Posted on 10/19/2004 3:00:59 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
During the closing weeks of the 2000 presidential campaign, at a campaign rally, George Bush spotted a veteran political reporter and turned to Dick Cheney, standing next to him on the platform, to remark: "There's Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York Times." "Oh yeah, big time," replied Cheney. Unbeknownst to them, their locker room exchange was caught by an open microphone. Four years later, nobody connected with the Bush-Cheney campaign appears even slightly concerned about being caught denigrating the Times; they are more than happy to do it on the record, as the White House has all but declared open warfare on the nation's leading newspaper. The latest volley came over the weekend when Republican campaign officials accused the Times's Sunday magazine of fabricating a provocative quote from Bush in which he bragged - behind closed doors and speaking to wealthy supporters - that he would announce plans for "privatising of social security" early next year, after his re-election. When Democrats jumped on the remark, dubbing it the "January surprise", the Republican National Committee chairman, Ed Gillespie, dismissed the Times's work as "Kitty Kelley journalism", insisting Bush had never uttered the phrase attributed to him. But the Times stands by the 8,300-word story by Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty: George W Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill, a revealing account of the former secretary of the treasury published earlier this year.
That confrontation, and the Bush campaign's harsh accusation that respected journalist Suskind and the editors of the Times are liars, come on the heels of a series of denigrations by the White House: the Times reporter was recently banned from Cheney's campaign plane; and in his acceptance speech before the Republican Convention Bush mocked the paper by distorting, out of context, one of its columnist's writings of almost 60 years ago. Early in his administration, Bush set the contentious tone when he broke with tradition by refusing to sit for an interview with the Times. He finally granted the paper a sit-down, just 30 minutes long, in August.
"Presidents like spin and secrets; journalists don't, so this is a relationship fraught with potential discomfort," says Times executive editor Bill Keller. He observes that the paper has dealt with difficult episodes with various White Houses in the past, but adds. "I admit we're puzzled over what seems to be a more intense antipathy at this White House, especially since the campaign heated up.
"I can only speculate, but some of it may be that they think whacking a big newspaper with 'New York' in its name plays well with the [conservative] base. Perhaps they think if they beat up on us, we'll go soft on them. Or maybe they have decided to blame the newsroom for our opinion pages, though they certainly know that the editorial writers and columnists operate completely independent of reporters and editors." (On Sunday, the Times published an endorsement of Senator John Kerry, in which it commented: "The Bush White House has always given us the worst aspects of the American right without any of the advantages. We get the radical goals but not the efficient management.")
The controversial quote from Suskind's story came near the end of a lengthy feature article, Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W Bush, which examines the extraordinary degree to which Bush and his senior aides rely on their "faith" and their "gut" to make key policy decisions, and how those who raise questions based on facts or "reality" are cut out of the inner circle. According to Suskind, Bush recently told a closed meeting of major contributors: "I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatising of social security." Suskind reported that the statements were relayed to him by sources present at the event.
On Sunday the RNC sent out emails - one complete with Suskind's photo and voter registration information - that attacked him professionally and said the passages in question were "third-hand, made-up quotes" designed to "scare seniors." But the editor of the Times magazine, Gerald Marzorati, told Salon in an email: "Ron Suskind's reporting was carefully reported and vigorously fact-checked."
If Times readers did not already know the paper's relationship with the White House was in serious disrepair, they found out on September 18. That day, Times reporter Rick Lyman wrote a front-page piece about how, despite having been assigned by the country's most influential newspaper to cover Cheney's re-election campaign, he was not welcome on Air Force Two, where 10 seats were reserved for the travelling press corps. None was available for him, or for the previous Times reporter assigned to the Cheney beat. Lyman's article, headlined Chasing Dick Cheney, was written with a slightly tongue-in-cheek tone (as much irony as the still-staid Times allows) but could not mask the strain between the paper and the White House, the kind of rift usually kept from public view as administration and news officials exchange behind-the-scene phone calls to try to patch things up.
Cheney had already made clear this summer that he had no intentions of maintaining cordial relations with the Times when he blasted its coverage of the 9/11 commission as "outrageous" and "malicious."
And in August, during his convention acceptance speech just 10 blocks from the Times newsroom, Bush derided the paper, suggesting it was a fount of wrongheaded pessimism. "In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to allied forces, a journalist wrote in the New York Times: 'Germany is ... a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. [European] capitals are frightened. In every [military] headquarters one meets alarmed officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy that they admit has failed.' End quote. Maybe that same person is still around, writing editorials."
Bush was referring to Anne O'Hare McCormick, the pioneering, Pulitzer prize-winning Times journalist. And he twisted her dispatch about Germany: in fact she was criticising the "moral crisis" in the British and French sectors while reporting that Americans were doing a better job of reconstruction. She also urged the US to commit more troops to the occupation. Times columnist Maureen Dowd, discussing the speech, wrote: "Bush swift-boated her."
"It takes a certain amount of gall to criticise the New York Times in the middle of Madison Square Garden, on the paper's home turf," says Susan Tifft, co-author with Alex Jones of The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times."
On one level the Times seems an odd choice for the White House's wrath: during the 2000 campaign, despite Bush's "asshole" remark, the paper's coverage of the candidate was considered to be among the most generous of any of the major dailies', particularly the work of Frank Bruni, the beat reporter who travelled extensively with the Bush campaign. In his book about that time, Ambling Into History, published in 2002, Bruni wrote that while watching the first debate from the audience, he thought Bush had done so poorly that he was sure he had lost the election. Yet Bruni never mentioned his sinking feeling to readers during his generally upbeat coverage of the Bush campaign. The Times was also very reserved in its coverage of the exposure during the final weekend of the campaign of Bush's old drink-driving arrest.
During the period leading up to the Iraq war, the Times was instrumental in the administration's political choreography of its case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, in particular that he was producing nuclear weapons. But this year, the newspaper felt compelled to essentially apologise for what amounted to its participation in an elaborate disinformation campaign. "The Times didn't cover itself in glory during that period," says Michael Massing, author of Now They Tell Us: The American Press and Iraq. "The paper", he says, "was far too credulous towards the administration during the run-up to the war. The irony is the Times helped the administration's case before the war."
The Bush White House's open feud with the Times represents a clear break with the tradition of most Republican presidents - including the current president's father - tolerating the major mainstream press outlets despite misgivings or unhappiness with their coverage. The days when the Times publisher Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger Sr travelled to the White House during the height of the Reagan administration for a cordial lunch with the president, his vice-president, George Bush Sr, and the secretary of state, George Shultz, are long gone. While President Nixon "had no love for the New York Times ... even he felt he had to deal with them. Bush officials do not feel like they have to deal with the gatekeepers," says Tifft. "They have taken advantage of cable channels and talk radio and websites that are sympathetic toward them. What they have basically done by words and deeds is to say to the New York Times: 'We don't need you. We can get our message out without you.'"
Bush and his campaign apparently see little political downside to a public fight with the allegedly liberal press. That very point was made in Suskind's Times magazine article, which quoted Bush political consultant Mark McKinnon as saying: "All of you ... up and down the west coast, the east coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street, let me clue you in: we don't care. You see, you're outnumbered two to one by folks in the big, wide middle of America - busy, working people who don't read the New York Times or Washington Post or The LA Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!"
Has the Guardian reported that the New York Times is at war with the Bush Administration? They are on record endorsing his opponent and calling President Bush's presidency "disastrous", but that is less objectionable than the Bush Administration criticizing the New York Times for what it claims are reporting inaccuracies and therefore refusing to cooperate with the Times.
I'm just stunned by the gall of an institution that thinks it should be able to exhibit animus against individuals without adverse reaction.
Egad....I can't wait for this election to be over with. I think I'll concentrate on MLB playoffs on weekdays and college and NFL games on Saturday and Sunday. That should be enough of a diversion until the shit hits the fan on 11/2/04.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
It is time that the battle is joined. By punishing the NY Times by limiting their access, the President is weakening the quality of their reporting. He has nothing to lose as the Times will stab him in the back regardless.
I don't think the Times is thrilled with having stories like this written. It will inform the 10 readers left who don't know about the Times' leftward tilt, that a major party has a problem with their coverage and that they'd better check with other news sources before believing what they read.
Damn, those guys owe me a new keyboard.
Recently, Secty Rumsfeld directed that the guys who put together the Early Bird (as it's called) to print periodicals' corrections to earlier articles at the front of the Early Bird.
Since he did that, the EB prints 2-3 corrections and/or retractions a day. Probably 55% or so come from the NYT, LAT, or Washington Post.
When I first heard Michael Savage say that Liberalism is a 'diseases of the mind', I stepped back and said to myself "whoa, this is a little extreme." However, since 2000 and especially with the crap being thrown out by these Red Diaper Doper baby journalists at the New York Times, I believe Mr. Savage is right about them. And it doesn't just stop with the NY Times - how about Dean's orgasmic shout across America or Gore's quasi-demonic rendition of an evangelist ("Rumsfeld outta resign",etc). When I heard those sound bytes, the first thought that entered my mind was "diseased mind."
Boo freakin' hoo.
The bosom buddies at The Guardian and The New York Times think it is 'news' that no one needs them? Man, you could have written that ten years ago, it's not news now.
For the New York Times to preach about spin, the same paper with a front page story on Abu Graib for 32 consecutive days, for just this year being forced to admit that Jayson Blair is a serial liar, and for being the textbook example of the liberal press spinning everything for its agenda, is just plain funny.
"Time to get rid of the old gray lady."
The old gray lady is doing a pretty good job of that herself :^)
It really wouldn't be so bad if they prefaced all their stories with:
"All the news thats fit to print for liberals and UN apologists"
That means that the reporters and editors are independently biased towards libralism. See, isn't that better than if they were colluding about their bias?/sarcasm
The NYT has been at war with Bush for a long time. Glad that Bush is finally waging it back.
I 8 out of every 10 people I know or meet started to call me biased or a racist or whatever, I thing I would do a introspective examination.
When 8 out of 10 people tell the media that they are biased, the call the 8 ignorant Republicans. The simple fact that they won't even investigate the assertions prove the assertions.
Bush should be very careful, otherwise the Times will start printing false, distorted, propogandistic stories about him.
ROFLMAO ping
LOL -- Thanks, I needed that laugh!
If 8 out of every 10 people I know or meet started to call me biased or a racist or whatever, I thing I would do a introspective examination.
When 8 out of 10 people tell the media that they are biased, the call the 8 ignorant Republicans. The simple fact that they won't even investigate the assertions prove the assertions.
I dread the end of the election now that Kerrys crooks are saying NO MATTER WHAT THE OUTCOME they will CHALLANGE IT....BUT if there is ONE THING this election has shown the American People ( our offical name I guess ) is the LIBERAL BIAS in the msm... it has outted every single paper, news program and talking head that is in the tank for Kerry and the DNC ....
they will NEVER again, RULE.. their day has come and gone..
LONG LIVE the INTERNET~~~
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.