In advance of Thursday night's first presidential debate, pundits and journalists said repeatedly that Kerry had to win the debate; he had to perform well. The debate was set up as a virtual make-or-break test for Kerry.

Week ending October 1, 2004
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This week:

Shifting standards: Media said Kerry had to win first debate; now that he has, they say it doesn't matter

Good guys 1, lying “pollsters” 0

CBS kills story critical of Bush administration's Iraq rationales; where's the outrage over THIS editorial decision?

Media repeating McCarthy-era mistakes?

Revisionist history accomplished: Media figures claim Bush didn't declare “Mission Accomplished”

“Stoned slackers” are better educated than O'Reilly's viewers

O'Reilly debates Springsteen; The Boss wins even without showing up

Shifting standards: Media said Kerry had to win first debate; now that he has, they say it doesn't matter

In advance of Thursday night's first presidential debate, pundits and journalists said repeatedly that Kerry had to win the debate; he had to perform well. The debate was set up as a virtual make-or-break test for Kerry.

The morning of the debate, The Washington Post previewed the debate by calling it “high-stakes,” adding “Kerry comes to the first of three presidential debates under pressure to rise to the moment.” CNN.com's debate preview declared: “The stakes are particularly high for Kerry” and “Onus on Kerry.”

Then Kerry won the first debate convincingly, by nearly any measure. ABC's The Note reported Friday morning that “Many Bush aides last night weren't even claiming that the president won.” Post-debate polls consistently showed Kerry the clear winner; the Gallup poll -- which, like other controversial Gallup polls, counts more Republicans than Democrats -- showed that 53 percent thought Kerry won, while only 37 percent thought Bush won. Even the conservative New York Post reported (under the headline "'Bad Night' For W"):

Sen. John Kerry scored a decisive victory over an unusually off-his-game President Bush at the first of three debates last night, according to a 10-person bipartisan panel of political consultants and debate experts interviewed by The Post.

But now that Kerry has won a “decisive victory” over Bush in the first debate, some CNN commentators are claiming that it doesn't matter. According to this latest spin, a “high-stakes” debate, watched by 50 million viewers, suddenly may have little effect on voters' views of the candidates.

Good guys 1, lying “pollsters” 0

After complaints from Media Matters for America, as well as criticism from progressive blogs (including Daily Kos and Atrios/Duncan Black) and their readers, MSNBC has “canned” Republican “pollster” Frank Luntz, whom the network has repeatedly used as an analyst - without disclosing his partisan ties.

MSNBC had planned to use Luntz as an analyst, conducting “focus groups” after this year's presidential debates. If recent past is any indication, the network wouldn't have identified him as a partisan Republican and certainly wouldn't have noted that he has been reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

MSNBC has used Luntz in this capacity before; he appeared on the network three times during the 2004 political conventions - but wasn't identified as a Republican any of those times, even after he participated in a GOP strategy session at the Republican National Convention.

In 2000, an MSNBC anchor did note Luntz's partisanship -- or, at least, he started to, as The American Prospect's Jeffrey Dubner noted:

It almost seems like MSNBC goes out of its way to avoid identifying Luntz as a Republican. Searching through his 2000 and 2004 appearances, I've only been able to find one instance of somebody calling Luntz a Republican on-air:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: All the while, Republican -- I should say political pollster Frank Luntz, yes, he's done a lot of work for Republican candidates over the years, has been gauging the reaction of his group of voters in Louisville, Kentucky tonight.

That from after the vice-presidential debate on October 5, 2000. Brian Williams actually stopped himself mid-sentence and rephrased his comments to avoid calling Luntz a Republican pollster. (Luntz went on to say that 18 members of his focus group thought Joe Lieberman won the debate and 18 thought Dick Cheney won -- and then arranged the on-air conversation so that three pro-Cheney groupers spoke before the first pro-Lieberman voice was heard.)

Fortunately, viewers won't be subjected to Luntz's partisan hackery disguised as objectivity during this year's debates, and MSNBC anchors won't have to bend over backwards to avoid mentioning it.

Thirty years of conservative assaults on the media have created an environment in which MSNBC has used an ethically challenged practicing Republican pollster as its on-air analyst without disclosing his partisan ties; CNN's “independent” polling guru is American Enterprise Institute fellow Bill Schneider; and CBS actually spikes a story critical of the Bush administration for partisan reasons and virtually no one in the media makes a peep (see below).

It doesn't have to be that way. If progressives and moderates fight back, as we learned this week, we can have a positive effect on media coverage of politics and policy.

CBS killed story critical of Bush administration's Iraq rationales; where's the outrage over THIS editorial decision?

CBS News has decided not to air a segment that questioned one of the Bush administration's many rationales for going to war against Iraq, not because the segment wasn't based on solid reporting, but because the network is afraid to criticize President Bush. While CBS's recent coverage of Bush's National Guard record drew righteous indignation from its competitors, other news organizations are now oddly silent about CBS's shocking decision to bury an important story for political reasons.

The Columbia Journalism Review's Campaign Desk noted of the situation:

CBS News will postpone a prepared segment questioning one of the Bush administration's rationales for invading Iraq, the New York Times reported Saturday in a little-noted story tucked away at the bottom of page A12.

Clearly, that move is a response to the furor over the networks' use of documents that questioned President Bush's National Guard service, and which CBS now says it cannot authenticate. Dismayed CBS staffers confirmed that over the weekend, describing to Newsweek a network frozen in its tracks -- and one that has decided that, because of the flawed National Guard story, that it can no longer legitimately present reporting that implicitly questions presidential decisions in the weeks leading up to the election.

A CBS spokeswoman said only that “it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the election.”

[...]

It seems clear, then, that public relations concerns won out over the journalistic imperative to get to the bottom of something and then tell what you have found.

[...]

[M]aybe airing the report would cause outcry, confirming the worst suppositions of Bush partisans. But if CBS News truly believes that it no longer has the credibility to report fairly on crucial political issues, it should just shut down entirely. You can't call yourself a reputable news operation if you're too gun-shy to run with your own original work during an election campaign.

Media repeating McCarthy-era mistakes?

Salon.com's Eric Boehlert wrote this week about media coverage of conservative claims that a vote for John Kerry is a vote for terrorists. MMFA has long noted how common this line of attack is on the right and how it has seeped into media coverage of the 2004 campaign; Boehlert added some historical context:

By adopting divisive rhetoric suggesting terrorists are working to elect John Kerry, Republican leaders are posing a challenge not only for the Democratic presidential candidate but also for the press. For the first time in decades journalists find themselves reporting on a kind of public character assassination that's reminiscent of McCarthyism, according to several distinguished journalists and historians.

[...]

Half a century ago, most of the press was slow to unravel McCarthy's vicious and reckless charges of treason, as reporters instead simply amplified them. “The press served as transmission belt for McCarthy's charges, making it more difficult for the truth to catch up,” says Edwin Yoder, former editorial page editor of the Washington Star, once the major daily newspaper in the capital.

[...]

In covering the current explosive Republican accusations without holding the accuser responsible, the press is in danger of repeating the same mistake [of the McCarthy era], some observers say. “The press can't simply report flat-footed a smearing accusation against somebody's loyalty; it's the most insidious charge you can make, particularly in Washington,” says Murrey Marder, who covered McCarthy for the Washington Post.

[...]

[M]ainly the press has treated this Republican rhetoric as just another development on the campaign trail. A CNN report this week, noting that Kerry had criticized Bush for bungling the war on terror, concluded it was fair to say “both sides can now be described as trying to politically exploit the issue,” as if Republicans charging that terrorists would prefer a Kerry victory were the same as Democrats critiquing Bush's foreign policy.

The Washington Post's Sept. 24 article also stretched when trying to show balance by pointing to “questionable rhetoric” on the Democratic side equivalent to Sen. Hatch's suggestion that terrorists are working hard to elect Kerry. The Post's example? The crude sexual pun comedian Whoopi Goldberg had made at Bush's expense at a celebrity fundraiser for Kerry this summer.

“That kind of equation is ridiculous,” Marder says. “Someone will always provide an inadequate parallel to try to deal with [the subject].”

“It's a bit like reporters in dealing with McCarthy,” says Lewis. He notes that most reporters then were overly anxious to dutifully report McCarthy's accusations as though they were objective news, and that today reporters are trying to present the contemporary versions with false balance. “They haven't figured it out yet.”

Revisionist history accomplished: Media figures claim Bush didn't declare “Mission Accomplished”

On May 1, 2003, George W. Bush stood beneath a massive sign that read “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” as he declared an end to “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

Since then, more than 900 U.S. troops have died in Iraq.

Naturally, the Bush campaign is trying to distance the president from his premature claims. What is -- or should be -- more surprising is that the media is going along with this charade:

• FOX News Channel's Bill O'Reilly: “But he didn't say that. That was the poster.”
• CNN correspondent Jeanne Meserve: “In reality, the sign said, 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED'; the president said something quite different.”
• FOX News Channel chief political correspondent Carl Cameron: “Though the banner said mission accomplished, the president never actually use[d] those words. Nonetheless, a new Kerry attack ad repeats the charge.”

The facts of the matter are simple:

Bush stood beneath a massive sign made by his White House staff (in what CNN once described as “a premier presidential photo op”) that declared “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.”

Though Bush has lied about who made the sign, falsely claiming it was the Navy, the White House acknowledged creating the sign.

Standing under the sign, Bush said:

[M]ajor combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. ... Operation Iraqi Freedom was carried out with a combination of precision and speed and boldness the enemy did not expect and the world had not seen before. ... I have a special word for Secretary Rumsfeld, for General Franks and for all the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States: America is grateful for a job well done.

Four days later, Bush told U.S. troops:

America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished.

A month later, Bush recklessly “challenged those tempted to attack U.S. forces, 'Bring them on.'”

They brought it on, and the death toll in Iraq has soared.

With Iraq becoming more and more a quagmire every day, with Bush's many and varied rationales for going to war against Iraq in the first place long since discredited, with leaders of Al Qaeda (you remember: the people who actually attacked the United States) still at large, and with more than 900 dead since he declared an end to major combat operations, it's understandable that Bush and his backers want people to forget that he told us the war was over.

Reporters don't have to go along with the Bush administration's spin, yet correspondents like Cameron and Meserve have done exactly that.

“Mission Accomplished” was very much Bush's message. The media shouldn't pretend otherwise.

“Stoned slackers” are better educated than O'Reilly's viewers:

From the you-had-to-know-this-was-true file, the Associated Press reported:

The folks at Comedy Central were annoyed when Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly kept referring to “The Daily Show” audience as “stoned slackers.” So they did a little research. And guess whose audience is more educated? Viewers of Jon Stewart's show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch “The O'Reilly Factor,” according to Nielsen Media Research.

O'Reilly debates Springsteen; The Boss wins even without showing up

On the September 24 broadcast of The Radio Factor, Bill O'Reilly picked a fight with Bruce Springsteen, rock icon, and winner of the inaugural John Steinbeck Award.

Even though The Boss wasn't present for the exchange, things didn't go well for O'Reilly. As MMFA noted this week:

On his nationally syndicated radio show, FOX News Channel host Bill O'Reilly defined the word oligarchy as follows: “An 'oligarchy' is when rich people run the country.” O'Reilly unveiled this new definition in ridiculing a remark by rock icon Bruce Springsteen, who explained his opposition to President George W. Bush in part by saying: “I don't want to watch the country devolve into an oligarchy.”

In fact, Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines oligarchy as “government by the few”; a different word, plutocracy, means “government by the wealthy.

O'Reilly then explained to his listeners that the United States has always been an ”oligarchy"; labeled Springsteen a “left-wing loon” and a “greed-head”; and suggested that Springsteen should “give millions back to the federal government” if he's concerned about wealth distribution in the United States.

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