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History
in the Making
As I walked
to the convenience store to buy a newspaper one Sunday in
late January, it occurred to me that the lead story in all
the papers would be the Iraqi elections, which had begun the
previous day.
And I
made a prediction. To myself. I only wish someone had been
there to attest to this. Because I was right.
The prediction
I made was that the Albany Times Union headline would have
the word “historic” in it. And it did. I don’t
recall the exact wording—I didn’t know I’d
be writing about it, and I didn’t buy the TU that day—but
I’m sure it was some simple variant of “Iraqis hold
historic election.” My main point is that I was sure
they’d use the word “historic,” and they did.
How is
that significant? First, I should point out that other newspapers
I saw that day—The New York Times, The Boston Globe,
the Washington Post, the Daily Gazette and The Berkshire Eagle—did
not use the word “historic” in their headlines.
They were all rather newsy and straightforward about it, typically
alluding to the dichotomy between the urge for democracy and
the shadow of violence: The Times, for example, ran with “Rocket
Strikes U.S. Embassy as Iraqis Prepare to Vote.”
Why did
the TU use a word the others did not—and why was that
predictable?
During
the long run-up to the U.S. war on Iraq, when the Bush administration
was looking for justification for the long-planned invasion
in the form of weapons of mass destruction (all the while
strategically repeating lies about Saddam Hussein’s ties
to Al Qaeda and 9/11), astute observers might have noticed
that the Times Union’s coverage was generally favorable
to the administration, and that the headlines, in particular,
seemed to border on cheerleading. Anytime a discovery was
made of a possible weapons cache, the TU’s headlines
were big and hopeful; whenever the administration issued a
strong statement, the TU, more than most papers around here,
seemed to consciously back up the bluster. Again, I didn’t
think to save any of those papers at the time—they, and
the fish, are long gone—but if Rex Smith wants to give
me a tour of the archives to try to prove his editorial department
would never, never allow bias to infect a headline choice,
I’d be happy to take that tour with him (and perhaps
later he’d invite me onto The Media Project to discuss
our findings).
How did
I guess the TU would use the word “historic” that
day? Because I suspected the editors would lunge at an opportunity
to try to cast a positive glow on the unprovoked war and its
relentlessly bloody aftermath. Besides the general sense of
grandeur imparted by “historic,” the headline overall
suggested it was morning in Iraq, that the country was on
the threshold of a glorious new era of freedom that would
not have been possible without United States intervention,
that the ends have finally justified the means. Never mind
that Iraq then, as now, was still mired in factional turmoil
with no end in sight, or that the American and Iraqi casualties
continued to mount daily—it was time to feel good about
Iraq and the accomplishment of our mission there.
Most mainstream
daily newspapers in this country (apart from a few flamboyantly
partisan papers like the New York Post) still try to advance
the notion that they present a purely objective record of
the events of the day (as opposed to, say, “alternative
newsweeklies” such as this one, whose editors typically
say that they aim to be fair and truthful while admittedly
leaning a little left of center, and who steadfastly argue
that objectivity is a myth). The TU’s Smith is fairly
typical in this regard, admitting no bias whatsoever. In fact,
as a regular on WAMC’s The Media Project, he frequently
counters suggestions of slanted coverage by insisting that
choices are made objectively, almost innocently by editors
trying their best to do a very demanding job. “If people
saw how things actually worked in a newsroom,” he typically
begins, they’d realize, for example, that Hearst executives
aren’t standing over reporters and editors making sure
they spin the Iraq war in a positive light or downplay the
voting irregularities in the presidential election.
The TU
is an interesting paper to study regarding objectivity, in
part because it’s not such a bad paper, most days. There
are good reporters doing a lot of solid work, and unlike,
say, the New York Post, there is no clear bias that informs
nearly everything in the paper. But coverage can be slanted
in a number of subtle ways, and most people don’t even
notice. In the TU’s case, the cheerleading headlines
are perhaps the most obvious example of subjectivity. Here’s
another recent one that caught my eye, from Bush’s recent
trip to Europe: “Bush offers vision of peace” (Feb.
22). Again, no other paper’s headlines I saw portrayed
Bush as quite so saintly, and why should they? For one thing,
the speech was little more than a PR stunt: Bush was trying
to position himself as the peace-and-democracy prince in front
of European leaders who had mostly opposed his war on Iraq.
For another thing, given that Bush’s record so far is
one of war and aggression—I would even say avoiding peace
at all cost—why make him appear to be the opposite of
what he has proven, so far, to be? It’s a rather blatant
example of the Orwellian doublespeak the Bush administration
has perfected like none before it, and isn’t objective
fact any more than any number of complaints of the disenfranchised
that the TU would never print without verification by an official
source.
(For what
it’s worth, I think most dailies give far too much ink
to what politicians of any stripe say in controlled, one-sided
PR fests like inauguration speeches.)
And speaking
of what newspapers never (or seldom) print, simply ignoring
stories is one of the most subtle and sinister methods of
daily-newspaper bias, one practiced as much by industry giants
like The New York Times as by smaller papers. The list is
endless—and we try to do our part each year by publishing
Project Censored’s top undercovered news stories of the
year—but I will mention a few that have been on my radar
in recent years: unexplained discrepancies in the Bush administration’s
knowledge of threats and stymied intelligence leading up to
9/11; the large-scale worldwide opposition during the run-up
to the Iraq war, including scathing antiwar statements by
the pope that I never saw printed in the TU or the Times;
and this year’s election irregularities in Ohio, including
the apparent illegality of the recount and the ongoing effort
to uncover the truth. As we speak, the legal effort by the
Green Party presidential candidates to uncover answers is
very much still active, and Kenneth Blackwell—a man who
must have a lot to hide—is behaving ever more bizarrely
in his attempt to avoid having to say anything at all under
oath. I’d like the mainstream media to look more closely
at this story—who knows, they might uncover something
truly historic.
—Stephen
Leon
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