Ken Jennings they ain't

Ken Jennings they ain't

Daily Howler writer Bob Somerby (among others) describes the media's relentless fascination with (Democrats') haircuts and (Democrats') earth tones and (Democrats') necklines as a focus on “trivia.” As in, the cost of one of John Edwards' haircuts is perhaps interesting to some, but quite insignificant -- it is the answer to a trivia question, not something that should be considered the defining element of the man.

But over and over and over again, media treat these trivial matters -- what songs are on Hillary Clinton's iPod? What color shirt is Al Gore wearing? How much was John Edwards' haircut? What is Barack Obama's middle name? -- as deeply significant revelations about the candidates' character. We've tried -- over and over and over again -- to explain the problems with this form of campaign journalism. And we'll likely do so -- over and over and over again -- in the future.

But this week, we're struck by something else: How frequently reporters are wrong not only about the importance of these trivial matters, but about the trivia itself. They aren't Ken Jennings, racking up win after win on Jeopardy. They're more like Cliff Clavin, spouting off in the bar about a "little known fact" that is completely false.

For example: A July 22 New York Times article about candidates' clothing warned that candidates “risk becoming Al Gore in earth tones, in other words, to cite a famously lampooned misstep the former presidential candidate undertook on the advice of Naomi Wolf, then his image consultant.” That was probably an inevitable line; media just love to snark about Wolf picking Gore's clothes out for him. This is classic trivia -- it couldn't possibly matter less that Al Gore wore a brown pair of pants, or that he did so on the advice of an image consultant. Indeed, since the media constantly tell us that candidates' appearances matter -- the July 22 Times article is but one of many examples -- they arguably should have considered Gore a savvy pol for seeking professional sartorial advice.

Oh, I almost forgot one little detail: Naomi Wolf didn't tell Al Gore to wear earth tones, and she wasn't an “image consultant,” as the Times acknowledged in a correction on July 29.

Why it took the Times a full week to correct a claim that anybody who cares has known is false for the better part of a decade is anybody's guess. But perhaps we should just be grateful the correction eventually came. When Times columnist Maureen Dowd made the same bogus claims during the 2000 presidential campaign, her falsehoods went uncorrected. Take, for example, her November 3, 1999, column that declared “Time magazine revealed that Al Gore hired Ms. Wolf, who has written extensively on women and sexual power, as a $15,000-a-month consultant to help him with everything from his shift to earth tones to his efforts to break with Bill Clinton.” Wrong and wrong again -- Wolf didn't have anything to do with “earth tones,” as the Times now acknowledges, and Time magazine didn't reveal that she did. Dowd was playing trivial pursuit -- but she kept getting the answers wrong.

Now, another presidential campaign brings still more media insistence that trivial observations about candidates' clothing are somehow deeply revealing matters of great importance. After The Washington Post ran an article about Hillary Clinton purportedly showing some cleavage during a statement on the floor of the Senate, journalists rushed to defend the paper from predictable (and well-deserved) derision.

CNBC chief Washington correspondent John Harwood, for example, defended the article by suggesting that Clinton's cleavage was the result of “the calculation that goes into everything that Hillary Clinton does.” Shortly thereafter, he decided he needed to defend himself, and explained his comments by invoking -- you guessed it -- Al Gore's earth tones.

Washington Post reporter Amy Argetsinger took to MSNBC to defend her paper's article. In doing so, she claimed the article was “very complimentary” toward Clinton and that it was “not critical of the cleavage display.” In fact, as Media Matters for America noted, the article described Clinton's appearance as “unnerving,” adding “it was more like catching a man with his fly unzipped. Just look away!”

Argetsinger went on to make a more telling false statement. Describing the article's genesis, Argetsinger said that the writer, Robin Givhan, “took note of the fact that Hillary Clinton was showing a bit of cleavage because she had been watching Hillary Clinton over the years and had noticed that she had never shown cleavage.” Givhan's piece also indicated the cleavage display was a new development -- it was headlined “Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory,” and made much of how “surprising” it was to see “coming from Clinton.”

The notion that this -- utterly trivial -- display of a little cleavage is a new and out-of-character development for Clinton is presumably the basis for the obsession many journalists have with the topic -- and for Harwood's insistence that it is the result of political calculation. It is also false. More than a year ago, for example, the National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez noted, “Senator Clinton's blazer is a bit lowcut today” and predicted a Washington Post Style section article about the topic. She even posted a screen-capture of Clinton on the Senate floor, showing just as much (which is to say, very little) cleavage as that which inspired the current media obsession with Clinton's “calculated” neckline.

More Clinton trivia appeared in The Washington Post's coverage of the most recent Democratic presidential debate, during which Clinton said that she and her husband sent their daughter Chelsea to private school upon arriving in Washington because the Clintons had been advised that if Chelsea went to public school, “the press would never leave her alone.”

The Post's Peter Baker wrote up Clinton's comments under the headline “CHELSEA'S SCHOOLING Blame the Media? Once It Wasn't So.” Baker's three-paragraph report was full of snarky observations: Beginning “Ah, it was the media's fault,” the report went on “Funny thing -- that's not what the Clintons said in January 1993 when they announced the decision. ... Nothing about reporters -- who, by the way, aren't exactly allowed to waltz into public schools any more than they are private schools. And who over eight years pretty much left Chelsea alone, regardless of school.”

Now, the Clintons' reasons for sending Chelsea to private school are basically trivia. Neither the Clintons nor any other progressive I know of thinks private schools should be banned, so there isn't any hypocrisy at play here (though, of course, you can't expect reporters to understand that.) But whatever substantive merit there may be to exploring the Clinton's reasons, the question of what the Clintons said in January 1993 is purely trivia. Regardless of what they said when, it's hard to imagine that anybody really doubts that concern for Chelsea's privacy was a factor in the decision. That was perfectly clear to observers at the time - a January 1993 Newsweek report, for example, noted “Chelsea's privacy could be one factor” in the decision.

But Baker focused on the trivia of what the Clintons announced in January, 1993 -- according to Baker, a White House spokesman said “They chose Sidwell Friends because it's a good school.” His Post colleague John Solomon declared it an “insightful catch of Sen. Clinton changing her story. ... Hillary Clinton may have had privacy in mind back in 1993 when she and her husband made the choice for Chelsea, but they didn't tell us that then, so noting it now is useful.”

Well, no, it isn't particularly useful, or insightful. And it's also false to say that the Clinton's “didn't tell us” about privacy concerns “back in 1993.” It's trivia, and it's wrong. In May 1993, the Associated Press reported:

Sending his daughter to a pricey private school gave her a chance to “be a normal kid,” President Clinton said today. He insisted that the decision was not a rejection of public schools.

“My daughter is not a public figure. She does not want to be a public figure. She does not like getting a lot of publicity, and frankly she has more privacy and more control over her destiny where she is than she would if she were at public school,” Clinton said in a two-hour “Town Meeting” broadcast on CBS.

“Back in 1993,” President Clinton told a national television audience that concern for Chelsea Clinton's privacy -- her dislike of “publicity” -- was a factor in the decision to send her to Sidwell Friends. This is little more than trivia -- but it is trivia Baker and Solomon get wrong.

The defining characteristics of the 2000 presidential campaign were the media's focus on trivia over weighty matters -- Al Gore's purported fib about dog medicine received far more scrutiny than George W. Bush's lies about taxes and Social Security -- and its tendency to get even the trivia wrong. Al Gore didn't claim to have invented the Internet, he didn't claim to have discovered Love Canal, he didn't wear earth tones at Naomi Wolf's insistence.

If we're going have another presidential campaign dominated by media focus on this kind of trivia -- and, for the love of all that is good, let's not -- reporters should at least make an effort to get the answers right.

Then again, if they had the facts right about these things, there wouldn't be any reason to talk about them.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.