As all of you Kossacks are aware, the White House and Dick Cheney have 'gone on the offensive' about the intelligence leading up to the war. Obviously, the only option they have at this point is to try and defend this position (untenable as it may be--I kind of think of this as the Hail Mary play of the administration). Mad as I am with the lies that Cheney et al. are spouting to the media, I sort of expect that. This doesn't mean that I am happy with Bush and Cheney lying, but thanks to Nixon politicians don't always have to tell the truth. However, I would like to see some sort of competent defense against these attacks from Dems and analyze how the MSM are dealing with the story. I'll take a look at how the same story plays on
CNN,
MSNBC,
FOX,
ABC, and for the foreign perspective
BBC. Each links to the story. All of these are based heavily on the
AP report. There's more below the fold.
I'm not going to try and rank things, but I will comment on similarities and differences. One particular piece of information I will highlight is the order the story is presented (and how this affects the average reader/skimmer). Additionally, I look at how the WH is portrayed against that of Dems.
One important thing to keep in mind is the strength of Cheney's comments, declaring the questioning of intelligence as "one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city."
Let's start with FOX Bush Continues Offensive Against Dems' Intel Claims:
The most fascinating thing about Fox's coverage is that there is a heavy focus on the President's comments. Initially, we have the meme of 'they came to the same conclusions we did.' Additionally with Bush is that he 'brushed off ... Hagel's claim that it's appropriate to question the war.' This is really odd, in that there is a sort of implicit argument that it's not ok to question the president. Of course, this is par for the course for Fox. We then get Presidential counselor Dan Bartlett with his quote of "There's a bright line there that the Democrats have crossed. They have no facts on their side." Oh yeah, and there is McCain whoring himself again--"I think it's a lie to say that the president lied to the American people"
Only at the very end of the story, do we find Cheney's comments, but they have been carefully edited and sugar-coated. There are no personal attacks on the Democrats, and he almost sounds reasonable: "these are elected officials who had access to the intelligence, and were free to draw their own conclusions. They arrived at the same judgment about Iraq's capabilities and intentions that was made by this administration and by the previous administration."
Dem side of the story: we get Rockefeller (1/4 in) saying WH controlled the evidence we saw and did not indicate estimates of quality. Kerry saying Cheney is misleading us. Reid saying Cheney is playing politics(both 3/4 down). The 2 Cheney comments come before the Cheney quote.
Analysis: Fox is as we would expect it. The link at the beginning of the story for pre-war intelligence only cycles to other stories about this PR war. I was intrigued to find that they are presenting a kinder gentler Cheney though. One other thing, a link to the RNC website where there is a montage of Dems supporting the war.
MSNBC Cheney calls war critics 'opportunists':
This story leads with Cheney's more inflammatory comments, with quotes of "dishonest and reprehensible", "opportunists", peddling "cynical and pernicious falsehoods", and ending with the key meme to Bush and Cheney's strategy:
“Some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing force against Saddam Hussein,” Cheney told the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a conservative policy group.
From there, the story has that ad block in the middle, and then the quote from Kerry (1 line, that's it). Then MSNBC subjoins to Bush's trip, few of his comments, etc. echoing much of what is in the Fox story.
The major Dem response is left to the end of the story, and leads with the exciting headline of "Reid: 'Cheney is playing politics.'" Reid's position as more clearly explained here than in Fox is that WH should be focused on doing their job of running the country, not yelling at critics of the Administration. Fair, but weak.
Analysis: MSNBC didn't do a terrific job of impressing me. I didn't feel particularly convinced of a balanced perspective. You have to read the whole story to get at both sides. Strangely, Fox's coverage I think is more damaging to Bush and Cheney as it has Rockefeller complaining, rather than John Kerry leveling a personal attack against Cheney.Reid got more coverage than Kerry, which slightly indicates some swing towards him as a key Dem media individual, so I do think his star is on the rise.
ABC Cheney Latest to Lash Out at Critics:
ABC starts with Cheney's comments, the more inflamatory reprehensible and dishonest quotes. Then flicks to Bush, agreeing with the Vice President(who would have thought.) From Bush, the article goes to Dan Bartlett quote.
Dem Response: It's left to the end of the first page of the story. We also get less on ABC than on Fox, as only Kerry's and Reid's quote are used--no words from Rockefeller. On top of that no further analysis.
Analysis: ABC is pretty bad at presenting the Dems in this story. There is also pretty heavy focus on the meme of how the Dems are hypocrites for voting for the war and now reviling against it.
CNN Cheney raps Democrats on war charges:
CNN leads heavily with Cheney's comments, giving the most thorough account of what he said, where he said it, and to whom he was speaking (Cpt. subtext says more facts.) Then we get something different from all other reports, Hadley defending the comments, rather than going to the President's comments.
Following on from Hadley's comments, CNN goes back to Cheney with him stating:
"In Washington, you can ordinarily rely on some basic measure of truthfulness and good faith in the conduct of political debate," Cheney said. "But in the last several weeks, we have seen a wild departure from that tradition."
<snark> Funny, I thought that truthfulness and good faith in the conduct of the political debate went out with the DSM.</snark>
CNN then moves to the Dem response: With Nancy Pelosi saying effectively the same thing as Kerry, that Cheney has pages and pages of factually incorrect statements. This response is more specific but again merely a personal attack on Cheney rather than addressing how incorrect this specific attack.
CNN closes with the Hagel jab at the whole PR campaign and McCain whoring himself.
Analysis: CNN disappoints me to be honest. They do cover the story more completely and factually, but there is just so little in response. Again you have to read most of the article to get anywhere near a response, so this story on an initial glance just looks like Cheney accusing the Dems of being opportunistic about the war.
And finally BBC Dick Cheney lambasts Iraq critics:
(as an aside: the photo of Cheney on the BBC website is my personal favorite.)
BBC starts with the same "cynical and pernicious falsehoods" quote, but enters the Dems response much more quickly. In fact, the BBC is the only website that has the Dem response without having to page down. Additionally, Reid's quotes on the BBC is much punchier: "tired rhetoric" and "Political attacks do nothing to get the job done in Iraq."
Aside from a more timely other side of the argument, BBC then goes on to say:
Nobody will be surprised that he is fighting back after rumours he has lost the trust of the president and might be forced to resign but the tone of his comments caused some raised eyebrows within minutes of their delivery at a Washington dinner, our correspondent adds.
emphasis mine
Analysis: This is generally more aggressive with Cheney's remarks. There are indications of how strong these remarks are. Also, we get a much fairer organization of the information for introducing the Dem talking points.
Quick note on the AP content. Many of these stories are simple restatements of the AP story. More importantly, the structure of all these other reports mirror pretty closely to how AP stories are generated. Now, I don't know a whole lot about AP aside from that it is a collaborative effort of news organizations and it is not for profit, but what AP does probably has a big impact on how most of these stories are written.
I have tried to collate from multiple sites to see how media changes. This idea struck me today when I saw basically the same story plastered across the internets. I'd like to do more of this to increase the sample size from just 1.
In general, I am disappointed with the press. There is very little on what the claims of misused intelligence are--no mention of the most damning evidence: the DSM. The Dems message against this was weak as well. Just attacking Cheney personally is ineffective and draws everyone into a political pissing match.
So in closing, I would like to see Dems focus more issues and try and get away from just calling Cheney a liar. Additionally, the most fundamental thing is that BushCo presented the intelligence to Dems. Fox, of all sites, is the only one that actually includes this.
I would also like to see more balanced coverage immediately(pipe dream, I know). Most importantly, though, there is very little difference in how this story was reported across all of the websites. So, perhaps we should encourage our journalists to actually do some work, or pressure AP into reporting like the BBC does.