Posted on 07/19/2002 1:23:06 PM PDT by GeneD
Howell Raines, the executive editor of The New York Times, is accused of running an anti-President Bush PR campaign in an op-ed page article in The New York Sun's July 19 edition.
The piece was written by Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor at the New Republic, who was recently barred from further contributions to The New York Times Sunday Magazine.
Sullivan accuses Raines of using the "newspaper's resources to the pursuit of a single ideological theme, e.g., that President Bush is a corrupt businessman, who supports thieves who have employed accounting fraud to steal shareholders' money."
"Usually, this is done by crude front page editorializing--most memorably in R.W. Apple's front page prediction of the Afghan campaign as a `quagmire,' and the saturation of Enron coverage a few months back," wrote Sullivan.
"But polls are particularly tempting methods for advancing political agendas under the guise of objective journalism. They work well because a poll gives a patina of empiricism to the prejudices of its architects."
Raines' modus operandi is to "devote legitimate story after story to this theme, weaving important news and analysis with sly insinuation and character assassination," according to Sullivan.
"Then you cap this campaign with a poll `proving' your point, taking the story to a new level of legitimacy," said Sullivan, who cites as an example a front page anti-Bush polling story in the July 18 edition of the Times, which was headlined: "Poll Finds Concerns That Bush is Overly Influenced by Business."
Sullivan said the "newsiest" part of the poll is what has not happened. "The poll shows that, despite some of the worst economic news since he came to office, Mr. Bush's approval ratings are still at a sky-high 70%. (That statistic is buried on the jump page.)," says Sullivan.
"More stunning still: 80% said the president shares their moral values--despite the Times's relentless attempt to portray Mr. Bush as a crony capitalist," said Sullivan. "This wilful distortion of polling to suit a predetermined agenda is nothing new for Mr. Raines's Times," said Sullivan.
Sullivan said the Times's new mantra is best described as: "When you can, spin. When you can't spin, commission a poll."
In the book he described how once, as a child, he was not taken fishing with his dad and older brother. In his rage at being left home, Raines broke his brother's fishing rod in half. That's something that a poorly behaved kid might do, I guess. But Raines then related that, after all these years, speaking as a middle aged man, he's still pleased about having, in a fit of pique, destroyed someone else's property. What a total jerk!
Somehow, it's not surprising that this guy is a liberal and has a position with the NYT.
And that, in a nutshell, is the classic M.O. of liberal media slant. They can bleat that they covered the story objectively, since all the facts were presented - but it's the order in which they present them that matters. A fine bit of analysis by Sullivan.
Well said.
That ended the conversation.
"Rosie...Oh, I'm dying..Rosie...Rosie...argghh....uggghhh...grrff.."
Citizen Raines. One can only hope.
My 15 yr.old son saw the NYT front page poll yesterday and mentioned that it looked like Bush wasn't doing too well. It gave me a great opportunity to explain about media bias, especially using polls.
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