See that good looking dude on the left? He's got FAR BETTER THINGS to do than conduct Freepathons! Come on, let's get this thing over with.
Posted on 07/15/2003 8:04:58 AM PDT by areafiftyone
Democrats in Congress claim the mainstream print and broadcast media are giving the Bush administration and Republican leaders on the Hill a free ride.
These lawmakers complain that the press holds President Bush to a much lower standard of accountability than it did President Clinton. Bush's predecessor weathered such media firestorms as Whitewater, Travelgate, and Monica Lewinsky.
The backdrop to these complaints is the uneven fundraising contest between the parties. Following the ban on unlimited soft money donations, Republicans are leaving the Democrats in the dust when it comes to dollars raised and cash on hand.
Democratic strategists fear that by next July the national Republican fundraising committees will have raised close to twice as much as their Democratic counterparts. At that point, they fear, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, having exhausted his financial resources in bruising primaries, will desperately need public funds. Typically these funds are withheld until after the nominating convention, which for Democrats will end in August.
Realizing that Republicans will air more television and radio ads, Democrats hoped to get more earned media, the term strategists use for press coverage favorable to their candidates or unfavorable to their opponents.
But Democrats charge the media is largely ignoring their message and, instead, slavishly adhering to the White House line in their coverage of Bush.
Other observers say, however, that the criticism reflect a weak party frustrated because it can't come up with a unified and coherent stance on such key issues as the war on terrorism or tax policy.
Last month Democrats on the homeland security department held a press conference to highlight issues they called of highest importance to our national security, specifically that the Department of Homeland Security is broken and needs to be fixed.
Few reporters covered the event.
We criticized the [department] and nobody showed up, said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a member of the committee: It's very frustrating because people are asking us Why aren't you speaking out about things?
The media institutionally is lazy, the news hole has shrunk, and there's the corporatization of newspapers. They now put out newspapers to make money, They're not making money to put out newspapers.
The limited space allotted to government is nearly monopolized by the president and his efforts to fight terrorism, Frank believes.
Frank said if issues were more broadly discussed, we'd be on the majority side.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who last year served as assistant to the minority leader, said the press needs to do a better job of probing and evaluating Republican policies.
I think the media has the responsibility to probe the ambiguous and ask the
second, and third and fourth questions, she said. There's been a lot of one-question stories being written.
Tom Rosenstiel, a former Los Angeles Times and Newsweek reporter who now directs the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said Democrats are themselves largely to blame.
It's not the job of the press to function as the opposition party,he said. If the Democratic opposition is lame or muted or conflicted, the press will never act as a surrogate for them.
Is Bush getting an easier ride? Yes. He is because the Democrats are weak and the president is popular and the press is reflecting that.
In the last week and a half, the press has focused on the fact that Bush included unsubstantiated information about Iraqi attempts to import uranium from Nigeria in his State of the Union Address. But one Democrat said the story gained prominence only after the White House acknowledged that the evidence underlying the assertion was unreliable and that it should have been picked it up months ago.
I sent a letter to the president two days before we went to war in Iraq, said Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the Government Reform Committee. It said How could he say Saddam Hussein imported uranium when it was not true and the intelligence people knew it?
I put that in the letter and sent it around to the press, and there was no coverage, he said.
Marvin Kalb, a former CBS and NBC diplomatic correspondent and senior fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, said Democratic complaints have some basis in reality.
Their frustration is so deep that they attack the media, Kalb said, adding:
There's a genuine feeling on the part of many critics that the media went wild with Clinton and Lewinsky and the Clinton exit and the pardons and a whole range of other factors and that they're giving Bush a free pass. There's some merit to that.
Kalb said the press is wary of criticizing the president in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks because it doesn't want to be accused of being unpatriotic. But it was equally true, he said, that the White House officials handle the press coverage very effectively.
The Bush White House manages the press with extraordinary skill, has managed to quiet the press and corral the press with a political skill and toward their political advantage in a way that I haven't seen in Washington in quite a long time, he said.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a four-term veteran, marveled at the amount of positive press coverage Bush received for arriving on the deck of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in a jumpsuit.
There is the president's obvious politicking on an issue, I wonder what [the press] would have done if Bill Clinton was in office, Lautenberg said, an implicit reference to Bush's handling of the war on terrorism. They would have taken him to task.
The question is where's the balance, where's the fairness? said Lautenberg. We work hard to fashion policy that we can propose to the people, and it seems to get ignored.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said: I believe the press seems to have a different standard for Mr. Bush than for Mr. Clinton. They are simply not getting through to ask the tough questions.
This White House has made it known to everyone if you cross them you won't have access, you won't have any resources, you'll be cut out of things, he said. The press corps in Washington likes to be invited to the White House, rub elbows with officials and get a leak now and then.
See that good looking dude on the left? He's got FAR BETTER THINGS to do than conduct Freepathons! Come on, let's get this thing over with.
Makes me wanna slap the snot outta one of these bed-wetting whiners. Any one'll do.
Cry me a river...
Hmmmmm.....Lets See, Clinton Campained on a middle class tax cut, then rammed thru a democratic congress the largest tax increase inte history of man, also Clinton got caught in , shady land deals with a corrupt S&L partner, an endless stream of bimbo eruptions culminating in a public Rape accusal, COmitting what would be considered sexual harassment in the least in corporate america in the Oval Office, Perjury before a Federal Judge, Bombing an aspirin factory on the eve of impeachment on scantier evidence than the uranium, (actually NO evidence...), and pardoned terroists to help his wifes senatorial campaign.....
I would respectfully assert that the difference in coverage is directly linked to the difference in Behavior.
But I wouldn't be leaning too heavily on the "different standard" argument if I were they - were Bush to gather personal FBI information on 1000 leading Democrats under the auspices of the Homeland Security Act I suspect they wouldn't want it whitewashed as it was under their boy Clinton. As with the CFR bill, they ought to be careful what they ask for.
Well, looks like Campaign Finance Reform will have to be reformed again. Hehhehheh....
Geez...it has only been in existence since Jan 2003, you can't reorganize a complete Govt. system overnight. Also, it would probably be alot easier if those Departments did not have the added burden of responding to Democrat investigations over perceived wrongs that have no factual basis .
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