PRESSWATCH: Issues of Narrative
Taranto, James
N A SUMMER POSTMORTEM on the Duke University rape hoax,RachelSmolkinoftheAmericanJournalismReviewsummedupmuchofwhatiswrongwithjournalism today: Perhaps the most complex lessons about...
...We fell into a stereotype of the Duke lacrosse players,"saysNewsweek'sEvanThomas...
...But it was a false and scurrilous charge for which innocent men paid...
...Becausethecircumstances of the women's story--black men attacking and raping white women--fit the prevailing racial paradigm of the local white population, guilt was assumed and the governor was forced to call out the National Guard to prevent a lynch mob from hanging the men on the spot...
...In September 2004, the New York Times publishedamemorableheadlinethatforeshadowedEvan Thomas's "the narrative was right" declaration: "MemosonBushAreFakebutAccurate,TypistSays...
...Support for theinitialinvasionofIraq,asmeasuredbyaquestiontheNewYorkTimes/CBSNewspollhasasked since December 2003, increased modestly compared to two months ago.TheTimeswentontoexplainthatitdoubtedthefirst July poll because the results were "counterintuitive...
...Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker,in2008,becausePelosihasnottakenstepsto impeach thePresident over Iraq...
...On July 24 the Times published a poll that found the proportion of Americans who said liberating Iraq had been the right thing to do had risen to 42 percent from35percenttwomonthsearlier.Thefollowingday, thepaper'swebsitecarriedafollow-upstory: ThewarinIraqisthesinglemostimportantongoingnewsstoryrightnow.Publicopinionaboutthe warisacriticalpartofthatstory.That'swhywhen we had a poll finding about the war that we could not explain, we went back and did another poll on theverysamesubject.Wewantedtomakesurewe had gotten it right...
...The narrative was properly about race, sex and class...
...David Petraeus, and his newapproachshowedsignsofworking.Publicopinion began to shift in support of the war...
...We went a beat too fast in assuming that a rape took place...
...We just got the facts wrong...
...ItmaybesaidthattheTimeswasrighttoignoreSheehan...
...And the New York Timesdidn'tbelieveit...
...It'scomplicatedbecausethereisastrongstereotype[that] lacrosse players can be loutish, and there's evidencetobackthatup.There'sevensomeevidence that the Duke lacrosse players were loutish, and weweretooquicktoconnectthosedots...
...That last sentence rang false to blogger Jules Crittenden, who wrote: "NYT, meet Cindy Sheehan...
...J A M E ST A R A N T O...
...N A SUMMER POSTMORTEM on the Duke University rape hoax,RachelSmolkinoftheAmericanJournalismReviewsummedupmuchofwhatiswrongwithjournalism today: Perhaps the most complex lessons about the media coverage of the Duke case involve issues of narrative...
...Back then, the narrative was right, even if the facts were wrong...
...The "narrative" of the Scottsboro boys' guilt was "right" in the Evan Thomas sense--it was consistent with the stereotypes of the times...
...JamesTaranto is editor of OpinionJournal.com, the website of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page...
...This was high comedy: a once-great newspaper reduced to defending another news organization's reliance on fraudulent documents on the ground that theycouldhavebeenreal,andallintheserviceofa"narrative"--George W. Bush was a slacker when he was young--thathadbeenestablishedfouryearsearlierand elicitedayawnfromthevoters...
...The subject was the counterfeit documents on which CBS had based a story purporting to reveal that a 20-something George W. Bush had shirked his National Guard duty...
...There were tensions between town and gown, that part was true...
...The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong...
...Inaway,it'sanoldstory.In1931,asthehistorian John Steele Gordon wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, two white women in Alabama falsely accusednineblackmenofrape...
...SOMETIMES THE STAKES ARE HIGHER...
...Indeed,formanymonthspublicopinionmovedin accordwiththedefeatistmedianarrative,andthiscontributedtotheRepublicandefeatinthe2006congressional elections...
...JohnEdwards,theformerNorthCarolinasenator,wouldkeeptroopsintheregiontointervenein an Iraqi genocide and be prepared for military action if violence spills into other countries...
...These positions and those of some rivals suggest that the Democratic bumper-sticker message of a quick end to the conflict--however much it appeals to primary voters--oversimplifies the problems likely to be inherited by the next commander in chief...
...A woman who did not type the docP R E S S W A T C H IssuesofNarrative 4 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 by James Taranto I O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 4 9 umentstoldtheTimesthatalthoughshe"believedthat theyarefakes,"theynonetheless"accuratelyreflectthe thoughtsofthecommander"forwhomshehadworked between1957and1979,andwhodiedin1984...
...In due course the men, known as the Scottsboro boys,werevindicated,butonlyafterallwereconvicted and some spent years in prison...
...As I have argued (see "Bad News Bearers," TAS, February 2006), the media, in reporting the Iraq war, have largely been following a Vietnam-era narrative in which war becomes quagmire, provoking domestic opposition and leading to American withdrawal...
...Reading over and over about an "increasinglyunpopularwar"--aFactivasearchturnsup 1,170storiesusingthisphraseinthe18monthsbeginninginFebruary2006--isboundtoinducesomepeople to hop aboard the defeatist bandwagon...
...Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York would leave residual forces to fight terrorism and to stabilizetheKurdishregioninthenorth.AndSenator Barack Obama of Illinois would leave a military presence of as-yet unspecified size in Iraq to providesecurityforAmericanpersonnel,fightterrorismandtrainIraqis...
...Antiwar advocates have raised little challenge to such positions by Democrats...
...It wouldhavebeenmoreaccuratetosaythatitwascounter narrative--itdidnotfollowthemedia'santiwarscript...
...By mid-August, a full-fledged counternarrative hadbeguntotakehold.Democrats,whohadbeenbetting on failure in Iraq, were hedging, as the Times reported August 12: Evenastheycallforanendtothewarandpledgeto bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leavetheUnitedStatesengagedinIraqforyears...
...The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong...
...The problem of journalists disregarding facts in favor of "narrative" is not limited to stories about race...
...Not only were the accused innocent of rape, the allegations of racial taunts that received so much media attention appear to have been exaggerated...
...Just three days earlier, Sheehan had announced that she plans to challenge Rep...
...But then President Bush appointed a new commander in Iraq, Gen...
...Nifong's motivations clearly were rooted in his need to win black votes...
...It turns out we had gotten it right...
...After all, she is a fringe figure, an America-hating crackpotwhoseraceagainstPelosiisutterlyquixoticand futile.Butallthiswasequallytrueinthesummerof2005, when Sheehan camped out in Crawford, Texas, and becameamediacausecelebrebyissuingaseriesofdemands forthePresidentoftheUnitedStates...
...But he adds: "It was about race...
...Because journalists influence as well as reflect public opinion, such a narrative has the potential to become self-fulfilling...
...Unquestionably, the media too readily ranwithasimplisticstoryline,sacrificingasearch for truth...
Vol. 40 • October 2007 • No. 8
