, to let someone with a less paleolithic energy policy carry on the same corporate agenda. So no, there won’t be any “electoral college sustained by the SCOTUS” type victory here. It will be Kerry and the money’s being spent to make sure that that happens, in spite of Mr. Kerry’s awkward attempt to immitate the alien being in the film “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. As long as he doesn’t erupt in “yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh” like Dean or get a bad tank picture like Dukakis, he’s a shoo-in. In other words: he’s a shoo-in.
Ciggy’s right. The major power brokers and vested interests that have dominated American politics since at least Kennedy (the major news and entertainment media and their myriad allies) have made their choice and have mobilized all of their considerable resources to that end. I don’t think Kerry’s a shoe-in, however, because the right now has a considerable rag-tag alliance of loosely affiliated media which offers at least some counterweight to the Orwellian world of the NYT, CNN, CBS etc. The NYT can keep printing outright falsehoods on page 1 and their retractions in small print on page 16 (and only when they’re caught with their pants down and forced to), but they’re alternate realty is no longer accepted without question.
It will be hard to keep insisting that the economy is terrible when it’s smashing every concievable record and that our victories in the war on terror are actually defeats while the right’s heroic media minutemen remain on the job! This really is a contest between right thinking people and the unelected intellecual tyranny of the self-appointed media kings. Viva la Revolution!
Posted by: Martin at June 24, 2004 01:25 AMCiggy, thank you for the detailed response. I can better see the instititionalized relationships built up over decades that you refer to and agree that they likely play a role.
You are essentially referring ( if I read you correctly ) to a style of approach and intercourse with the media being warmer and more solicitous by Democrats and Liberals than the treatment and approach received by media from Republicans and conservatives. If that is your part of your view, I agree also that this would explain some media bias.
I still don’t think however, that media bias is going to win or lose the election for Bush. It may be a factor, but a small one compared the declarative and evidenciary content of the stories coming out in the media as listed in the article.
Martin, above, seems to want to blame his team’s losing on liberals in the media. I just don’t see the evidence from polls that show that likely voters are being influenced by biased stories as much as they are being influenced by the very real problems facing Americans which are being discussed in the media, like reductions in disposeable income by middle and lower class workers, the American image internationally, the increase in terrorist deaths since invading Iraq in 2003 without the same increase after invading Afghanistan, and outsourcing of American jobs, ever escalating health care costs in combination with reductions in benefits - bread and butter issues and issues of practical consequence to the welfare and security of Americans. This demonstrably factual content placed side by side with the Bush administration’s emphasis on how very much better off we are, is a disconnect not lost on the public and the polls seem to be supporting that proposition.
Posted by: David R Remer at June 24, 2004 02:55 AMMartin sez:
The NYT can keep printing outright falsehoods on page 1 and their retractions in small print on page 16 (and only when they’re caught with their pants down and forced to), but they’re alternate realty is no longer accepted without question.
A few other things relating to bias:
—Of the 3 major cable news networks, Fox does not offer broadcast transcripts on its website
—Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Hannity refuse to go on any other broadcast shows deemed ‘unfriendly’, which would open them up to unscripted examination or open questioning.
—According to a recent Gallup Poll, 76% of Americans believe Saddam and Al Queda collaborated on the 9/11 attacks.
I’m not sure how any of these things are “related to bias,” and except for the first item, I wonder what sources you have for the second two, which seem highly doubtful.
I’ve seen Limbaugh on several network shows (and he doesn’t even work for Fox); also, that so-called recent poll has got to be at least a year and a half old.
Posted by: Martin at June 24, 2004 11:33 AMMartin said, I’m not sure how any of these things are “related to bias,”
BINGO! Give that man a cigar!
Where do you get your doubts, Martin, “also, that so-called recent poll has got to be at least a year and a half old.”
That poll was announced THIS MONTH !
Posted by: David R Remer at June 24, 2004 11:48 AMDavid, are you kidding? I looked at the poll you linked to, and it says that 76% of Americans think the war has damaged the image of the US abroad.
That 76% has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with what Bert was talking about. Aside from the number 76 being involved, it comes from another planet entirely. Is this what leftist partisanship has come to? Getting a little sloppy there, eh? I’ll take that cigar.
Posted by: Martin at June 25, 2004 02:35 AMMartin, I was referring to my article. You apparently are referring to Bert’s comments. We are on different topics here. The point of my article is that the content of the news has little to do with bias. So your assessment that it has little to do with bias earns you a cigar! Precisely what I said in the article.
The link in my reply again is in response to my article. I think we got our wires crossed as to who was referring to what and whom.
Posted by: David R .Remer at June 25, 2004 11:14 AMMartin, to some extent I understand the basis of your sentiment, but I think the economic news you’re citing is probably easier for the NYT and their cohorts to debunk than you might think—at least to the unskilled or underskilled labor demographic targeted as the left’s consumer group. If the only thing you’re qualified for is hairnets and name tags, it’s easy to whine about only being offered hair nets and name tags for jobs, and do so on a factual basis.
David, keep in mind that the media failed to secure a Gore victory in 2000. It’s not all-powerful by any means, but it is somewhat of a star quarterback on any political faction’s team. As a balancing factor, the GOP has geared up talk radio as a Middle Linebacker, ready to occasionally pull off a sack or an interception.
And the games continue.
Republicans can sometimes learn what techniques employed by the Clinton white house made conspiracies about the deaths of Vince Foster and Ron Brown much harder to sell, and in turn focus those spin-beams on Michael Moore. As long as there are no stained dresses among the Bin Laden family and the House of Saud, or Arabs named Linda Tripp, the Bush camp is likely to at least have an opportunity to spin their way out of things through a careful study of recent history.
This quote may settle the argument over the poll quoted on what Americans believe about Saddam and Al Qaeda:
It should be noted, though, that the majority’s suspicion of an Iraq-al Qaeda link is just that — a suspicion, not an assertion or assumption of fact. In this poll, 62 percent think Iraq provided direct support to al Qaeda, nearly what it was (68 percent) in January 2003, before the war. But just 23 percent say there’s “solid evidence” of this support; 38 percent say instead that it’s their suspicion only.Posted by: Ciggy at June 25, 2004 04:34 PM
Ciggy, that 62% should shrink as we move toward Nov. just as all the numbers reflecting belief and trust in Bush’s words have been shrinking this year steadily.
Posted by: David R .Remer at June 25, 2004 06:22 PMDavid, the complexity of the Iraq war, which has caused consternation to erupt among Democrats, is that mistaking the significance of intelligence information is a pardonable offense among many Americans, and the arrival of certifiable terrorist elements into Iraq after the war have given continued military action there much more of an imprimatur of anti-terrorist authentication than there ordinarily would have been, had Al Qaeda shown the restraint to stay “in Afghanistan where they belong”. It was a case of Al Qaeda not quite reading their Sun Tzu flash cards properly.
While the beheading of Nick Berg did nothing to make the more disgustingly barbaric of Islamic militants cease to support the terrorist cause, it DID allow the Bush administration to snatch legitimacy from the jaws of illegitimacy, in the Iraq theatre of that regional conflict.
Unlike the Spain factor, the Iraq factor is such that the more the terrorists commit atrocities there, the more it proves American military action to be necessary, which further erodes the Democrat argument that going to Iraq was a mistake. This is why conspiracy buffs claim Nick Berg was beheaded by the CIA—because American action there had so much to gain from the event.
The Iraq war argument in the mainstream of the two factions of the One Binary Party has boiled down to just a question of how much to involve France and Germany in reconstruction. I say let ‘em into the contracting bids, because they’ll probably force their own taxpayers to subsidize a lower bid, and thus the people who marched in French and German streets to vent hatred of Americans will be getting some further economic karma for their hatred, even when they think they’re getting a “piece of the pie”.
So in that regard, of the two main arguments available, Kerry’s is the one that holds more water there. He’s either read his Sun Tzu, or has happened onto the proper approach by chance.
