12/13 Ben: Spin works its way into liberal harping on Enron
In politics, people often delight in the pain of their opponents. That's been the case with some liberals who have been harping on the bankruptcy of energy trading company Enron due to its deep connections to President Bush and members of his administration. Of course, there's nothing wrong with such criticism or satire per se, but some of these liberals have gone beyond reasonable debate and made unproven, illogical and misleading allegations about Enron and the administration.
A major piece of this attack came yesterday from Los Angeles Times and syndicated columnist Robert Scheer. Scheer's article is full of innuendo and suggestion, citing numerous campaign contributions by Enron to Bush and connections between his administration and the company, but he never actually makes a connection between the company's downfall and the President.
The closest he comes is in his final paragraph, when he states that "[w]e have a right to know whether the Enron alums in the administration were tipped off in time to bail out with profit the way [Chairman Kenneth] Lay and the other Enron top execs did." Surely, no one would disagree that the public should know if this happened. Scheer has no evidence to suggest that it did, however -- this is simply speculation. He additionally fails to note that members of the administration were required to divest their stock holdings, although some took longer to do this than others.
What makes this lack of substance particularly disturbing is that Scheer claims that this case "has the makings of the greatest presidential scandal since the Teapot Dome." Teapot Dome was a case where Warren Harding's Interior Secretary, Albert Fall, gave access to national oil reserves to a private company in return for $400,000 in gifts and loans. In the case of Enron, however, no one, not even Scheer, has alleged that officials violated the law to enrich the company in return for bribes. The comparison seems particularly absurd when one considers that Enron has not recently benefited from any largesse--it has gone bankrupt.
While Scheer twists logic in his connections and comparisons, he stops short of outright dissembling. That task was picked up by another pundit, however, syndicated columnist Molly Ivins. In an otherwise reasonable December 6 article, she asks what would have happened if Enron had been connected to former President Clinton and it had fallen apart under his watch, and writes, "Holy moley, we'd have four congressional investigations, three special prosecutors, two impeachment inquiries and a partridge in a pear tree by now."
Humorous hyperbole aside, the implication, however, is that Enron's bankruptcy and any potential wrongdoing is not being investigated. In fact, while there aren't four congressional investigations, there is one, which has requested the presence of top Enron executives and heard damning testimony from the company's auditors. Growing concern from politicians makes it likely this hearing will continue to probe Enron's downfall. In addition, Ivins conveniently fails to note that President Clinton's administration did have ties to Enron, and that they are not being investigated as of yet.
Many liberals have been criticizing Enron's connections to Bush for a while, and it's not surprising to see them jumping on its collapse as an opportunity to score political points. But illogical attacks and dissembling should not be thrown into the mix.
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Related links:
-Scheer Deception: The Lies and Jargon of Robert Scheer (Ben Fritz, 10/8)
12/13/2001 10:56:56 AM EST |
12/11 Brendan: "Bush recession" ads? – an echo chamber case study
Reports that Democrats will be running ads blaming President Bush for the recession are greatly exaggerated. In fact, they're false.
Last Friday, I examined Democratic attacks on President Bush's management of the economy and counter-attacks from Republicans and sympathetic conservative pundits. It now appears there is more to the story than I previously reported.
It all began with a November 30 USA Today interview with Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY). Lowey, the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, discussed a series of planned ads criticizing House Republicans for voting to repeal the alternative minimum tax (AMT) on corporations. She also made this widely publicized comment: "[t]he bottom line is, this is George Bush's recession." From there, an overexcited USA Today headline writer set in motion a wave of spin that has shaped the debate.
The paper headlined the story "Dems' ad campaign to assail 'Bush recession'," even though a cursory glance at the story revealed that the ads would focus on the AMT vote. There’s no indication that the President is criticized in the ads or, more specifically, that he is criticized for causing the recession.
Four days later – an eternity in the Washington spin cycle – USA Today issued a clarification saying the ads would not mention the President, but the damage was done. The original headline influenced reports saying Democrats were blaming Bush for the recession, including a CBS News report that night (11/30) saying that Democrats "decided to break their silence and blame the recession on the president." The supposed "Bush recession" ads were debated on CNN’s "Crossfire" the same evening. The following Sunday, "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert asked Daschle a question about the ads, saying "[t]he House Democrats are going to launch a television commercial against the president calling it the Bush recession." Cokie Roberts also criticized the ad strategy and cited the Bush recession quote on "This Week" that Sunday.
Incredibly, the day after the USA Today clarification, a different reporter at the newspaper even repeated the fallacy, writing that "Democrats [are launching] a campaign on what they call 'the Bush recession'" (this also puts in quotes a phrase that no Democrats has used to describe the current downturn).
Over time, the phrase began to circulate more widely. William Safire of the New York Times wrote about Daschle’s "strategy of running against 'the Bush recession' in the 2002 elections" on Thursday. It is unclear if Safire erroneously attributed the phrase to Daschle or just left an impression to that effect by the way he put "the Bush recession" in quotes. Lexington, a columnist in the Economist, similarly attributed the "Bush recession" phrase to Daschle in the December 8 edition, apparently either confusing him with Lowey or mischaracterizing Daschle's November 29 reference to "the Bush recession of the early 1990s".
Unsurprisingly, when the ads were released, few reports acknowledged that they had been previously mischaracterized. One exception came from the Associated Press:
Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., declared recently that the current economic contraction was "George Bush's recession." But the radio commercials steer well clear of that - saying only that "we're in a recession."
There is clearly a larger Democratic strategy to criticize President Bush for mismanaging the economy. Some of these attacks are and may continue to be deceptive, but this does not excuse the media’s irresponsibility in reporting what Democrats actually say and do.
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Related links:
-More of the economic blame game (Brendan Nyhan, 12/07)
12/11/2001 07:26:08 AM EST |
By Bryan Keefer
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, Attorney
General John Ashcroft implied that critics of the Bush administration's
domestic anti-terrorism measures "only aid terrorists," a statement which a
Justice Department spokeswoman later echoed in criticizing media coverage of
Ashcroft's testimony. Such statements constitute a troubling attempt by
high-ranking officials to shut down rational debate by associating much
criticism of the administration with terrorism. (read the whole column)
12/9/2001 10:21:54 PM EST |
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