Posted on 09/13/2004 3:19:55 PM PDT by Chris_Shugart
Swift Boats, Slow Media
By Chris Shugart, 13 sep 04
Give the media credit for their predictable consistency. And they at least get an ‘A’ for effort in their valiant (though transparent) attempt to ignore the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth organization. For three months these Vietnam vets were everywhere making bold public allegations about John Kerry’s “exaggerated claims about his own service in Viet Nam .” The media didn’t seem to notice.
On May 4, at a televised press conference, eighteen Navy combat veterans and commanders went on the record opposing John Kerry's bid for the Presidency. These weren’t fringe nobodies with vague pasts materializing out of nowhere. They were respectable veterans that included the entire chain of command above Lt. Kerry in Vietnam . The media apparently didn’t consider them credible.
The news media would appear to have been unbothered with such unimportant news. No need to make a fuss over some insignificant rabble of Viet Nam veterans who, only by pure coincidence, served with Kerry in Vietnam . No story there. Just because more than 250 Swift boat veterans signed an open letter challenging Kerry’s fitness to serve as commander-in-chief certainly didn’t justify any responsible reporter getting unnecessarily caught up in the trivialities of such a non-event.
Of course that changed, big time, once the book Unfit for Command became a best seller. Even the most blatantly partisan news outlets could no longer ignore the Swift boat veterans’ story. As much as they might have tried, the press could no longer pretend that John Kerry’s military record, (a record on which Kerry has founded much of his campaign) didn’t at least deserve a serious new look. For better or worse, the media finally got on board the Swift boat controversy. It took them three months, but better late than never I guess.
When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth held their first press conference on May 4, they hardly created a ripple in the news. For three months the mainstream press was strangely quiet. A LexisNexis search from May 4 to August 5 produced only 474 U.S. newspaper and wire story results. Obscure disgruntled ex-White House officials get that much ink in a weekend.
Compare that meager figure to an identical search from August 5 to August 26 which produced 1,650 results. What a ratio—three months: 474 stories, compared to three weeks: 1,650 stories. Funny how a runaway bestseller can prod the media into actually reporting news every once in awhile. By the time that everyone can see the rhinoceros in the living room, news people are pretty much obligated to report it. They don’t mind appearing blatantly biased, but they’ll do anything to avoid appearing blindly stupid.
Although the media eventually started reporting on the Swift boat veterans, they were more or less dragged into it, kicking and screaming all the way. But they had to make at least a token effort on a story that clearly wasn’t going to go away. Again, in predictable clockwork fashion, a partisan press went out of their way to dismiss the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth allegations as unsubstantiated political smears. You can almost derive comfort from such dependable constancy.
But even media bias can occasionally wander into strange territory that would be difficult for anyone to predict. In what I guess was an attempt to publish a follow-up story on the Swift boat debate, the Associated Press newswire service offered a new perspective that borders on the surreal.
The AP didn’t interview any Swift boat veterans for this bizarre story. They didn’t interview any U.S. veterans at all. In fact they didn’t even interview any Americans. That’s because the AP story released on August 31, comes not from the U.S, but from Vietnam . The press had to go all way to the Mekong Delta to find suitable material for a pro-Kerry story. And then they had to use two former Viet Cong soldiers as their source—soldiers, who in 1969 were the enemy trying to blow up American Swift boats and their crews.
One of the soldiers, Duong Hoang Sinh applauded Kerry’s military record saying that, “He deserves the medal.” Another former soldier, Nguyen Van Khoai regarded the Swift boat controversy as nothing but “American politics.” Sinh went so far as saying he would vote for Kerry over Bush. Hey, if you can’t get endorsements from former enemies, from whom can you?
The stubborn consistency of the mainstream media is a modern marvel. Even when they have to reach all the way to the Far East to bolster their agenda, they’re still predictable. Their bias is so fixed upon the media firmament that it has long since gone beyond a need to debate. Meanwhile the news viewing public is slowly but surely catching on to the conspicuous lack of objectivity of the news establishment. What mystifies me is how the media can continue with their pretense of fairness, when clearly there is none.
AMEN!
I am struck with how differently this is playing out compared to the 1992 election. The press truly did do a number on W's father and were very effective in suppressing any counter strike.
This time the counter strikes are quick, focused and hard hitting...and they get out because of the new media.
"The stubborn consistency of the mainstream media is a modern marvel. Even when they have to reach all the way to the Far East to bolster their agenda, they're still predictable."
For perspective I like to imagine the situation reversed. If 254 of Bush's fellow guardsmen/fellow offices/chain of command came forth and said he was unfit for command, how would the media have reacted? Similarly, if a major network hawked forged documents against Kerry, what would have hit the fan?
The answers are not only obvious but serve to show how far in the tank the MSM are.
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