Media pounced on Edwards' haircuts, but ignore Giuliani's Iowa farm snub

As Media Matters for America documented, the media recently devoted extensive coverage to a report -- first "broken" by Politico senior political writer Ben Smith on April 16 -- that Democratic presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards' (NC) campaign spent $800 on two haircuts. The story was covered by major print, broadcast, and cable outlets, and often featured characterizations of Edwards as "pretty" and the "Breck girl" -- echoing Republican and conservative attacks on Edwards dating back to 2004. These same media outlets, however, have shown almost no interest in recent reports that the presidential campaign of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) scheduled -- and then abruptly canceled -- a campaign rally at the home of two Iowa farmers because they were not wealthy enough to be affected by the estate tax.

In a May 3 article, the Anamosa Journal-Eureka (Jones County, Iowa) reported: "Deb and Jerry VonSprecken of Olin received a call from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's campaign office asking them if they would be interested in holding a campaign rally on May 4, after she had donated to his campaign." According to the article, the VonSpreckens, who "have a modest 80 acre farm and raise cattle," agreed to the proposal and prepared for a 75-100 person rally. However, according to Deb VonSprecken, the Giuliani campaign later canceled the event, telling her: "I'm sorry, you aren't worth a million dollars and he is campaigning on the Death Tax right now." According to the Journal-Eureka, a Giuliani campaign spokesman would not comment on the issue. As Media Matters has noted, Republicans and conservatives who support repealing the "death tax" (a poll-tested GOP buzzword for the estate tax) have claimed that it hurts family farms and small businesses -- when in fact a very small percentage of the affected estates -- 2 percent in 2004 -- in which more than half of the assets are farms and family-owned businesses. At the May 3 Republican presidential debate, Giuliani declared: "We have to get rid of the death tax."

Blogger and media critic Greg Sargent highlighted the Journal-Eureka article on May 10, confirmed the details of the story with the Iowan paper and the VonSpreckens, and wrote that the "Rudy campaign just confirmed to me that its non-denial to the paper is real." On May 11, Sargent reported that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) "put in a personal call today to an Iowa woman that was snubbed by Rudy Giuliani's campaign, asking to meet with her and apologizing to her on 'behalf of all politicians,' the woman told me this evening."

However, a Media Matters Nexis search revealed that this story has been almost completely ignored by the media in the 11 days since it was first reported, even after McCain's reported phone call. The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today have not reported on the story. In his May 14 "Media Notes Extra" online column, Post media critic Howard Kurtz noted that the story "has gained some traction in the liberal blogosphere," but he dismissed blogger Kevin Drum's observation that "Giuliani's gang was playing an old time conservative game: trying to find a family farm that would eventually have to be sold in order to pay inheritance taxes," writing: "Come on -- don't all politicians look for people who illustrate the problem that their plan (on taxes, Social Security, whatever) is going to solve?" When asked about the story during a May 11 washingtonpost.com online discussion, Washington Post congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman responded: "There really aren't too many farmers affected by the death tax, although most of them think they are, so if that's his criteria, he's gonna have some trouble stumping in farm country." The Politico's Smith and Jonathan Martin noted the story on their respective blogs, but it was completely ignored by CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS, and NBC. ABC noted the story on its Political Radar weblog on May 12.

The Associated Press devoted a May 12 article to the Giuliani story, reporting: "Deborah VonSprecken said that Giuliani's campaign bailed after deciding the couple didn't mesh with Giuliani's planned speech about the elimination of the inheritance tax. The so-called 'death tax,' is a big issue in Iowa, where farmers face hurdles passing their land along to the next generation." The AP offered no evidence to support the claim that the estate tax is "a big issue" for Iowa farmers. Estate tax data available on the IRS website do not indicate how many Iowa farms have paid estate taxes, though only 174 estates in Iowa paid the tax in 2005. According to Roger McEowen, director of Iowa State University's Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation, the federal estate tax "has virtually no impact in Iowa," and "[m]ost Iowa farms" are not valuable enough to meet the estate tax's threshold. McEowen was quoted in an April 20 Des Moines Register article:

"It has virtually no impact when you bring it down to Iowa," said McEowen. ... "It's not a death tax. That's misconstruing it."

McEowen said that Iowa continually ranks near the bottom of the list of states ranked in order of the amount of estate taxes paid. He cited a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office study from 2004 that showed of the roughly 25,000 deaths in Iowa, fewer than 1 percent generated estate tax returns.

Most Iowa farms are valued at less than the $2 million threshold required to trigger the estate tax, McEowen said, especially considering the debt owed on most farms.

The media's lack of interest in the Giuliani/VonSprecken story stands in stark contrast to the widespread coverage of the Edwards haircut story. The Politico's Smith "broke" the Edwards story in an April 16 blog entry, which was linked to by Internet gossip Matt Drudge and almost instantly seized upon by the rest of the media. A Nexis search of the 11 days following Smith's blog entry (the same interval of time since the Giuliani story was first reported on May 3) revealed:

• The New York Times reported on the story twice, and the haircuts were the subject of Times columnist Maureen Dowd's April 21 column (subscription required). The Washington Post mentioned the haircuts in five articles, while the Los Angeles Times mentioned them twice. USA Today mentioned them once.

• The AP referred to the haircuts in five articles, including an April 17 article that labeled Edwards as "pretty."

• NBC and CBS reported on Edwards' haircuts twice, and ABC reported on them once.

• CNN referred to the haircuts at least six times, MSNBC at least three times, and Fox News at least five times.

As blogger Glenn Greenwald documented on May 3, The Politico had reported on the story at least eight times since April 16, while eschewing other political news stories. The Politico's and the media's coverage of the story was such that, during the April 26 Democratic presidential debate, moderator and NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams asked Edwards a question about the haircuts based on a column by Politico chief political columnist Roger Simon.

Kurtz, rather than dismissing the Edwards/haircut story as he did the Giuliani report, wrote on April 24: "You might think that this would be too trivial to spark a major online debate, but hair matters, apparently. It's a metaphor for ... well, for something very important." In a May 14 online discussion on washingtonpost.com, Kurtz rejected a reader's suggestion that the disparity in coverage between the Edwards haircut story and the Giuliani farm story constitutes "pretty clear evidence of conservative bias in those outlets that neglect the Giuliani story." According to Kurtz:

Howard Kurtz: No, I don't think it's evidence of pretty clear bias because I don't think the two are comparable. While the haircut story has been overblown, Edwards presumably knew about it, since it was his hair being cut, and he had the good sense to say he was embarrassed about it. There's no evidence that Giuliani personally knew about his staff's effort to line up a farming family hit by the estate tax. And I do believe that political staffs looking for real-life examples of this or that policy do this kind of prospecting all the time.

In dismissing the story, Kurtz ignored the problem underlying the staff's endeavor to find "real-life examples" for Giuliani's estate tax policy: Giuliani has chosen to stress an issue -- the federal estate tax -- that, as noted above, has little impact in Iowa. According to Kurtz apparently, the fact that Giuliani and/or his campaign staff either do not understand or willfully misrepresent the effects of the estate tax is less newsworthy than Edwards' paying for his haircuts with campaign funds, which Edwards later claimed "was a mistake."

—S.S.M.