http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/gore200710
Now, my friends might very well tell me to get over the 2000 election already, but part of me never will. Moreover, we still have much to learn from what happened. With the 2008 election battle heating up, I hope some of those same mistakes don't happen again.
The piece does an excellent job of detailing how two reporters, Katharine Seelye of the New York Times, Ceci Connolly from The Washington Post lead the way in beating up on Gore with distorted information and misquotes. The entire MSM latched on to the 'exaggerations' storyline and went into a feeding frenzy over irrelevancies like Gore's "sigh's" during the first debate with Bush. We are given several examples of the outright distain for Gore and cynicism that carries through the news articles. This type of journalism is a long way from the work of the legendary "Johnny" R. W. Apple, who covered camapaigns and was the Washington Bureau chief for the Times for years.
On the editorial pages, Maureen Dowd belittled Gore at every turn.
So, the question is, what happened? Why did the national media cover Gore with distain and Bush with kid gloves? Were they manipulated? Was this the outcome of a self-loathing "liberal media" turning on a progressive politician? After the Clinton years was the MSM overly cynical?
Perhaps the MSM just acted like sheep:
The trivial continued to dominate during the postmortem following Gore and Bush's first debate, on October 3, 2000. The television media were sure Gore won—at first. But then Republican operatives promptly spliced together a reel of Gore sighing, which was then sent to right-wing radio outlets. Eighteen hours later, the pundits could talk of little else. "They could hear you audibly sighing or sounding exasperated as Governor Bush was answering questions," Katie Couric scolded him the next day on the Today show. "Do you think that's presidential behavior?" For the Times's Frank Bruni, the sighs weren't as galling as Gore's familiarity with the names of foreign leaders. "It was not enough for Vice President Al Gore to venture a crisp pronunciation of Milosevic, as in Slobodan," he wrote. "Mr. Gore had to go a step further, volunteering the name of Mr. Milosevic's challenger Vojislav Kostunica."
Which candidate can do the best job fighting against this in 2008? I have to think it's Hillary Clinton, given all of her experience in the battle with the 'vast right wing conspiracy'.
For more on the MSM echo chamber read Media Matters: http://mediamatters.org/items/200612160001
Thoughts?
