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Mediamatters.Org - The
sad news last week that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) has been
diagnosed with a malignant
brain tumor triggered an extraordinary amount of news coverage, making the
front pages of newspapers across the country and producing more than 2,000
television mentions, according to TVeyes.com.
Aside
from sitting presidents, there aren't many politicians who can generate
that kind of play with a health-related bulletin. The avalanche of interest in
Kennedy's cancer battle stems not only from his famous family and his
last-of-a-generation, living-legend
status, but also because Kennedy symbolizes
-- and
serves as a de facto spokesman for
-- an entire political
leaning in America:
liberals.
That's
why what Kennedy does and says is important,
and it's usually treated that way by the media.
Indeed,
this is the second time this year the illustrious lawmaker has made big
headlines. The first came in January when Kennedy endorsed Sen. Barack Obama
for president. That was also front-page news across the country and completely
dominated television's political coverage for days. In fact, news of
Kennedy's endorsement, made on the morning of January 28, nearly eclipsed
President Bush's State
of the Union address,
which was delivered later that evening.
This
year, the press has treated
Kennedy as a singularly powerful figure in the Democratic Party and a
commanding spokesman for the
American left.
Unfortunately,
that hasn't always been the case. Just a few years ago, when Republicans
were riding high on Iraq
war fever and Democrats were seen as on the retreat politically, the press
cavalierly snubbed Kennedy.
Specifically,
back in September 2002, with the Bush administration and much of the Beltway
media rushing to embrace war with Iraq,
Kennedy delivered a passionate, provocative, and newsworthy
speech raising all sorts of doubts about a possible invasion. Unlike today,
the political press wasn't very interested in Kennedy or what he had to
say about the most pressing issue facing the nation. Back in that media
environment, being the voice of American liberals didn't mean much.
I've
been thinking about Kennedy's speech a lot lately. Not just because the
senator has been in the news, but also because of the Pentagon's
still-unfolding propaganda scandal involving retired U.S.
generals who, at times,
were used as puppets on network and cable television during the war, where they
repeated administration talking points
while presenting themselves
as independent analysts. That outlets eagerly embraced the Pentagon's
pro-war generals while mostly dismissing Kennedy's warnings perfectly
captured the media's mindset during the run-up to the war.
To
really get a sense of the damage done by that propaganda initiative and to
appreciate just how badly the press fell down as professional skeptics who are
supposed to hold people in power accountable, it's instructive to revisit
the media environment of late 2002 and early 2003.
And
looking back, a key turning point during that public rush to war was
Kennedy's fervent and thoughtful speech. It was a turning point because
it highlighted, months before the invasion even took place, how the press was
going to deal with high-profile, articulate critics of Bush's war policy.
The press was going to downplay them, marginalize them, and ignore them. Even if
those critics included high-wattage political stars like Ted Kennedy.
In
retrospect, I can't help thinking that if the media treated Kennedy in
2002 the way they treat him today (and the way the press treated him before 2002), as somebody whose actions
command respect and attention, that the doomed public debate about the war
would have, or at least could have, been much different. It could have been
more critical, more thoughtful,
and more illuminating.
Instead,
much of the political press in 2002 treated Kennedy as a bystander in the
passing Bush parade, and specifically,
they treated Kennedy's September
27 speech as little more than a political maneuver that deserved only passing
mention -- literally.
That
night on NBC's Nightly News,
just 32 words from the Kennedy address were excerpted. On ABC's World News Tonight,
it was 31 words. And on the CBS
Evening News, 40 words. In all three instances, the brief mention of
the Kennedy speech was part of a larger report on the
looming possibility of war. Meaning, on none of the networks
did Kennedy's speech qualify as a stand-alone news event.
The
address was given on a Friday. Two days later on the Sunday talk shows, where Iraq
was discussed in detail, Kennedy's name never came up on NBC's Meet the
Press, on
CBS' Face the Nation,
or on ABC's This Week.
For
the network pundits, Kennedy's anti-war speech did not
exist. It was irrelevant to the around-the-clock media chatter about a looming
war.
The
Kennedy coverage in the major newspapers
wasn't much better. At The Washington Post,
Kennedy's newsworthy speech,
a clarion call against Bush's pre-emptive
war, garnered exactly one sentence -- 36
words total in coverage. Keep in mind, during 2002, the Post published more than 1,000 articles
and columns about Iraq,
nearly 1 million words. But
the Post set aside just 36 words
for Kennedy's farsighted war speech.
What
was so remarkable was that Kennedy delivered his address at the time when there
was already a media narrative unfolding about how Democrats, anxious about the
political ramifications of not supporting a then-popular president, were not voicing stiff opposition to the
planned invasion.
Two
days before Kennedy gave his speech, the Post
detailed in an A1
article how "[d]ozens
of congressional Democrats are frustrated with their leadership for rushing to
embrace President Bush's Iraqi war resolution and fostering an impression the
party overwhelmingly backs a unilateral strike against Saddam Hussein."
When
Kennedy stepped forward and answered the specific issue raised by the Post, what did the newspaper do? It
devoted 36 words to Kennedy's address.
What
was lacking from the limited coverage that did exist was even the slightest
attempt to relay the key points of Kennedy's address, which represented
the same central points that White House critics had been raising for months
and continued to raise after Kennedy's speech.
Some
key passages from the Kennedy speech:
"[T]he
Administration has not made a convincing case that we face such an imminent
threat to our national security that a unilateral, pre-emptive American strike
and an immediate war are necessary."
"[T]he
Administration has not explicitly acknowledged, let alone explained to the
American people, the immense post-war commitment that will be required to
create a stable Iraq."
"A largely unilateral
American war that is widely perceived in the Muslim world as untimely or unjust
could worsen not lessen the threat of terrorism."
"War
with Iraq before a genuine attempt at inspection and disarmament, or without
genuine international support -- could swell the ranks of Al Qaeda sympathizers
and trigger an escalation in terrorist acts."
"[I]nformation
from the intelligence community over the past six months does not point to Iraq
as an imminent threat to the United States or a major proliferator of weapons
of mass destruction."
"[T]here
is no clear and convincing pattern of Iraqi relations with either Al Qaeda or
the Taliban."
Talk
about a greatest-hits
performance. Kennedy nailed virtually every major problem and shortfall that
emerged in the wake of the invasion. Yet in real time, the press, which was
producing voluminous reports and commentary about the possible war, showed only
superficial interest in Kennedy's prophetic comments.
For
instance, Kennedy's hometown paper, The Boston
Globe, ran a
Page One story about the
senator's war speech. But the article itself contained just three quotes
from the address and did not include most of his most stinging assessments.
The
New York Times did the
same thing in a September
28, 2002,
article, leading with a reference
to Kennedy's address. But the Times
included just two Kennedy quotes in the entire article,
an article that mostly focused on upcoming war-related votes in Congress and
the United Nations.
Also,
both the Globe and the Times set aside nearly as much space for
Republican hit man Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX)
to attack Kennedy's speech as the papers did to explain what Kennedy
actually said about waging war.
Note:
I mentioned earlier that it's instructive to go back and actually read
the articles and transcripts from 2002 and 2003 to get a sense of just how
dreadful the prewar coverage was. But that kind of research is not for the faint
of heart, because what
you'll find is often just gruesome.
That's
my way of prefacing how MSNBC's Hardball
dealt with Kennedy's speech on September
27, 2002.
I kid you not, host Chris Matthews took the news of Kennedy's smart,
provocative speech, which represented the most sweeping and prominent
indictment of Bush's war plan delivered by an in-office Democrat, and the
MSNBC host packaged it with war pronouncements made that same week by Hollywood
stars:
MATTHEWS:
Tonight
on Hardball,
Barbra Streisand, Senator Ted Kennedy,
and Tom Cruise speak out as debate picks up in Washington
and in Hollywood over whether this country
should attack Iraq.
Don't
you love how Babs got top billing over Kennedy? And yes, the program's
guests spent nearly as much time discussing (in a serious manner) what
celebrities thought about the war as they did debating Kennedy's thoughts
about launching an unprecedented pre-emptive war against Iraq.
(FYI: Cruise supported the
war; Streisand, not so much.)
Not
gruesome enough? Note this teaser that Matthews read at the top of the program
that night, which perfectly captured the tone and tenor of the times:
"Tonight, do the radical protesters shutting down Washington
have a legitimate cause or do they simply hate America?"
Incredibly,
Hardball was not
alone in grouping Kennedy together with the
Hollywood actor
and singer
in terms of the day's top political news. From CNN's Inside Politics on
September
27, 2002:
Senator
Ted Kennedy joins the ranks of Democrats raising red flags about war with Iraq, but is his take on Iraq that
different from the president's? Then, Barbra Streisand is emerging from partial
retirement Sunday, lending her voice to a star-studded event in Los Angeles, expected to
bring in $4 million for House Democrats.
And
yes, you read that correctly. The pros at CNN suggested that Kennedy's
laundry list of reservations about a war with Iraq
wasn't all that different
from what Bush was saying publicly at the time. As CNN's Candy Crowley
reported that day, "What
was remarkable was the extent to which they
[Kennedy
and Bush] seemed to be saying the same thing."
Just
amazing.
As
we hope for the best regarding Kennedy's health condition and await the
latest update, which will likely spark a flurry of press reports, let's
not forget that it wasn't that long ago that the media did their best to
ignore what Kennedy had to say. And when it ignored Kennedy, and when it
ignored the voice of liberals, the press
--
and
the country
--
paid
a dear price.
Media Matters - Why did the press ignore Ted Kennedy in 2002? {...} Published: May 28, 2008, 6:15 pm - Indexed: May 28, 2008, 11:43 pm - Page Size: 24KB |