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From http://onlinejournal.com/Media/GoreMedia/goremedia.html
Al Gore
v. the media
by Robert Parry
February 1, 2000 | To read the major newspapers
and to
watch the TV pundit shows, one can't avoid the
impression
that many in the national press corps have decided
that Vice
President Al Gore is unfit to be elected the
next president of
the United States.
Across the board -- from The Washington Post to
The
Washington Times, from The New York Times to
the New
York Post, from NBC's cable networks to the traveling
campaign press corps -- journalists don't even
bother to
disguise their contempt for Gore anymore.
At one early Democratic debate, a gathering of
about 300
reporters in a nearby press room hissed and hooted
at
Gore's answers. Meanwhile, every perceived Gore
misstep,
including his choice of clothing, is treated
as a new excuse to
put him on a psychiatrist's couch and find him
wanting.
Journalists freely call him "delusional," "a liar"
and "Zelig."
Yet, to back up these sweeping denunciations,
the media has
relied on a series of distorted quotes and tendentious
interpretations of his words, at times following
scripts written
by the national Republican leadership.
In December, for instance, the news media generated
dozens
of stories about Gore's supposed claim that he
discovered
the Love Canal toxic waste dump. "I was the one
that started
it all," he was quoted as saying. This "gaffe"
then was used to
recycle other situations in which Gore allegedly
exaggerated
his role or, as some writers put it, told "bold-faced
lies."
But behind these examples of Gore's "lies" was
some very
sloppy journalism. The Love Canal flap started
when The
Washington Post and The New York Times misquoted
Gore
on a key point and cropped out the context of
another
sentence to give readers a false impression of
what he meant.
The error was then exploited by national Republicans
and
amplified endlessly by the rest of the news media,
even after
the Post and Times grudgingly filed corrections.
Almost as remarkable, though, is how the two newspapers
finally agreed to run corrections. They were
effectively
shamed into doing so by high school students
in New
Hampshire and by an Internet site called The
Daily Howler,
edited by a stand-up comic named Bob Somerby.
Though the major media often portrays the Internet
as a
bastion for crazed conspiracy theories, the nation's
prestige
newspapers appeared to have sunk into their own
pattern of
reckless journalism.
The Love Canal quote controversy began on Nov.
30 when
Gore was speaking to a group of high school students
in
Concord, N.H. He was exhorting the students to
reject
cynicism and to recognize that individual citizens
can effect
important changes.
As an example, he cited a high school girl from
Toone,
Tenn., a town that had experienced problems with
toxic
waste. She brought the issue to the attention
of Gore's
congressional office in the late 1970s.
"I called for a congressional investigation and
a hearing,"
Gore told the students. "I looked around the
country for
other sites like that. I found a little place
in upstate New
York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing
on that issue,
and Toone, Tennessee -- that was the one that
you didn't
hear of. But that was the one that started it
all."
After the hearings, Gore said, "we passed a major
national
law to clean up hazardous dump sites. And we
had new
efforts to stop the practices that ended up poisoning
water
around the country. We've still got work to do.
But we made
a huge difference. And it all happened because
one high
school student got involved."
The context of Gore's comment was clear. What
sparked his
interest in the toxic-waste issue was the situation
in Toone --
"that was the one that you didn't hear of. But
that was the
one that started it all."
After learning about the Toone situation, Gore
looked for
other examples and "found" a similar case at
Love Canal. He
was not claiming to have been the first one to
discover Love
Canal, which already had been evacuated. He simply
needed
other case studies for the hearings.
The next day, The Washington Post stripped Gore's
comments of their context and gave them a negative
twist.
"Gore boasted about his efforts in Congress 20
years ago to
publicize the dangers of toxic waste," the Post
reported. "'I
found a little place in upstate New York called
Love Canal,'
he said, referring to the Niagara homes evacuated
in August
1978 because of chemical contamination. 'I had
the first
hearing on this issue.' Gore said his efforts
made a lasting
impact. 'I was the one that started it all,'
he said." [WP, Dec.
1, 1999]
The New York Times ran a slightly less contentious
story
with the same false quote: "I was the one that
started it all."
The Republican National Committee spotted Gore's
alleged
boast and was quick to fax around its own take.
"Al Gore is
simply unbelievable -- in the most literal sense
of that term,"
declared Republican National Committee Chairman
Jim
Nicholson. "It's a pattern of phoniness -- and
it would be
funny if it weren't also a little scary."
The GOP release then doctored Gore's quote a bit
more.
After all, it would be grammatically incorrect
to have said, "I
was the one that started it all." So, the Republican
handout
fixed Gore's grammar to say, "I was the one who
started it
all."
In just one day, the key quote had transformed
from "that
was the one that started it all" to "I was the
one that started it
all" to "I was the one who started it all."
Ihttp://sm.org/exegesisnstead of taking the offensive
against
these misquotes, Gore tried to head off the controversy
by
clarifying his meaning and apologizing if anyone
got the wrong
impression. But the fun was just beginning.
The national pundit shows quickly picked up the
story of
Gore's new exaggeration.
"Let's talk about the 'love' factor here," chortled
Chris
Matthews of CNBC's Hardball. "Here's the guy
who said he
was the character Ryan O'Neal was based on in
'Love
Story.' It seems to me he's now the guy who
created
the Love Canal [case]. I mean, isn't this getting
ridiculous?
Isn't it getting to be delusionary?"
Matthews turned to his baffled guest, Lois Gibbs,
the Love
Canal resident who is widely credited with bringing
the issue
to public attention. She sounded confused about
why Gore
would claim credit for discovering Love Canal,
but defended
Gore's hard work on the issue.
"I actually think he's done a great job," Gibbs
said. "I mean,
he really did work, when nobody else was working,
on trying
to define what the hazards were in this country
and how to
clean it up and helping with the Superfund and
other
legislation." [CNBC's Hardball, Dec. 1, 1999]
The next morning, Post political writer Ceci Connolly
highlighted Gore's boast and placed it in his
alleged pattern of
falsehoods. "Add Love Canal to the list of verbal
missteps by
Vice President Gore," she wrote. "The man who
mistakenly
claimed to have inspired the movie 'Love Story'
and to have
invented the Internet says he didn't quite mean
to say he
discovered a toxic waste site." [WP, Dec. 2,
1999]
That night, CNBC's Hardball returned to Gore's
Love Canal
quote by playing the actual clip but altering
the context by
starting Gore's comments with the words, "I found
a little
town "
"It reminds me of Snoopy thinking he's the Red
Baron,"
laughed Chris Matthews. "I mean how did he get
this idea?
Now you've seen Al Gore in action. I know you
didn't know
that he was the prototype for Ryan O'Neal's character
in
'Love Story' or that he invented the Internet.
He now is the
guy who discovered Love Canal."
Matthews compared the vice president to "Zelig,"
the
Woody Allen character whose face appeared at
an unlikely
procession of historic events. "What is it, the
Zelig guy who
keeps saying, 'I was the main character in 'Love
Story.' I
invented the Internet. I invented Love Canal."
Former secretary of labor Robert Reich, who favors
Gore's
rival, former Sen. Bill Bradley, added, "I don't
know why he
feels that he has to exaggerate and make some
of this stuff
up."
The following day, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post
elaborated on Gore's pathology of deception.
"Again, Al
Gore has told a whopper," the Post wrote. "Again,
he's been
caught red-handed and again, he has been left
sputtering and
apologizing. This time, he falsely took credit
for breaking the
Love Canal story. Yep, another Al Gore bold-faced
lie."
The editorial continued: "Al Gore appears to have
as much
difficulty telling the truth as his boss, Bill
Clinton. But Gore's
lies are not just false, they're outrageously,
stupidly false. It's
so easy to determine that he's lying, you have
to wonder if he
wants to be found out.
"Does he enjoy the embarrassment? Is he hell-bent
on
destroying his own campaign? Of course, if
Al Gore is
determined to turn himself into a national laughingstock,
who
are we to stand in his way?"
On ABC's "This Week" pundit show, there was head-shaking
amazement about Gore's supposed Love Canal lie.
"Gore, again, revealed his Pinocchio
problem," declared
former Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos.
"Says he
was the model for 'Love Story,'
created the Internet.
And this time, he sort of discovered
Love Canal."
(Judas Maximus - twisting the knife in his old friend's back.)
A bemused Cokie Roberts chimed in, "Isn't he saying
that he
really discovered Love Canal when he had hearings
on it
after people had been evacuated?"
"Yeah," added Bill Kristol, editor of Murdoch's
Weekly
Standard. Kristol then read Gore's supposed quote:
"I found
a little place in upstate New York called Love
Canal. I was
the one that started it all." [ABC's This Week,
Dec. 5, 1999]
The Love Canal controversy soon moved beyond the
Washington-New York power axis.
On Dec. 6, The Buffalo News ran an editorial entitled,
"Al
Gore in Fantasyland," that echoed the words of
RNC chief
Nicholson. It stated, "Never mind that he didn't
invent the
Internet, serve as the model for 'Love Story'
or blow the
whistle on Love Canal. All of this would be funny
if it weren't
so disturbing."
The next day, the right-wing Washington Times
judged Gore
crazy. "The real question is how to react to
Mr. Gore's
increasingly bizarre utterings," the Times wrote.
"Webster's
New World Dictionary defines 'delusional' thusly:
'The
apparent perception, in a nervous or mental disorder,
of
some thing external that is actually not present
a belief in
something that is contrary to fact or reality,
resulting from
deception, misconception, or a mental disorder.'"
The editorial denounced Gore as "a politician
who not only
manufactures gross, obvious lies about himself
and his
achievements but appears to actually believe
these
confabulations."
But The Washington Times' own credibility was
shaky. For
its editorial attack on Gore, the newspaper not
only printed
the bogus quote, "I was the one that started
it all," but
attributed the quote to The Associated Press,
which had
actually quoted Gore correctly, ("That was the
one...").
The Washington Times' challenge to Gore's sanity
also was
reminiscent of its 1988 publication of false
rumors that
Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis
had
undergone psychiatric treatment. [As for the
Times'
insinuations about Gore's "delusional" behavior,
it might be
noted that the newspaper's founder and financial
backer,
South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon, considers
himself
the Messiah.]
Yet, while the national media was excoriating
Gore, the
Concord students were learning more than they
had
expected about how media and politics work in
modern
America.
For days, the students pressed for a correction
from The
Washington Post and The New York Times. But the
prestige
papers balked, insisting that the error was insignificant.
"The part that bugs me is the way they nit pick,"
said Tara
Baker, a Concord High junior. "[But] they should
at least get
it right." [AP, Dec. 14, 1999]
When the David Letterman show made Love Canal
the
jumping off point for a joke list: "Top 10 Achievements
Claimed by Al Gore," the students responded with
a press
release entitled "Top 10 Reasons Why Many Concord
High
Students Feel Betrayed by Some of the Media Coverage
of
Al Gore's Visit to Their School." [Boston Globe,
Dec. 26,
1999]
The Web site, The Daily Howler, also was hectoring
what it
termed a "grumbling editor" at the Post to correct
the error.
Finally, on Dec. 7, a week after Gore's comment,
the Post
published a partial correction, tucked away as
the last item in
a corrections box. But the Post still misled
readers about
what Gore actually said.
The Post correction read: "In fact, Gore said,
'That was the
one that started it all,' referring to the congressional
hearings
on the subject that he called."
The revision fit with the Post's insistence that
the two quotes
meant pretty much the same thing, but again,
the newspaper
was distorting Gore's clear intent by attaching
"that" to the
wrong antecedent. From the full quote, it's obvious
the "that"
refers to the Toone toxic waste case, not to
Gore's hearings.
Three days later, The New York Times followed
suit with a
correction of its own, but again without fully
explaining
Gore's position. "They fixed how they misquoted
him, but
they didn't tell the whole story," commented
Lindsey Roy,
another Concord High junior.
While the students voiced disillusionment, the
two reporters
involved showed no remorse for their mistake.
"I really do
think that the whole thing has been blown out
of proportion,"
said Katharine Seelye of the Times. "It was one
word."
The Post's Ceci Connolly even defended her inaccurate
rendition of Gore's quote as something of a journalistic
duty.
"We have an obligation to our readers to alert
them [that] this
[Gore's false boasting] continues to be something
of a habit,"
she said. [AP, Dec. 14, 1999]
The half-hearted corrections also did not stop
newspapers
around the country from continuing to use the
bogus quote.
A Dec. 9 editorial in the Lancaster [Pa.] New
Era even
published the polished misquote that the Republican
National
Committee had stuck in a press release: "I was
the one who
started it all."
The New Era then went on to psychoanalyze Gore.
"Maybe
the lying is a symptom of a more deeply-rooted
problem: Al
Gore doesn't know who he is," the editorial stated.
"The vice
president is a serial prevaricator."
In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, writer Michael
Ruby
concluded that "the Gore of '99" was full of
lies. He
"suddenly discovers elastic properties in the
truth," Ruby
declared. "He invents the Internet, inspires
the fictional hero
of 'Love Story,' blows the whistle on Love Canal.
Except he
didn't really do any of those things." [Dec.
12, 1999]
The National Journal's Stuart Taylor Jr. cited
the Love Canal
case as proof that President Clinton was a kind
of political
toxic waste contaminant. The problem was "the
Clintonization of Al Gore, who increasingly apes
his boss in
fictionalizing his life story and mangling the
truth for political
gain. Gore -- self-described inspiration for
the novel Love
Story, discoverer of Love Canal, co-creator of
the Internet,"
Taylor wrote. [National Journal, Dec. 18, 1999]
On Dec. 19, GOP chairman Nicholson was back on
the
offensive. Far from apologizing for the RNC's
misquotes,
Nicholson was reprising the allegations of Gore's
falsehoods
that had been repeated so often that they had
taken on the
color of truth: "Remember, too, that this is
the same guy who
says he invented the Internet, inspired Love
Story and
discovered Love Canal."
More than two weeks after the Post correction,
the bogus
quote was still spreading. The Providence Journal
lashed out
at Gore in an editorial that reminded readers
that Gore had
said about Love Canal, "I was the one that started
it all." The
editorial then turned to the bigger picture:
"This is the third time in the last few months
that Mr. Gore
has made a categorical assertion that is -- well,
untrue.
There is an audacity about Mr. Gore's howlers
that is
stunning. Perhaps it is time to wonder what
it is that
impels Vice President Gore to make such preposterous
claims, time and again." [Providence Journal,
Dec. 23, 1999]
On New Year's Eve, a column in The Washington
Times
returned again to the theme of Gore's pathological
lies.
Entitled "Liar, Liar; Gore's Pants on Fire," the
column by
Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder concluded that
"when Al
Gore lies, it's without any apparent reason.
Mr. Gore had
already established his credits on environmental
issues, for
better or worse, and had even been anointed 'Mr.
Ozone.'
So why did he have to tell students in Concord,
New
Hampshire, 'I found a little place in upstate
New York called
Love Canal. I had the first hearing on the issue.
I was the one
that started it all.'" [WT, Dec. 31, 1999]
The characterization of Gore as a clumsy liar
continued into
the new year. Again in The Washington Times,
R. Emmett
Tyrrell Jr. put Gore's falsehoods in the context
of a sinister
strategy:
"Deposit so many deceits and falsehoods on the
public
record that the public and the press simply lose
interest in the
truth. This, the Democrats thought, was the method
behind
Mr. Gore's many brilliantly conceived little
lies. Except that
Mr. Gore's lies are not brilliantly conceived.
In fact, they are
stupid. He gets caught every time Just last
month, Mr.
Gore got caught claiming to have been the whistle-blower
for 'discovering Love Canal.'" [WT, Jan. 7, 2000]
It was unclear where Tyrrell got the quote, "discovering
Love
Canal," since not even the false quotes had put
those words
in Gore's mouth. But Tyrrell's description of
what he
perceived as Gore's strategy of flooding the
public debate
with "deceits and falsehoods" might fit better
with what the
news media and the Republicans had been doing
to Gore.
Beyond Love Canal, the other prime examples of
Gore's
"lies" -- inspiring the male lead in Love Story
and working to
create the Internet -- also stemmed from a quarrelsome
reading of his words, followed by exaggeration
and ridicule
rather than a fair assessment of how his comments
and the
truth matched up.
The earliest of these Gore "lies," dating back
to 1997, was
Gore's expressed belief that he and his wife
Tipper had
served as models for the lead characters in the
sentimental
bestseller and movie, Love Story.
When the author, Erich Segal, was asked about
Gore's
impression, he
stated that the preppy hockey-playing
male lead, Oliver Barrett IV,
indeed was modeled after Gore
and Gore's Harvard roommate, actor Tommy Lee
Jones.
But Segal said the female lead, Jenny, was not
modeled after
Tipper Gore. [NYT, Dec. 14, 1997]
Rather than treating this distinction as a minor
point of
legitimate confusion, the news media concluded
that Gore
had willfully lied. The media made the case an
indictment
against Gore's honesty.
In doing so, however, the media repeatedly misstated
the
facts, insisting that Segal had denied that Gore
was the model
for the lead male character. In reality, Segal
had confirmed
that Gore was, at least partly, the inspiration
for the
character, Barrett, played by Ryan O'Neal.
Some journalists seemed to understand the nuance
but still
could not resist denigrating Gore's honesty.
For instance, in its attack on Gore over the Love
Canal
quote, the Boston Herald conceded that Gore "did
provide
material" for Segal's book, but the newspaper
added that it
was "for a minor character." [Boston Herald,
Dec. 5, 1999]
That, of course, was untrue, since the Barrett
character was
one of Love Story's two principal characters
The media's treatment of the Internet comment
followed a
similar course. Gore's statement may have been
poorly
phrased, but its intent was clear: he was trying
to say that he
worked in Congress to help develop the Internet.
Gore
wasn't claiming to have "invented" the Internet
or to have
been the "father of the Internet," as many journalists
have
asserted.
Gore's actual comment, in an interview with CNN's
Wolf
Blitzer that aired on March 9, 1999, was as follows:
"During
my service in the United States Congress, I took
the initiative
in creating the Internet."
Republicans quickly went to work on Gore's statement.
In
press releases, they noted that the precursor
of the Internet,
called ARPANET, existed in 1971, a half dozen
years
before Gore entered Congress. But ARPANET was
a tiny
networking of about 30 universities, a far cry
from today's
"information superhighway," ironically a phrase
widely
credited to Gore.
As the media clamor arose about Gore's supposed
claim that
he had invented the Internet, Gore's spokesman
Chris
Lehane tried to explain. He noted that Gore "was
the leader
in Congress on the connections between data transmission
and computing power, what we call information
technology.
And those efforts helped to create the Internet
that we know
today." [AP, March 11, 1999]
There was no disputing Lehane's description of
Gore's lead
congressional role in developing today's Internet.
But the
media was off and running.
Routinely, the reporters lopped off the introductory
clause
"during my service in the United States Congress"
or simply
jumped to word substitutions, asserting that
Gore claimed
that he "invented" the Internet which carried
the notion of a
hands-on computer engineer.
Whatever imprecision may have existed in Gore's
original
comment, it paled beside the distortions of what
Gore clearly
meant. While excoriating Gore's phrasing as an
exaggeration,
the media engaged in its own exaggeration.
Yet, faced with the national media putting a hostile
cast on his
Internet statement -- that he was willfully lying
-- Gore chose
again to express his regret at his choice of
words.
Now, with the Love Canal controversy, this media
pattern of
distortion has returned with a vengeance. The
national news
media has put a false quote into Gore's mouth
and then
extrapolated from it to the point of questioning
his sanity.
Even after the quote was acknowledged to be wrong,
the
words continued to be repeated, again becoming
part of
Gore's record.
From the media's hostile tone, one might conclude
that
reporters have reached a collective decision
that Gore should
be disqualified from the campaign.
At times, the media has jettisoned any pretext
of objectivity.
According to various accounts of the first Democratic
debate
in Hanover, N.H., reporters openly mocked Gore
as they sat
in a nearby press room and watched the debate
on television.
Several journalists later described the incident,
but without
overt criticism of their colleagues. As The Daily
Howler
observed, Time's Eric Pooley cited the reporters'
reaction
only to underscore how Gore was failing in his
"frenzied
attempt to connect."
"The ache was unmistakable -- and even touching
-- but the
300 media types watching in the press room at
Dartmouth
were, to use the appropriate technical term,
totally grossed
out by it," Pooley wrote. "Whenever Gore came
on too
strong, the room erupted in a collective jeer,
like a gang of
15-year-old Heathers cutting down some hapless
nerd."
Hotline's Howard Mortman described the same behavior
as
the reporters "groaned, laughed and howled" at
Gore's
comments.
Later, during an appearance on C-SPAN's Washington
Journal, Salon's Jake Tapper cited the Hanover
incident, too.
"I can tell you that the only media bias I have
detected in
terms of a group media bias was, at the first
debate between
Bill Bradley and Al Gore, there was hissing for
Gore in the
media room up at Dartmouth College. The reporters
were
hissing Gore, and that's the only time I've ever
heard the
press room boo or hiss any candidate of any party
at any
event." [See The Daily Howler, Dec. 14, 1999]
Traditionally, journalists pride themselves in
maintaining
deadpan expressions in such public settings,
at most
chuckling at a comment or raising an eyebrow,
but never
demonstrating derision for a public figure.
Reasons for this widespread media contempt for
Gore vary.
Conservative outlets, such as Rev. Moon's Washington
Times and Murdoch's media empire, clearly want
to ensure
the election of a Republican conservative to
the White
House. They are always eager to advance that
cause.
In the mainstream press, many reporters may feel
that
savaging Gore protects them from the "liberal"
label that can
so damage a reporter's career. Others simply
might be
venting residual anger over President Clinton's
survival of the
Monica Lewinsky scandal. They might believe that
Gore's
political destruction would be a fitting end
to the Clinton
administration.
Reporters apparently sense, too, that there is
no career
danger in showing open hostility toward Clinton's
vice
president.
Yet, the national media's prejudice against Gore
-- now
including fabrication of damaging quotes and
misrepresentation of his meaning -- raises a
troubling
question about this year's election and the future
health of
American democracy:
How can voters have any hope of expressing an
informed
judgment when the media intervenes to transform
one of the
principal candidates -- an individual who, by
all accounts, is a
well-qualified public official and a decent family
man -- into a
national laughingstock?
What hope does American democracy have when the
media
can misrepresent a candidate's words so thoroughly
that they
become an argument for his mental instability
-- and all the
candidate feels he can do about the misquotes
is to
apologize?
As The Daily Howler's Somerby observes, the concern
about deception and its corrosive effect on democracy
dates
back to the ancient Greeks.
"Democracy won't work, the great Socrates cried,
because
sophists will create mass confusion," Somerby
recalled at his
Web site. "Here in our exciting, much-hyped new
millennium,
the Great Greek's vision remains crystal clear."
[The Daily Howler, Jan. 13, 2000]