Matthew Yglesias finds the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler and Ceci Connolly taking a dive:
Posted by DeLong at September 30, 2004 09:49 AM | TrackBackTAPPED: September 2004 Archives: FAIR AND BALANCED. Hey, it's campaign season, so everybody lies. That, at least, is the message of a Washington Post article arguing that "Both Bush and Kerry Have Set the Stage With Some Misleading Claims." But consider the actual content of the Post report, which notes that Bush has mischaracterized Kerry's views on the war, mischaracterized the circumstances under which he made the decision to go to war, and mischaracterized the intelligence data he used to make the case for war. Kerry's sin?
In a recent line of attack, Kerry has said the cost of Bush's "go-it-alone policy in Iraq is now $200 billion." This is an exaggeration, because it combines the amount already spent -- about $120 billion -- with money that is expected to be spent in the coming year or requested by the administration. In the past week, Kerry has modified his comments to say Bush "didn't tell America this would cost $200 billion."
That's not really the same, is it? Bush said Iraq had WMD. It didn't. Bush said Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda. It didn't. Kerry said the war has cost $200 billion when in fact $200 billion is merely the pricetag for paying for everything we're currently committed to doing. Meanwhile, every cost estimate the administration has ever put forward for the war has proven to be an underestimation.
On the economy, none of the things the Post charges either candidate with saying are really inaccurate. Bush says the unemployment rate is low, without mentioning that it was even lower when he took office. Kerry says the country's lost a ton of manufacturing jobs without mentioning that some of those jobs have been compensated for by gains in other sectors.
On health policy, again, the Post can't find a single inaccurate Kerry claim. They can find the Bush administration lying to the public -- and to Congress -- about the cost of the Medicare bill, and they can find Bush totally mischaracterizing Kerry's health-care proposals. So why is the headline for the pre-debate article "Both Bush and Kerry Have Set the Stage With Some Misleading Claims" instead of "Bush Has Set the Stage With Some Misleading Claims?" And make no mistake, his performance in tonight's debate is going to have nothing but misleading claims on it. And the press will almost certainly give him a free pass on it just as they always do -- maybe by ignoring the way he misrepresents things or maybe, like the Post, by pretending Kerry did the same thing even when he didn't.
WaPo writes that the cost of the Iraq War is the same as what has been so far and forget about what we are committed to spend in the future. My wife would love that. She looks at the $700,000 price tags for homes we would like to buy and worries how we'll pay for one. She'll may be glad to know that the price is only the $70,000 down payment. Or will she? Maybe she'll infer that I have forgot everything I learned in finance.
Posted by: pgl at September 30, 2004 10:08 AMYou and Matt are WAY OFF base.
Glen Kessler is one of the good guys: an excellent fact-checker at the Washington Post who has been calling Bush on his lies again and again. The article itself is proof of that.
Reporters do NOT get to choose the headline, editors do. And at the Washington Post, the editors are, how I shall I put...
Posted by: ch2 at September 30, 2004 10:09 AMI know reporters always say (to me at least), "I'm sorry: I didn't choose the headline." They never say, "You wouldn't believe what headline the editor wanted to put over it! I pushed back, and got it changed to something that wasn't a lie!"
I don't buy the "reporters don't choose headlines" excuse any more. The editors I know who successfully manage reporters try hard to keep their reporters happy...
Posted by: Brad DeLong at September 30, 2004 10:22 AMKerry's claim that the cost of the war is "now" $200B is not an "exaggeration." It is the truth. Part of that $200B cost has been paid in the past, part will be paid in the future.
Kerry uses the word "now" because, as we all know, the cost of the war will actually be much higher. The total cost is "now" estimated to be $200B; next year, the total cost will be estimated to be $300B? $400B? Who knows?
The reporters deserve condemnation for pretending that what Kerry said was hyperbole when it was not.
Posted by: joe at September 30, 2004 10:26 AMBrad,
headlines can change very fast over the net, while body text changes are rare. Doesn't that tell you that the decision is made by the editors and not by the reporters ?
Didn't you post just recently about Drezner complaining that his own headline was NOT what he wanted ?
Didn't you hear how a yahoo story headline got changed from "Bush Twists Kerry's Words on Iraq" to a more "fair" "Bush, Kerry Twisting Each Other's Words" after complaints. Though the body of the text remained unchanged and featured mainly Bush fibs ?
Journalists can complain. They might even win an argument. But editors can overrule them later, no questions asked.
So I wholeheartedly disagree with you.
Posted by: ch2 at September 30, 2004 10:35 AMBrad is right, ch2 is wrong. Hell, in my several years as a journalist I was always around until the lead got moved from the Meganthaler to the mat.
Any reporter worth diddley can screech at their editor until some vague ghost of truth appears in the headline. The sole exception may be when the editor has got some very cute thing in mind, e.g. the one that was propose for Variety on Pope John's passing: "XVIII Skidoo." Slate, for instance, is particularly bad at making word games out of headlines, without regard to any contact with the content of the story.
I suspect that this is a result of the high degree of bottle-feeding among the social class aspiring to literacy, and producing a disproportionate number of editors, in the 1940's and '50's.
These are the people of whome Adlai Stevenson once wisely observed to an ASNE conference "You separate the wheat from the chaff, and print the chaff."
-dlj.
It is true that Glen Kessler is one of the good guys. However, Ceci Conolly is one of the bad gals, truly bad (see the daily howler for dozens of examples).
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Post editors brought her into what would have been a kessler story on bush deceit in order to prove how "fair and balanced" they are....
Posted by: howard at September 30, 2004 10:51 AMDavid Lloyd-Jones,
Things are likely to have changed since you were a journalist. For crying out loud, where were you the last 5 years ? And if you look carefully at Glenn Kessler's pieces, you'll see that he is an excellent fact checker and that the headlines are usually quite on target. Howard may be on to something...
Posted by: ch2 at September 30, 2004 10:57 AMHoward is spot-on about Conolly. It's not fair of course, but I blame her silly sniping at Gore four years ago to somewhat leading to a dismissiveness of the Democratic candidate, and in some small way to the tragedies of Bush.
Posted by: richard at September 30, 2004 10:57 AMThe post- Yglesias through DeLong- is completely on point. Kessler has a good history, but he co-wrote it with Ceci Connolly who does not have a good history.
Consider this line from the article: "Here are some of the inaccurate claims Bush and Kerry have been making on crucial issues in this election year." And then they proceed to list Bush inaccuracies and Kerry... well not inaccuracies. it's not just the headline. It's that relentless pursuit of 'balance'.
Even their attempts to sort out statements on economic matters come up short. Kerry calls the medicare a $139 billion payoff to drug companies. The post found somebody (wholly unindentified) who disagrees (at worst their disagreement is of the it's only a $79 billion payoff variety). Conclusion: who knows who's right, but clearly Kerry has been exaggerating because every single person does not agree with him.
The article sets up a framework which it can't find evidence to support. But the structure of its argument fully supports the headline.
It's not just the headline. It's the article. Who should we blame for that? Answer given.
Posted by: tegwar at September 30, 2004 10:58 AMtegwar,
my beef is not with Matt's article, really. It's with the "Kessler taking a dive" comment.
I have this vague, stupid hope that the recent trend in press coverage of the election, toward pointing out lies from "the candidates" is part of a process of setting up for the post-debate spin. Having already planted the flat - there's a lot of lying going on out there - the press can then go to town on the claims made during the debate. Since Bush cannot make any claims that are both true and likely to get him elected, he will be portrayed as the liar-in-chief in the debate post-mortem.
That could happen, couldn't it?
Posted by: kharris at September 30, 2004 11:17 AMOh, we're abso-bloody-lutely doomed..
Posted by: Andrew McManama-Smith at September 30, 2004 11:33 AMPlanted the FLAG, the stinkin' FLAG, not the FLAT.
Posted by: kharris at September 30, 2004 11:36 AMThese people lie about almost everything. Take health care, for instance. Everybody shilling for the Bush administration keeps talking about how Kerry wants to nationalize health care. Is that even remotely accurate? Well, I'll crib from The Washington Post's editorial board: "That's not a mere mischaracterization of Senator Kerry's plan -- it's fiction."
Posted by: Brian at September 30, 2004 12:15 PMEven the WP editorial board can't bring themselves to call a spade a spade. That or they think "lie" is spelled "f-i-c-t-i-o-n".
Posted by: kharris at September 30, 2004 12:42 PMWhy don't newspapers write TWO columns. One focusing on John Kerry's occassional fib and one focusing on Bush's use of major deception as standard operating procedure. Then they can have the balance they seek, and they won't have to deal with the One-the-one-hand...wishy-washiness that results in boring articles and bad headlines. Big Banner Headline across the top "Candidates and the Truth" Small headlines over each separate article that reflectst the true tone of the article.
Bush rhetoric vs. reality:
http://healthandenergy.com/bush_rhetoric_versus_reality.htm
Posted by: Kosh at September 30, 2004 01:55 PMBush Rhetoric versus Reality:
http://healthandenergy.com/bush_rhetoric_versus_reality.htm
Posted by: Kosh at September 30, 2004 01:57 PMBush Rhetoric vs. Reality
http://healthandenergy.com/bush_rhetoric_versus_reality.htm
Posted by: Kosh at September 30, 2004 01:58 PM