Michael Moore's career as a rabble-rousing populist has been marked by a frequent pattern of dissembling and factual inaccuracy. He distorted the chronology of his first movie, "Roger & Me"; repeatedly peddled the myth that the Bush administration gave $43 million to the Taliban; published two books, Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country?, that were riddled with factual errors and distortions; and won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine," a documentary based on a confused and often contradictory argument that features altered footage of a Bush-Quayle campaign ad, a misleading presentation of a speech by National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston, and other factual distortions.
With his new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the prestigious Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was #1 at the US box office last week, Moore has surged to new prominence -- and come under increasing scrutiny. His staff has made much of elaborate fact-checking that was reportedly conducted on the film. And fortunately, it appears to be free of the silly and obvious errors that have plagued Moore's past work, such as the claim in Stupid White Men that the Pentagon planned to spend $250 billion on the Joint Strike Fighter in 2001, a sum that represented over 80 percent of the total defense budget request for the year.
However, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is filled with a series of deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased insinuations that Moore does not adequately back up. As Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum and others have noted, the irony is that these are the same tactics frequently used by the target of the film, George W. Bush. Moore and his chief antagonist have more in common than viewers might think. (Read the whole column.)
Update 7/7 4:42 AM EST: A shorter version of this column appeared today in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
By Bryan Keefer
Published in Columbia Journalism Review
Political spin is as old as politics, and it is tempting to view the Campaign '04 version as nothing more than an update of the same old, same old. Ask a dozen reporters about this campaign season and you'll hear a dozen variations on recurrent themes: the campaigns are dishonest, the attacks and counterattacks fly nonstop, the wash of information dumped on the press is bewildering. Such assessments, though, miss a crucial new development: President Bush, Senator Kerry, and their operatives are deliberately using a cynical combination of calculated deception, speed, and volume to exploit the press's reluctance to call a lie a lie. Rather than sorting through the facts and pointing out what is true and what is not — something good reporters are qualified to do — we too often treat the truth as something the reader or viewer should be able to discern from competing bits of spin. In doing so, we encourage the candidates to mislead the public. And when the "facts" are coming from every conceivable angle and around the clock, it makes it even more unlikely that the press will sort through it all and render a judgment. Bush has taken advantage of this like no other president before him (this is how he governs, not just how he campaigns) and Kerry is learning quickly how to play the game. The rules of engagement on the campaign trail have changed, and the press must change the way it covers the race or risk drowning — along with the voters — under a toxic tsunami. (Read the whole article.)
By Bryan Keefer
In radio and print advertisements that ran in Philadelphia last week, the liberal Media Fund continued a trend of Democrats and their supporters exaggerating the number of jobs lost during President Bush's time in office. The ads also implied that Bush has cut funding for Pennsylvania schools when, in fact, the administration has simply not increased funding as much as it once suggested it would.
The ads, which were timed to coincide with a June 23 appearance in Philadelphia by President Bush, stated, "Mr. Bush - what about the 1.9 million Americans who've lost their jobs?" In backup materials, The Media Fund claims that "Since Bush took office in January 2001, 1.9 million jobs have been lost in the US," citing Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs data as evidence. However, the data demonstrate that between January 2001 and May 2004, approximately 1.9 million private sector jobs were lost, while only 1.16 million net jobs have been lost (a figure which includes gains in government jobs). Like the Kerry campaign, The Media Fund exaggerated the number of jobs lost by stripping the larger number of context.
The ad also asked "Mr. Bush - what do your promises mean to the Pennsylvania children who are still waiting for the $200 million dollars in school funds you took away?" This, as Media Fund admits, is a reference to the difference in the amount of funding the administration had estimated in 2002 that it would make available in fiscal 2004, and the actual budget request the President made to Congress this year. This is hardly money taken away from schools, as the ad implies. The convoluted grammar of the ad ("still waiting . . . you took away"), however, twists a technically true claim into something far more sinister-sounding.
The Media Fund, with millions of dollars in funding, is already a player in national politics - and already pumping misleading spin into the minds of voters.
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The latest back-and-forth between the Bush and Kerry campaigns has revolved around one of the most emotional symbols of the 20th century: Adolf Hitler. The Bush camp released an online ad Friday connecting Democratic politicians to footage of two independently produced advertisements that briefly appeared on the website of the the liberal group MoveOn.org which compared Bush to Hitler. Democrats, meanwhile, have fired back by suggesting the Bush campaign is playing on Hitler's image intentionally, rather than borrowing it from the ads. The result is a morass of spin as both sides scramble to associate each other with one of the worst mass murderers in history.
In the online ad, the Bush campaign features footage of the two ads featuring Hitler that were submitted to MoveOn, which the group briefly allowed on appear on its website as part of a contest (the group later removed them and apologized after coming under criticism). Bush's ad also includes angry statements by John Kerry supporters such as former Vermont governor Howard Dean, Missouri congressman Richard Gephardt and former Vice President Al Gore, who are labeled the "coalition of the wild-eyed" by the Bush campaign.
Including these two obscure ads in a montage of statements by prominent Democratic politicians is hardly fair, reprehensible as they may be. Anyone can dredge up hateful material of a similar nature from the Internet. And because the ads' origins were not explained by Bush's campaign, viewers of its ad were left to infer that the Hitler footage came from a source of similar stature to Gephardt or Gore.
However, although the Republican National Committee turned the ads into a major controversy when they originally appeared on the MoveOn website, the Kerry campaign played dumb about the source of the footage in a press release and email to supporters, suggesting in both cases that the Bush campaign had invoked Hitler without mentioning that the footage came from MoveOn submissions. Here is the statement issued by Kerry spokesperson Phil Singer:
The fact that George Bush thinks it's appropriate to use images of Adolf Hitler in his campaign raises serious questions about his fitness to spend another four years in the White House. Adolf Hitler slaughtered millions of innocent people and has no place in a campaign that is supposed to be about the future and hope of this nation. The President's use of these images during a month that evoked the memory of World War II is remarkably insensitive to the sacrifices of the millions of people who lost their lives during Hitler's reign of terror.
The Bush Campaign should immediately remove these hateful images from its website and apologize for using them. The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong.
Similarly, Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill wrote in her email (56K Adobe PDF) that the Bush campaign "placed a disgusting ad called 'The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party' as the main feature on its website. Bizarrely, and without explanation, the ad places Adolf Hitler among those faces. The Bush-Cheney campaign must pull this ad off of its website. The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong." It is true that the Bush campaign did not adequately explain the original source of the footage in the initial version of its ad; however, Cahill's email falsely suggested ignorance as to their source.
The Democratic Party also denounced the "disgusting ad" in a separate email to supporters (92K Adobe PDF) and post on its weblog, claiming that the Bush ad "features Adolf Hitler alongside Democrats, including John Kerry," as if the President's campaign were comparing Hitler to Democrats.
Bush's campaign responded with its own email to supporters and a post on its weblog calling on Kerry to denounce comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis. The campaign also edited the ad, which now includes an explanation of the context of the footage at the beginning. But the explanation is disingenuous. It states that "The following video contains remarks made by and images from ads sponsored by Kerry Supporters" - vague language that fails to make clear that the ads were not created by MoveOn, though the contest was sponsored by the group. Then it shows the two ads with Hitler comparisons, the first of which includes a graphic stating "Sponsored by MoveOn.org" (in anticipation of being aired by the group, presumably). Bush's campaign has added a caption to the second ad from the MoveOn contest that features footage of Hitler which says "Images from MoveOn.org ad," an even more blatantly disingenuous suggestion that MoveOn created the ad.
This controversy revives the long-standing controversy over political figures playing on associations with Hitler and the Nazi regime. As Al Kamen of the Washington Post wrote back in 2000, these were sometimes invoked during President Clinton's time in office, and they have become even more common in recent years, particularly in attacks on President Bush. Recent examples include Vice President Al Gore's attack on "a network of 'rapid response' digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors;" philanthropist/financier George Soros' comparison of a Bush slogan to the Nazi era; Andrew Sullivan's description of filmmaker Michael Moore as "our very own Leni Riefenstahl" (a filmmaker and Nazi propagandist), an analogy also drawn by writer Christopher Hitchens and Fox News host Bill O'Reilly; O'Reilly's comparison of Moore and author/radio host Al Franken to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels; and syndicated columnist Ted Rall's description of Bush as a "Nazi."
With all the issues at stake in this election, can't we do better than Hitler analogies?
Update 6/28 1:24 PM EST: In a report on the controversy in today's Washington Times, Bill Sammon continues the pattern of distortion, falsely suggesting that MoveOn created the ads shown in the Bush campaign's online advertisement. He refers to "over-the-top ads by MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group," and writes of "a clip from a MoveOn.org ad showing Adolf Hitler basking in the adulation of Nazis" as well as "more shots of ... MoveOn.org likening him to Hitler." Sammon never specifies that the ads were not created or aired by MoveOn, nor does he provide readers with the essential fact that they briefly appeared on the group's website as part of a contest.
Update 7/1 4:46 PM EST: A slightly different version of this article ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer today.
Update 7/1 5:55 PM EST: Committing the opposite sin of the Washington Times's Bill Sammon, Los Angeles Times writer Nick Anderson incorrectly suggests today that the Bush campaign used raw footage of Hitler in its ad, failing to clarify that the clips were from two independently produced ads submitted to a MoveOn contest:
Last week, the Bush campaign e-mailed a 78-second video to millions of supporters that included images of Adolf Hitler amid a stream of Democrats inveighing against the president.
Ensuing protests over the video's use of images of the Nazi dictator led Bush aides to add a 20-second disclaimer saying the Hitler clips had first been used against him by liberal opponents.
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Related links:
-The meaning of "liberation" shifts in the political winds (Brendan Nyhan, 5/5/04)
-A flurry of unfair associations (Ben Fritz, 1/13/04)
-Peters plays the Nazi card (Brendan Nyhan, 1/7/04)
-The trouble with Media Whores Online (Brendan Nyhan, 8/15/02)