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Paula Zahn tried, but she just couldn't raise her journalistic standards
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By Mike Cuenca | July 15, 2004
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The strangest thing appeared on Paula Zahn's CNN program last night: a flicker of sound journalism.
As Zahn introduced a segment on the Bush election team's ongoing
characterization of Democrat John Kerry as a "flip-flopper," she
actually gave a detailed explanation of Kerry's vote against the $87
billion appropriation for the Iraq war. First, Zahn showed a portion of
a Bush TV ad in which Kerry is quoted as saying, "I actually did vote
for the $87 billion before I voted against it." Then she went on to
describe the details:
Here is how that vote actually
happened. Last September, the Bush administration asked Congress to
dole out $87 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars but the
president didn't want to raise taxes to cover the cost. That same
month, Senators John Kerry and Joe Biden proposed an amendment that
would reduce the Bush tax cut on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans
to pay for the extra spending.
KERRY: We are a going to pay that $87 billion for Iraq, it ought to come out of that $690 billion tax cut.
ZAHN: It was an idea the Bush administration opposed. The
Republican-controlled Senate voted on the Biden-Kerry amendment in
October and rejected it.
15 days later, the Senate voted on
the original war funding bill without the amendment. That's when Kerry
voted no. But this time, the bill passed.
Wow. For once, a
mainstream journalist actually provided TV viewers with some context.
Viewers could analyze for themselves the intricacies of Kerry's
statement and make up their own minds about what it says about him and
about that issue.
But before we pop the corks and celebrate
the revival of ethical journalism, we have to pop back into the real
world. The Bush campaign's characterization of Kerry as flip-flopping
is an election-year strategy employed to undercut Kerry's credibility
with the voters. Besides being hypocritical in light of Bush's own
flip-flopping on issues ranging from the gay marriage ban to the
importance of capturing Osama bin Laden, the story detracts from the
many other substantive discussions the media could be presenting over
the positions these two candidates have taken on many significant
issues.
Zahn's guest for this segment was Joe Klein of TIME
Magazine. Even as he sat there and engaged in this lengthy analysis of
Kerry's vote, he stated his understanding that the issue was
distracting from the more important discussion of the integrity of the
decision to go to war in the first place. Klein said:
And to
the extent that the discussion is about this rather than the wisdom of
going into Iraq and also the wisdom of the president, the
administration's kind of nonpolicies for what was going to happen after
the war was over, the fact that the discussions about this is very good
for President Bush and not so good for John Kerry.
This is
just one more example of the media acknowledging that they're haplessly
taking part in a diversion from the real issues. Klein's statement
should have been a dismissal of the story, not just a passing
commentary about it. When Zahn first brought it up, that should have
been his first and last statement about it: it's a Bush-generated
diversion from the real issues. But before leaving the subject, Klein
inflated it into the primary issue of the election season:
This is a very complicated issue. Complicated is a word that political
consultants hate to hear and, yet, I believe that this issue is at the
center of the campaign and John Kerry won't win unless he really
plainly explains this to the American people.
There you have
it. Joe Klein says John Kerry can't win unless he adequately explains
this one vote to the American people. And for an example of what the
mainstream media considers "balance," Zahn and Klein then obligingly
dismissed the discussion of whether or not Dick Cheney will remain on
the GOP ticket as being a mere distraction raised by the Democrats:
ZAHN: Final thought on the speculation about Dick Cheney being dumped
from the ticket. We just had a spirited discussion in our previous
segment with one guest suggesting that this is much to ado about
nothing, there's no real movement underway to do so. What do you think?
KLEIN: Oh, absolutely. Jonah Goldberg was absolutely right.
This is an incredibly stupid story that's being spread by the media and
by Democrats in terms of disinformation...
ZAHN: Since when is Al D'Amato a Democrat?
KLEIN: Al D'Amato was speaking off the top of his head. There were a
lot of -- there's some panic on K Street that the lobbying wing of the
Republican party [transcript incomplete]
Doug Schoen was
right that Cheney is a problem for Bush, but he can't be dumped because
that would be a total admission of failure of all of his major
policies, as Jonah said. But you know, it's a fun story; it's an inside
the beltway story. It isn't -- But it isn't a true story. There isn't
real -- there isn't a real debate going on within the Bush campaign:
"Do we keep this guy or not?"
There are also rumors
spreading about whether or not to dump Donald Rumsfeld, also untrue.
These are the kind of rumors you get at this point in the campaign.
The other party usually -- Al D'Amato was doing the Democrats' work for
them. The other party is usually the one that spreads these. In 1992,
the rumor was spreading that George Bush, the elder, was going to dump
Dan Quayle.
It's all part of politics, but it's not something that we should take all that seriously.
ZAHN: Joe Klein, appreciate it.
KLEIN: OK.
Again, there in that exchange, Zahn almost crossed the line into sound journalism, pointing out
to Klein that the source of the rumor, Al D'Amato, isn't even a
Democrat, but she let Klein talk his way out of it and dismiss the
whole issue. Even as he dismissed it, he acknowledged the story's
significance, pointing out that "Cheney is a problem for Bush." He also
brought up the point that George H.W. Bush fought the same rumors about
his vice-president, Dan Quayle, but then he left out an important and
relevant aspect of that story: GHW Bush didn't drop Quayle—and then
lost the election.
Right here in this five-minute segment, we
have an example of how the "liberal" media slants their coverage to
favor President Bush. In these two "journalists" minds (and,
apparently, the minds of their producers, publishers, and networks),
the Bush campaign's characterization of Kerry as a "flip-flopper" will
likely decide the election, while the serious consideration of just how
much of a drag Cheney will be on the GOP ticket is a "stupid story"
that shouldn't be taken "all that seriously."
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