Bad News Bearers
Georges, Christopher
Bad News Bearers The media really were mugging Bill Clinton. Here's the proof by Christopher Georges Back in the Democrats' glory days (before they were elected), the Clinton image warriors...
...A few examples: • When Clinton took his act to California on May 18 to hype his jobs and defense conversion programs —neither of which had received air time on NBC—Andrea Mitchell's report not only ignored the Clinton proposals, but rambled through one negative image after another...
...No longer the Yale yuppie with a silver spoon in his mouth," NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported in April of 1989, "no longer the attack dog of the campaign...
...And on TV, consider the negative tone of NBC's report, the thrust of which was that "some teachers today were skeptical," and which featured two teachers and an education expert, all of whom criticized the plan...
...Stephanopou-los said early in the day that the President was going to Quantico, Va...
...Jimmy Carter was victimized by the double-standard problem as well...
...Although reporters and editors are loath to admit it, a day-by-day comparison of Clinton White House reporters' dispatches with those of the media that covered the past administration confirms Sabato's claim...
...One of Clinton's fleeting moments of glory in May came when the House Ways and Means Committee passed his tax package...
...The network's report on the compromise that led to the final vaccine plan—a compromise that experts agreed made the plan more affordable and more closely targeted to the truly needy—fo-cussed almost exclusively on Clinton's waffling...
...ity (as pointed out in a Washington Monthly article in December 1991) was that the briefings, which rarely covered any ground Bush did not want covered, were merely a backdoor method of making the president appear tough and active...
...But old habits die hard, and as Willie Horton proved, by 1988 the press was still malleable...
...Coverage of the President turned decidedly sour...
...They're going for the jugular...
...What did Bush eventually present in April 1989...
...For a better picture of the media's double-standard, we'll have to go to the videotape, starting with a comparison of the way the national media handled four similar issues for the new administrations in 1989 and 1993: National Service: Like Clinton in 1992, Bush in 1988 campaigned aggressively for national service...
...Bush's ambitious campaign rhetoric called specifically for a full-blown domestic peace corps...
...On June 1, for example, The New York Times devoted an entire article to explain that Clinton had stepped out the previous day to play three holes of golf...
...the coverage is tighter...
...He had too much work,' he said...
...Of course, the press is not monolithic...
...Not to worry...
...Hadn't Bush and the Republicans continued to take money from PACs and lobbyists too...
...presidential trips, even a summit with Yeltsin, are described as Hollywood-style sales campaigns...
...That's right, Clinton lies...
...Stephanopoulos called back to say there had been some 'confusion' and that the President did play...
...After opening with a shot of presidential hecklers ("You broke your promise"), she reminded viewers of how Clinton said he had found himself "surprised" at the size of the deficit when he came into office...
...Certainly the parallels between the Clinton and Reagan media strategies have limits, but the Carvillites made no secret of the fact they wanted to keep up the Deaver magic...
...Despite the grand words . . ." The Wall Street Journal reported, and "though smaller than the president had led audiences to expect, the program was introduced with a Clintonesque flair...
...The only group more likely to comment favorably on Bush was Republicans, with an 80 percent rating...
...For Clinton, just 21 percent of the comments made by reporters have been positive...
...We'll have to fill out something...
...The barbs are sharper...
...The '88 campaign seared them," says Larry Sabato, author of Feeding Frenzy and professor of government at the University of Virginia...
...compromise—any compromise—has become at best a broken promise, at worst a ruse...
...In its zeal to expose presidential hooey, the media see—and report—slickness where it may not exist...
...this won't parrot the tired administration line (any administration, that is) that the media are biased against it...
...Enberg's report jabbed at Clinton for hypocrisy and noted that while Clinton was proposing reform, he and other Democrats were still taking thousands of dollars from "fat cats" and "influence brokers...
...Clinton's plan, like Bush's, fell short of his campaign promise—but it came a whole lot closer...
...Here's the proof by Christopher Georges Back in the Democrats' glory days (before they were elected), the Clinton image warriors figured out how to win the message crusade...
...And if the media sense that they are getting the Reagan/Deaver treatment, woe be it to the messenger—whether it's the president or his flacks...
...with] a program intended to 'make excellence in education not just a rallying cry but a classroom reality'" Four years later, almost to the day, Clinton proposed a plan that, while it fell short of his campaign pledge, was not only more comprehensive than Bush's, but also closer to the rhetoric of his campaign (such as promising increased funding, which he came through on...
...Similarly, the administration's program to provide free vaccines for every child in America merited a short news read from NBC's Tom Brokaw, who provided neither an explanation of the plan nor any other detail...
...hypocrisy could lurk in any and every press release...
...That's true, of course, but it's also true that avoiding the presidential hustle doesn't require leaving fair play behind...
...Swallowing their pride—or what was left of it—the Democrats brilliantly plagiarized from the Reagan-Deaver-Gergen-Ailes gospel of media maintenance: a line of the day, a coordinated theme, populist images...
...NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on the other hand, did offer a national service feature—but focussed on the plan's drawbacks...
...The press even dug up and hit him for his failure to meet those long-forgotten campaign promises...
...After all, if Reagan could pull the wheelchairs out from under the elderly and still, thanks to gushy photo ops and a pliant press, appear as the old folks' champion, smooth-talking Clinton— with the right communications plan—should also be able to have his way...
...press office has gone over the heads of the White House press corps...
...The timing couldn't have been better for the Deaverites who were not only able to sell upbeat images of their man's ability where he was making progress (such as in dealing with the Soviets) but also in areas where he wasn't, such as officiating at the Special Olympics (he had proposed cutting the budget for the disabled), and dedicating senior citizens projects (he had proposed cutting federal housing subsidies for the elderly...
...The coverage...
...They show it in dozens of smaller, subtler ways as well...
...CBS' Dan Rather granted this news a 10-second read before turning to correspondent Susan Spencer, who then proceeded with a full feature on the administration's ill-fated value-added tax trial balloon...
...The White House," the piece notes a few paragraphs in, "concerned about Mr...
...George Stephanopoulos smirked too much...
...By Campaign 1992, the old tricks were no longer working: Bush's sudden incarnation as a "reformer" might have flown in 1989, but it drew only mockery in 1992...
...the press—perhaps reflecting the mood of the nation, or weary of being labelled unpatriotic—mellowed its tone...
...But Mr...
...sell, sell, sell...
...a soundbite from a woman who asks Clinton about his plan to convert defense industries to civilian projects ("What is it supposed to convert us into, except jobless, homeless, and hungry...
...The program, which was unveiled with a splashy photo-op at a New York youth center, where the Bushes touchingly cradled babies and related to a once-stabbed teenager, was trumpeted with glowing reports on all three networks...
...Obviously, something's bugging the media...
...Media cynicism remained, moreover, at bay for the most part during the first two years of the Bush administration, thanks in part to Bush's unique communications strategy —government by press conference...
...high unemployment in California...
...Today, President Clinton came out with his plan for what is called campaign reform . . . Correspondent Eric Enberg looks past the photo op...
...In fact, Clinton's $7 billion proposal not only calls for real money, but is expected to involve 100,000 youths by 1997...
...So some do the next best thing: They show it, or at least try to...
...How did the press react to the Clinton announcement, which, like Bush's, was presented in a made-for-TV photo-op at a youth center...
...That's good reporting, of course, but where were Enberg and the rest of the probing pack in 1989 when Bush proposed his reforms...
...The Populist Con: For presidents, the populism dance comes with the job...
...frowning on presidential news conferences (Reagan had only 21 in his first three years...
...To hear the media tell it, the bad news is all the administration's doing...
...Of course, no White House reporter who wants to keep his job until the next photo-op would dare let such an assessment slip into copy...
...There are newborn puppies in the parlor and a freshly dug horseshoe pit in the back yard...
...This feeling is not only of him, but his staff...
...CBS's Dan Rather offered a two-line news-read drily announcing the plan and then led into the day's White House report: a feature detailing how Clinton had cunningly evaded his pledge to cut the White House staff by 25 percent through a bookeeping maneuver...
...ABC News' Brit Hume, for example, featured a Democratic governor—who the Bush people had conveniently offered up for this very occasion—who praised the plan as "a strong new commitment...
...progress, like the announcement of a national service program, is presented as an unfulfilled pledge...
...In fact—in a move that would certainly be labeled a Slick Willie in 1993—the Bush plan, which was trumpeted as a 2 percent spending increase was, in reality, with inflation factored in, an education cut...
...The piece then takes the unusual step of explaining how the story was reported: "Mr...
...After being Deaver-ized, then Hortonized, and then mulling it over for the past few years, the presidential press has at long last taken on a fiercer, less trusting tone—a tone not heard in these parts since the nastiness of Watergate...
...the president's ratings in the business community have plummeted...
...For one, their prickliness towards the Clinton administration is, to a degree, personal...
...Once elected, however, Bush announced that his plan was —to be kind—less comprehensive: In fact, it consisted merely of creating the "Points of Light" foundation, funded with a paltry $25 million federal outlay...
...and the "you broke your promise" hecklers...
...Many view [Clinton] as a tax-and-spend Democrat...
...If this happens on health care, what emerges from Congress may not much resemble what Mr...
...Personalities aside, there's a more Clinton-specific reason why some reporters have been eager to paint the president as a con-man: They, rightly or wrongly, believe it...
...Probably just another level of paper that will have to come down," says one teacher...
...to present awards at a golf tournament, and he insisted that he did not actually play golf...
...Clinton did more than just compromise—he agreed to a major overhaul of his plan...
...That helps explain not only the press's prickly aversion to any form of phoniness—real or perceived —in the current administration, but the harsh treatment Bush received in his last year as president...
...Other news organizations, such as The Boston Globe, stated falsely that Clinton was trying to fob off Bush's old plan as his own...
...After a scholar slammed the program, Mitchell closed: "Once again, Clinton has proved that there is big difference between what he promised as a candidate and what he can deliver as president...
...giving preference to local media markets...
...even pathetic gaffes and loose-lipped friends become "evidence" of slickness...
...I sympathize with his efforts, but it's easy to find yourself being angry with him...
...Also virtually ignoring Clinton's proposals (the jobs plan is mentioned only in reference to Clinton's troubled relationship with Congress), Susan Spencer's story covers: Clinton's ditching his middle class tax cut pledge...
...One of the President's few foreign policy highlights came on April 15, when he rallied seven nations to pledge $28 billion in new aid to Russia...
...ABC News' Ann Compton, for example, said that the plan came as a "surprise" to Congress and labeled it a "PAC attack...
...That, of course, is a step in the right direction...
...The feature report that followed, however, took viewers to New Haven to explain how "free vaccines won't alone solve the problem...
...Five million students now have college loans and could have assumed they'd be eligible," she reported, "but Clinton's plan would cover only a fraction of them...
...NBC's John Cochran opened his piece with the Bushes entering the center to a cheering crowd: "President Bush chose New York to finish what he started at the Republican convention last summer, when he said volunteer groups could be 'a thousand points of light,'" and closed it saying that if the program is "far from the Great Society, that's fine...
...But NBC's Mitchell had other images in mind: "Today was mostly good news," she starts, and then explains why it was really a "black letter day...
...Apparently in a feverish attempt to avoid becoming ventriloquist dummies for the Clintonites, the media have routinely glossed over and even taken pot-shots at the president's message in cases where a little Reagan-era flacking might have been entirely legitimate...
...They're not...
...Part of the reason was, of course, the sinking economy...
...Clinton benefitted from a cheerleading media during the second half of the campaign, but when he moved into the White House, he faced what was for the most part a new set of reporters—a group that continued its work on Clinton where it had left off on Bush...
...and so on...
...In one sense, we should be grateful for the media's tougher tone...
...The media, of course, eventually caught on to the Reagan video game and grew progressively more savvy about being manipulated...
...and so on...
...At the same time, the natural reporter-Democrat bond means, ironically, that many reporters may be more willing to take liberties that offend their Democrat administration sources...
...Education Reform: Clinton's campaign pledges for education reform, while ambitious, still did not match the scope of those made in 1988 by Bush, who had, after all, pledged to become our education president...
...Photoslop It's not, however, just what the press has been reporting, but what it hasn't...
...It's hard to argue with all that...
...Consider, for example, that for Bush, 74 percent of the evaluative comments made by TV reporters on evening news broadcasts during the first three months of his administration were positive, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs...
...Not only was his "reform" package mostly a compendium of pilot programs, but he had reneged on his most basic promise: to increase the level of spending for education...
...On ABC, a story about the vaccine plan didn't take viewers that far...
...The print press was even less generous: The Washington Post's front page story led not with the plan but by stating that Clinton had, in preparing the program, buckled to a special interest, watering it down from the original version...
...Why an entire story for three holes...
...The result was to throw the skepticism machine back into high gear...
...Clinton's deficit reduction fund is, according to Republicans, a "shell game," and according to an independent analyst, a "gimmick...
...The press has a learning curve...
...This helps explain why the media made such a hoo-ha about the travel story, the hypocrisy on PAC and lobbying reform, and the ersatz populism...
...The new image: a guy who could live in your hometown...
...She added that "some critics worry that Clinton's proposal, small as it is, could be a boondoggle...
...the White House Research assistance for this article was provided by Danny Franklin, Spencer Freedman, Nicholas Joseph, Jennifer Levitsky, and Genevieve Murphy...
...Rose-colored window To truly understand the media's recent edgi-ness, however, you have to go back to the seventies...
...Clinton's image these days, had spent much of the day trying to avoid any mention of a presidential golf outing...
...Given all that, why did the media—before moderately toning down its belligerence in late June—savage Clinton in his first four months in office...
...But by the time Reagan was elected, the cynicism shtick had grown old...
...She proceeds to take us through a two minute tour of the dark side of the Clinton presidency...
...on election campaign reform...
...But like just about everything else that involves the press, it's turned into a caricature...
...So when the new team of eager-Deavers took over America in January, it only made sense to stay on the same page...
...the piece ignored both the substance of the plan and its improvement...
...Although the conferences gave the appearance of an open and active president, the realHow did the press react to Clinton's National Service program announcement...
...The same month, Newsday reported that in place of the "the Reagan glitz and glamour . . . have come a tumble of children, grandchildren, and in-laws the likes of which the White House has not seen since the days of John F. Kennedy...
...That meant limiting national media access to the Boss...
...the president is being attacked by Ross Perot...
...The last thing [Bush] wants is a federal bureaucracy...
...In the meantime, the press dutifully ignored, for example, Bush's Kennebunkport trips, which routinely caused traffic backups and even interfered with the livelihood of local lob-stermen, just as they had looked the other way when Ronald Reagan spent $50,000 of taxpayer money on planes and helicopters for a weekend excursion to Rancho del Cielo...
...He's not straightforward," explains Julia Malone, White House correspondent for Cox newspapers...
...It means, in short, that in the press' zeal to avoid being snookered, it has neglected a crucial part of its job: an objective rendering of the news...
...For Beleaguered Bill, that means his message of the day, even the noblest ones, such as PAC reform, is portrayed as a deception...
...In fact, all other groups except Republicans—and that includes interest groups and foreign sources—were more likely to make positive remarks about Clinton than journalists were...
...Keep in mind, by the way, that John F. Kennedy's Peace Corps enrolled fewer than 16,000 volunteers at its peak in 1966...
...Most reporters are closer personally and politically to Democrats, which means that the press' standards with Democrats are generally higher...
...Even the paper's editorial For Beleaguered Bill, the messages of the day, even the noblest ones, such as PAC reform, have been portrayed as deceptions...
...Even worse, all three networks fell for the funding level charade, parroting the administration line that spending was upped...
...In fact, ABC News devoted an entire American Agenda segment to a weepy piece on the youth center and the Bush plan...
...Clinton sends up there...
...After all, they say, Clinton's bumbling decisions—from A(ir Clinton) to Z(oe)—would do in even the most popular of politicians, and if that explanation doesn't convince you, the media have offered a dozen or so alternatives, including: Clinton's communications team has been arrogant...
...She closes relatively mercifully, saying the "point of [the economic plan] is to make the President appear more accountable, more concerned about deficit reduction...
...Hard pressed And just how unobjective have the media been...
...In print, The Los Angeles Times' front page story led saying that the Bush plan "backs up his campaign pledge to become the 'education president...
...Not one of the networks and few of the major papers noted the gap between the plan and the promise...
...But as the press ruminates on the slapstick communications effort, the conventional wisdom tells only half the story...
...page labeled it "a workman-like and valuable job...
...With friends like these...
...some reporters admit (although not for attribution) that they feel more compelled to tread gently when dealing with Republican sources simply because they fear losing access...
...and even pathetic gaffes and loose-lipped friends become "evidence" of slickness...
...Reporters hate that...
...CBS's Dan Rather offered a two-line news-read drily announcing the plan and then led into the day's White House report: a feature detailing how Clinton had cunningly evaded his pledge to cut the White House staff by 25 percent through a bookeeping maneuver...
...Even so, Time labeled the plan "pallid," saying it "avoids all the toughest issues" and charged Clinton with breaking yet another campaign pledge...
...But it's also true that the untold numbers of seminars, articles, and books self-reflecting on the presidential cons of the past few years were beginning to sink in...
...Watergate and Vietnam made the media realize that they were being manipulated by the communications gurus, and that turned a previously fangless press nasty...
...Again, it was universally favorable...
...On immunization, Mr...
...No one," says The New York Times's Andrew Rosenthal, who covered the Bush White House, "wants to be played for a chump...
...But for Clinton (even before the hair-care fiasco), the media made an outright mockery of his man-of-the-peoplism (despite his far more humble roots), from the White House jogging track to The Washington Post's photo spreads whenever an administration biggie buys a pricey home...
...And to their own surprise, it worked...
...The White House has now backed away from the one health care proposal the President has already made," reported correspondent Brit Hume...
...But it's not just that the press is tougher on Clinton than on any recent administration, but tougher in a very specific way: Because it's constantly looking for the con, the press won't take the bait on the Rockwellian images or be soothed by promises or be bullied by press officers...
...Into this minefield stepped Ford and then Carter...
...Yet while Clinton's plan is without question bolder, more comprehensive, and more detailed, the press, from The New York Times to Newsweek, has focussed largely on the Clinton con —that is, how the president and the Democrats have continued, even as they have proposed reform, to take money from special interest donors...
...The Washington Post's story led calling the Bush plan "a wide ranging package of ethics proposals for the three branches of government and . . . broad reform in campaign financing laws...
...Adds another White House reporter, who asked not to be quoted by name, "He's incredibly charming, but he lies...
...Could it possibly be that the negative tone and content of the coverage has something to do with the press itself...
...Mitchell then commented on his Hollywood connections ("To fix the president's image, the Hollywood producer who staged all those campaign bus trips showed up today"), before closing by saying that if Clinton has his way, we are all likely to face higher taxes...
...But numbers tell only a small part of the story...
...Even so, if you talk to enough reporters, a pattern emerges...
...And, to a certain degree, they're right (except perhaps for the smirk...
...it means that compromise—any compromise—becomes at best a broken promise, at worst a ruse...
...Coverage of the Bush program was straightforward and positive...
...But unlike administrations from Nixon's to Bush's, the Clinton crowd may be onto something...
...But by the third year of Bush's presidency, none of that seemed to matter...
...Almost nothing that comes out of the White House, the press seems to be saying, should be taken at face value...
...Clinton's tax package, she explains, will hit small business owners hard...
...catchy visuals...
...So when horse -shoe-playing-Bush—who was about as elitist as presidents get these days—played the game, the press reacted about as expected...
...PAC and Lobby Reform: In 1988 Bush not only campaigned for PAC reform—as did Clinton in 1992—but also came through with a plan in his first 100 days...
...CBS News' Rather, for example, offered: "Candidate Clinton said he would deliver...
...CBS took that same set of events and butchered the message even further...
Vol. 25 • June 1993 • No. 7
